Swing State Project

If you post or lurk here, you must be the political junkiest of the junkiest. That’s why you’ve probably been looking forward to Gerrymandering, a documentary about redistricting directed by filmmaker Jeff Reichert.

I don’t pretend to be a movie aficionado. Not at all. Hopefully this review will be somewhat coherent 🙂

I’ve seen a lot of users here posting that they were looking forward to seeing the film. I, as an avid user of the time-draining DRA, couldn’t wait to see it. Fortunately, I got a chance to witness the film at the Tribeca Film Festival this weekend. My thoughts about the documentary are below the jump.

I came into the movie with high expectations because I’ve done too much research on the issue of gerrymandering and redistricting over the past few months. I also was expecting many issues to be touched upon that one would expect, like partisan motivations for gerrymandering and the Voting Rights Act.

I discuss specifically the movie in the block quote, so please skip if you want to go into the movie without knowing anything about Reichert’s style.

At the beginning of his documentary, Reichert employed animation of lines carving up states while explaining the definition of gerrymandering succinctly, a definition that anyone could easily understand. I would be content if all people took away from this movie was the definition he gave–everyone should know what gerrymandering is!!

Obviously, he went beyond it. The movie contained many interviews from activists, lawmakers, and pundits that gave their own anecdote about the issue. Personally, I felt that one of the most effective parts was the (brief) interview he got with Fmr. Rep. Martin Frost; Frost detailed exactly how he was affected by the DeLaymander, and the graphics that showed it firsthand were extremely effective.

Reichert covered pretty much everything that is pertinent to the redistricting process today: partisan motivations; racial motivations and the VRA; independent commissions; prison counting; Texas’ mid-decade redistricting; incumbent homes, etc.

I feel that people who constantly review and create maps here at SSP and know a lot about the process will know almost all of the information provided in the film. However, I thought it was cool to see personal stories behind the data we analyze here. There was one story from a non-establishment Brooklyn Democrat who had his house removed from a district so that he couldn’t re-challenge an entrenched incumbent in the ensuing election. The lawmaker, who called the process “gangsta,” now is an assemblyman.

The documentary spent a lot of time with background from the campaign on Prop 11, which you may know as the thing that will create independent commissions to deal with California redistricting. I felt as though the film didn’t do enough to explain how that would affect the state, and I also felt that it was kind of boring at times to keep hearing about the campaign behind it. Not that this was that much of a bother; in fact, it was still interesting, but the time could have been better spent explaining the background behind the VRA or other history.

I’m not going to talk more about the film, as I don’t want to give anything more away. The movie was extremely successful in teaching an important, yet under appreciated topic. It was easy to understand and follow, while it explored the ways that gerrymandering can hurt our democracy. Undoubtedly, the movie was extremely biased against legislators drawing districts, but the movie is still an extremely important teaching tool. Reichert is knowledgeable about the issues–he took questions from the audience after the movie and I was extremely impressed that he knew all of the factual answers. The only problems I had were that the VRA wasn’t explained enough, the Prop 11 campaign part was too long, and the prison-counting part was way too short.

All in all, though, the movie is extremely important for any citizen of this country. I highly recommend it for anybody in the SSP community. Also, it was nice to hear Ed Rollins call us–the people into reconfiguring districts–“nerds.” Rollins also said our work was important though.

Thanks and I hope that was coherent…

This diary has the baselines for the Nevada Senate race this time. Reid is currently unpopular because the Senate is unpopular and Reid is the Senate Majority Leader. Also, the economy in Nevada is bad after the foreclosure crisis and the decrease in tourists so Nevadans will be blaming the incumbent. About 20 candidates are running against Reid in the Republican primary. Since the primary does not occur until June 8th, I do not know who the Republican nominee will be. Most polls suggest Sue Lowden (R), a former State Senator from  Clark County will be the nominee. Recently, she damaged her chances by talking about bartering healthcare for chickens. Still, a recent poll showed her with a lead of 17 points in the primary. Another recent poll showed her lead by 10 points drop to 4. She has not even faced Reid’s 25 million dollars in a state where 1 million is enough to run a credible campaign. This race should turn around faster as soon as every voter knows about Lowden’s chicken comment and anything else Reid can find. Lowden benefits however from the fact that Clark County will not see a high African American turnout or Hispanic turnout (which definitely will change if the immigration bill gets the Hispanic community active.)

