CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
– POLITICS
March 9, 2009 – 4:51 a.m.
Nearly Three Dozen GOP House Winners Dodged Obama’s Coattails
By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff
Some of the most competitive congressional races of 2010 will be in districts where voters split their ballots between Republicans for the House of Representatives and Democrat Barack Obama for the White House.
CQ Politics’ analysis of presidential election returns in all 435 congressional districts shows there are 34 that split that way — perhaps a testament to the durability of partisan voting habits in House races or maybe a further decline in the “coattails” effect.
Those split districts complement the 49 that favored Republican John McCain for president while helping the Democrats expand their congressional majority.
These “Obama-Republican” and “McCain-Democratic” districts, combined, amount to a substantial 19 percent of all House seats. In 2010, the parties will try to bring those districts back into line with their traditional partisan voting patterns.
The most heavily pro-Obama seat now represented by a Republican is Louisiana’s 2nd District, a black-majority district in and around New Orleans where Republican lawyer Anh “Joseph” Cao scored a shocking upset of Democratic Rep. William J. Jefferson.
Special circumstances played into this outcome.
Jefferson was severely weakened by his indictment on federal corruption charges, for which he is still awaiting trial.
Even in this damaged political condition, Jefferson probably would have defeated Cao had the House general election coincided with the November presidential balloting, in which the district’s usually overwhelming majority of Democratic voters came out in droves and favored Obama with 75 percent of the vote.
That didn’t happen.
The Cao-Jefferson election was instead held in early December, a dead zone for political activity, because damage from Hurricane Gustav in September had delayed the state’s election schedule.
Cao won the low-turnout December contest, but he’ll be an underdog in 2010, when more of the strongly Democratic-leaning electorate will show up.
Cao is one of three freshmen among the 34 House Republicans from Obama-voting districts.
Erik Paulsen of Minnesota’s 3rd District, which takes in suburbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and Leonard Lance of New Jersey’s 7th District, located in the north-central part of the state, also represent districts that voted for Obama.
Among the Republican incumbents re-elected by constituencies that also favored Obama, Michael N. Castle of Delaware’s at-large House district had to counter the most strongly pro-Obama vote.
In fact, the 62 percent that Obama received in Delaware — the home base of Joseph R. Biden Jr. , the longtime senator who was the Democratic vice presidential nominee — placed the state second after Cao’s Louisiana district in the ranks of the most strongly pro-Obama district won by a Republican House candidate.
Castle’s moderate record and familiarity with many residents of his small state have enabled him to win nine House terms in increasingly Democratic-leaning Delaware. “I’ve got a long history with the state and they approve of what I’ve done,” said Castle, who previously served as a state legislator, lieutenant governor and governor.
Castle is a prominent and long-standing advocate of expanding embryonic stem cell research — an issue he underscored in a letter to Obama last month that was signed by five other House Republicans, all from Obama-voting districts: Brian P. Bilbray of California; Fred Upton of Michigan; Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania; and Mark Steven Kirk and Judy Biggert of Illinois, Obama’s home state.
Republicans from Obama-voting districts “tend to be more moderate,” Castle said. And though the Democrats have a robust House majority, Castle said the Obama administration has sought the votes of GOP centrists because “the White House’s preference is to have things done on a bipartisan basis.”
Kirk had to overcome a surge for Obama, then a senator from Illinois, in the 10th District just north of Obama’s hometown of Chicago. He fended off a rematch bid by well-funded Democratic challenger Dan Seals by a margin of 5 percentage points, not much of a slip from his 7-point victory over Seals in 2006.
Other Republicans who withstood a strong Obama tide in their districts include Dave Reichert , who won a rematch race in of Washington’s 8th District. In winning a third term, Reichert actually increased his margin of victory over Democrat Darcy Burner, who in 2006 came closer to unseating the congressman in a district that includes Bellevue and other suburbs of Seattle.
One of the unlikeliest places on the Obama-Republican list is Nebraska’s 2nd, an Omaha-centered district where the Obama campaign made a full-bore effort to secure one of Nebraska’s five electoral votes. Nebraska and Maine are the only states that use a district-based system rather than a statewide winner-take-all system to apportion electoral votes.
The big turnout of voters generated by Obama in Nebraska’s 2nd District nearly toppled Republican Rep. Lee Terry . He nonetheless squeaked by to win a sixth term, defeating Democrat Jim Esch in a rematch of their 2006 race.
California, the state with by far the biggest population and House delegation, is alsohome to the motherlode of Obama-Republican districts.