A bit about Reid’s past elections: in 2004, he won 61%-35% against Richard Ziser, a real estate investor from Las Vegas. Reid even won the majority of voters outside of Clark County (Las Vegas.) Being a Mormon may have helped in rural areas but now that the rural areas are prime teabagger territory, Reid may face very large Republicans margins there. In 1998, it was not as easy. John Ensign (R), the now disgraced Republican Junior Senator of Nevada ran against Harry Reid. Ensign lost by only 100 votes while losing Clark County by nine but barely winning Washoe County (Reno).

About the baselines: the baselines show the candidates’ percentages for each county if the race were a tie. I found them by adding percentages from Reid’s 2004 Senatorial election and the 2008 presidential election by county. Then I divided the result by two, giving me the baselines. I am sorry that the baselines are not in a straight line. After some links, you will see them.

Link for 2004 Senatorial election: http://www.uselectionatlas.org…

Link for 2008 Presidential election: http://www.uselectionatlas.org…

County Name Reid Republican Other

Carson City  45% 54% 1%

Churchill   29% 70% 1%

Clark   54% 45% 1%

Douglas  35% 64% 1%

Elko   27% 72% 1%

Esmerelda 23% 76% 1%

Eureka 21% 78% 1%

Humboldt 34% 65% 1%

Lander 29% 70% 1%

Lincoln 24% 75% 1%

Lyon 35% 64% 1%

Mineral 52% 47% 1%

Nye 41% 58% 1%

Pershing 37% 62% 1%

Storey 42% 57% 1%

Washoe 49% 50% 1%

White Pine 38% 61% 1%

For those of us who like visual aides like myself, here is a map:

Dark Red: Republican 70%+

Red: Republican 60%-69%

Light Red: Republican 50%-59%

Light Blue: Reid 50%-54%

The baselines do not show too many surprises for me. It shows Reid winning Clark County in the high single digits which he needs to do to win. Also, the only other county he wins is Mineral County which McCain won by six points in 2008. Reid also loses Washoe County by one point which makes sense because Washoe County recently votes in line with the candidates’ statewide percentages. A difference with the baselines is that I expect Reid to win Washoe County by a few hundred votes if the race ties because Washoe County is trending Democratic quickly.

Just in case you were wondering, I will do Florida’s Gubernatorial race next. Do you have any suggestions for statewide races after that?

The GOP endorsing convention seemed to wrap things up pretty quickly: state Rep. Tom Emmer will be their gubernatorial nominee.

To chants of “Marty! Marty!”, Rep. Marty Seifert bows out of the Republican gubernatorial race, and endorsed Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Delano, for the party’s gubernatorial endorsement.

“Put your Emmer stickers on!” Seifert told the roaring crowd.

After Emmer had gotten to 56% on the second ballot (60% was needed to endorse), apparently that was enough for Seifert to pull the plug, in the face of Emmer’s last-minute momentum. Emmer, considerably more conservative than the moderate Republicans who are usually the only type who can win statewide, can expect a tough go of it in the general — especially if Independence Party candidate Tom Horner soaks up a big share of moderate votes. (Seifert would have faced the same problem, but Emmer, who just got a Sarah Palin endorsement, seems especially out-of-whack with his state’s preferences.)  

Come along if you dare.

• AR-Sen: The SEIU is turning their amps up to 11 in a final effort to beat Blanche Lincoln in the Democratic primary. They’re ponying up another $1 million for a new TV ad blitz, focusing on Lincoln’s support for NAFTA, CAFTA, and sundry other free-trade deals.

• FL-Sen: Looks like the “Help wanted” sign is going out at Charlie Crists’s office. As expected, much of his top-tier staff evacuated en masse; he lost communications director Andrea Saul, spokesperson Amanda Hennenberg, and campaign counsel Ben Ginsberg (all Beltway types left over from when Crist was the NRSC’s prize pony, who just headed back to the GOP’s mothership). Also former Crist marionette George LeMieux severed his strings: the seat-warming Senator says he won’t support Crist’s independent bid.

• NV-Sen: Imagine that… a Democrat actually taking to the airwaves to explain the benefits of the broadly-misunderstood (or just plain not-understood-at-all) health care reform bill and not just ceding the discursive arena to right-wing radio and astroturfers? Better late than never, I guess. Harry Reid is forging ahead with that, launching three different new TV ads featuring stories from actual Nevadans actually benefiting from HCR.

• OH-Sen (pdf): There’s one more poll of the Democratic Senate primary in Ohio, from Suffolk this time. They find an even bigger edge for Lee Fisher over Jennifer Brunner than did PPP; in fact, Suffolk has Fisher doubling up on her, 55-27. Voters may be thinking strategically: they also find that respondents feel Fisher has a better chance of beating Rob Portman than does Brunner, by a lop-sided 55-15 margin. Brunner voters report that, if Fisher wins the election, 74% will vote for Fisher and 8% for Portman.

• AZ-Gov: PPP has one more installment in its Arizona sample today: the Republican primary in the gubernatorial race. As other pollsters have found, once-wobbly incumbent Jan Brewer has strengthened her primary position (while destabilized her general election position) by signing off on Arizona’s new racial profiling law. Brewer leads the pack at 38, over fractured opposition led by NRA board member Owen Buz Mills at 19, state Treasurer Dean Martin at 16, and former university regent John Munger at 3. (In PPP’s last poll here, from September, Brewer was losing a head-to-head against Martin 37-26.) PPP also did a fantasy-baseball poll that included Maricopa Co. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who, as he does every four years, has been expressing interest in the race but not moving forward in it. Arpaio wins that version of the primary, taking 33%, with 25 for Brewer, 15 for Martin, 11 for Mills, and 1 for Munger.

• MN-Gov: With the Republican endorsing convention in Minnesota already underway, most media accounts are focusing on Sarah Palin’s last-minute endorsement of state Rep. Tom Emmer, but there’s a more important endorsement at work here in terms of potentially moving some delegates: Norm Coleman is now also backing Emmer and privately making calls to delegates on Emmer’s behalf. The GOPers have already endorsed in some of the downballot races, maybe most notably the Auditor’s race, where they endorsed former Auditor Pat Anderson (who had been running for Governor for a while, until she decided to drop down and try to get her old job back instead).

• UT-Gov: Mason-Dixon, on behalf of the Salt Lake Tribune, took another look at the general election in the Utah governor’s race, which is definitely looking like a heavy lift for Salt Lake County mayor Peter Corroon. The Democrat trails GOP incumbent Gary Herbert 61-30, an even better showing than Herbert’s 55-30 result in January.

• FL-16: Whew. After making some noises about a possible comeback attempt, ex-Rep. Tim Mahoney decided on filing day that he wouldn’t run to get his seat back. He still took a parting shot at Rep. Tom Rooney, saying he’s part of the GOP’s move to the “radical right.” Some Dudes Jim Horn and Ed Tautiva are all the Dems have on the ballot in this R+5 district, unless something changes in the next few hours.

• HI-01: The Republicans continue to very subtly funnel money into the 1st, somewhat mirroring their stealth strategy on how they got similarly-blue MA-Sen off the ground. Rather than the NRCC charging in with both barrels blazing, instead there’s a push for individual House GOP members to contribute directly to Charles Djou; about 40 have done so already.

• IN-02: The National Rifle Association slammed GOP candidate Jackie Walorski. No, that’s not because the right-wing Walorski suddenly had a change of heart on the gun issue; instead, it was because she was claiming the NRA’s endorsement. That was only for her 2008 legislative bid, the NRA said, and she has not been endorsed yet for this year for the different office.

• IN-03: Looks like Rep. Mark Souder isn’t going to be in the House much longer, regardless of how next week’s primary plays out. Brian Howey says Souder has been telling him that he’d already been contemplating retirement in 2012, and the stress of trying to win his unexpectedly-tough primary election has “sealed it” for him.

• PA-04: Here’s a last-minute sign of life for Keith Rothfus, who’d been the leading GOP contender here up until the moment when former US Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan announced (although Rothfus beat Buchanan at fundraising last quarter). He got the endorsement today of Glen Meakem, a wealthy businessman and part-time talk radio host who’s something of a behind-the-scenes power in Republican circles in western Pennsylvania and who had briefly considered a Senate bid last year.

• SC-04: Rep. Bob Inglis’s main threat this year is in the GOP primary, not the general, and he launched two different ads reminding voters that he’s actually pretty conservative. One ad touts his NRA endorsement, while the other runs down the litany of things he opposed (health care reform, stimulus, cap-and-trade, auto industry bailout).

• NY-St. Sen.: A long-time Republican stalwart in the New York state Senate is retiring: Dale Volker (in office since 1975). Democrats looking to pad their narrow majority in the Senate may need to look elsewhere, though; this district in the Buffalo suburbs and surrounding rural counties is one of the most conservative in the state, with a 79K-to-65K GOP registration advantage, and won 54-40 by John McCain.

• Arizona: Arizona has been doing all kinds of weird things lately, and here’s one more to add to the list. One of the few states to not have a Lt. Governor (the SoS is 2nd in line of succession, which is how Jan Brewer became Governor), Arizona is planning to have a Lt. Governor… but only because they would eliminate the SoS position and give all those duties to the LG. What’s even weirder is that they’d start doing what Illinois just decided to stop doing because the results were so uniformly terrible: the Governor and LG candidates will run separately in the primary, but be joined together on one ticket via shotgun wedding for the general election. The idea cleared the legislature, but because it’s a constitutional amendment, the idea has to pass a voter referendum before it becomes law.

• Puerto Rico: The House approved allowing Puerto Rico to hold a plebiscite on its grey-area status (the last one was in 1998, where they decided to remain a commonwealth). It’ll be a two-step vote, where the first vote will ask whether it should remain a commonwealth or not. If the answer is “no,” the second vote will ask whether it should become independent, a U.S. state, still remain a commonwealth, or enter some other sovereign-but-connected-to-the-U.S. status. If it voted for statehood, Congress would still have to approve making it a state. Of course, this has to pass the Senate as well before the vote could happen, so it may get kicked down the road for a while.

• OFA: Nathan Gonzales has a thorough look at the Obama campaign’s state directors, and how they’re part of OFA’s pivot to focus on turning out the same voters for the 2010 midterms. Here’s a handy table of what all the directors are up to these days.

• History: Rhodes Cook has an interesting column that’s been getting linked all over the place in the last couple days: a much more apt comparison for what the Democrats are getting themselves this year, rather than 1994, is 1966. The parallels are that the Democrats were facing some inevitable snap-back after overperforming in the 1964 election (winning nearly 2/3s majorities in each chamber), and the GOP quickly got back up off the mat after the Dems pushed the limits in passing a variety of Great Society legislation (most notably Medicare). Of course, the Democrats still took a bath, losing 47 in the House and 3 in the Senate, so it’s still not really something the Democrats should aspire towards.

It’s for real, this time:

Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville, is abandoning her re-election bid.

“As I have prepared for my campaign, I have been troubled by persistent health problems and have come to the disappointing and sad conclusion that I cannot run for reelection. There are simply too many unresolved issues around my health and my pancreas in particular. As of this morning, my doctors are still undecided about what course to pursue next for my treatments.”

Brown-Wait immediately backed Hernando County Sheriff Ted Richard Nugent.

“I encouraged Sheriff Nugent to run because I know him to be a strong conservative who will continue my fight for veterans and seniors.  This past week Rich told me he would stand in my place for election to Congress.  On Monday I will to ask the Secretary of State to withdraw my name from the ballot.

You may recall that Brown-Waite teased the world with hints that she would retire back in February, only to announce instead that she was getting married. Though this seat has been held by Democrats in friendlier configurations, I wouldn’t expect a competitive race here — Obama lost the district by a 56-43 margin in 2008.

UPDATE: I neglected to mention that today is the filing deadline for Florida, so this looks like it was timed well in advance to give The Nuge a clear field in the primary (and probably the general, as well).

LATER UPDATE: Ah, crikey. The St. Pete Times incorrectly identified Hernando County Sheriff Richard Nugent as Ted Nugent. Words cannot express how disappointed I am right now.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (4/26-28, likely voters, no trendlines):

Mark Critz (D): 40

Tim Burns (R): 46

Undecided: 14

^{(MoE: ±4%)}

Things are looking tough for Democrats in the race to fill the late Jack Murtha’s House seat, with Research 2000 giving Republican Tim Burns his biggest lead yet. An earlier PPP poll showed him up three points, while interestingly, Burns’s own internal had him back one. Critz’s standing seems to be no fault of his own. He has similar favorables to Burns (44-33 vs. 46-40). The problem is simply that this is a bad district and a bad environment – a toxic combination.

Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district is a socially and culturally conservative place, the kind of area which has steadily been moving away from Democrats for quite some time. While much has been made of the fact that PA-12 was the only CD in the nation to flip from John Kerry to John McCain in 2008, that’s a pretty arbitrary metric. The real story is that it was one of just 35 CDs (out of 435) where Barack Obama got a smaller share of the vote than Kerry did. So while the nation as a whole was voting a whole lot more Democratic, PA-12 took a step in the other direction.

And it shows in two other key poll numbers. Obama’s approval in the district is just 38-55. Just as troubling, only 34% of voters say they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports healthcare reform, while 48% are more likely to pull the lever for someone who advocates repeal. This helps explain why Critz has said he would have voted against HCR, but with this kind of headwind, that may not make much of a difference.

Both parties are seriously contesting this race – the DCCC has spent $472K so far, while the much less flush NRCC has matched them with $482K. Dems have also sent Joe Biden into the district to campaign for Critz. The election is a little over two weeks away (May 18), and undoubtedly it will be fought hard until the very end. But if Democrats’ streak winning special elections comes to an end, it may truly be a case of wrong place, wrong time.