Eight of the 19 seats won by Republicans in the 53-member House delegation ran in districts that favored Obama, whose 61 percent statewide vote share was the largest for any presidential nominee in more than 70 years. Some Republican incumbents running in districts that had voted strongly for President George W. Bush as the Republican nominee just four years earlier — including Dan Lungren of the Sacramento-area 3rd District in northern California and Ken Calvert of 44th District in southern California — struggled to unexpectedly close victories as Obama prevailed among their constituents.
Democrats won 257 seats in last fall’s election, more than 50 above what they won in 2004 and the biggest total for either party since the Democrats began 1993 with 258 seats. That suggests they may have reached a high water mark for party control of House seats or are approaching one.
Yet there are will be opportunities for Democrats to win some Republican-held, Obama-voting districts that eluded Democratic House nominees in past elections.
One is Pennsylvania’s 6th, a swath of suburbs and exurbs west of Philadelphia in which Republican Rep. Jim Gerlach was re-elected narrowly. Obama took 59 percent of the vote there, and the Democrats might have the edge to win the seat if Gerlach leaves it open to pursue a campaign for governor of Pennsylvania, a possibility he is now exploring.
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Total Vote: 120,662,065 430 Districts Democratic: 65,203,062 54.0% (52.9%) 417 candidates Republican: 52,290,917 43.3% (44.9%) 395 candidates Other: 3,168,116 The 2006 percentages are in the brackets. This total covers 430 Districts. There were 5 incumbents (1 in Arkansas, 2 in Florida and 2 in Louisiana) who faced no challengers and did not appear on the ballot, they were reelected by acclamation. 4 of them are Democrats and 1 is a Republican. Overall the Democrats ran 421 candidates (out of 435) and the Republicans ran 396 candidates. These are the 30 districts that, following the election, I thought the Democrats should focus on for 2008. Of course, this list precedes retirements or an incumbent making a fool of themselves or candidate recruitment. 1.Alabama 3, Mike Rogers 54.0-45.8% (2008 election results) 2.Alaska. Don Young, 50.1-45.0 3.California 3, Dan Lungren, 49.5-43.9 4.California 4, Tom McClintock, 50.2-49.8 5.California 44, Ken Calvert, 51.2-48.8 6.California 46, Dana Rohrabacher, 52.5-43.1 7.California 50, Brian Bilbray, 50.2-45.2 8.Florida 15, Bill Posey, 53.1-42.0 9.Florida 25, Mario Diaz Balart, 53.1-46.9 10.Illinois 10, Mark Kirk, 52.6-47.4 11.Illinois 13, Judy Biggert, 53.6-43.6 12.Indiana 3, Mark Souder, 55.0-39.7 13.Louisiana 2, Joseph Cao, 49.5-46.8 (Dec 6 result) 14.Louisiana 4, John Fleming 48.1-47.7 (Dec 6 result) 15.Louisiana 6, Bill Cassidy, 48.1-40.3 16.Michigan 11, Thad McCotter, 51.4-45.4 17.Minnesota 3, Erik Paulsen, 48.5-40.9 18.Minnesota 6, Michelle Bachmann, 46.4-43.4 19.Missouri 9, Blaine Luetkemeyer, 50.0-47.5 20.Nebraska 2, Lee Terry, 51.9-48.1 21.New Jersey 7, Leonard Lance, 50.2-42.2 22.New York 26, Christopher Lee, 55.0-40.5 23.Ohio 2, Jean Schmidt, 44.8-37.5 24.Ohio 12, Pat Tiberi, 54.8-42.2 25.Pennsylvania 6, Jim Gerlach, 52.1-47.9 26.Pennsylvania 15, Charlie Dent, 58.6-41.4 27.South Carolina 1, Henry Brown, 51.9-47.9 28.South Carolina 2, Joe Wilson, 53.7-46.2 29.Texas 24, Kenny Marchant, 56.0-41.1 30.Washington 8, Dave Reichert, 52.8-47.2 As you can see, I had to stretch the list a fair bit to get to 30.
The GOP has a problem beyond numbers: what do they stand for? Their ideas worked fine when they were running against the 1960's, but people have grown tired of the culture wars. If the GOP doesn't adapt to modern times, it won't last that much longer.
Florida 15, Bill Posey, 53.1-42.0 Posey spent 900k to Blythe's 100k. Blythe had 1k in DNC support, no ads and no administrative or advertising support, and took no PAC money.. Posey's PAC and donators looked like a laundry list of American corporations. First thing Posey does after he is elected is write a bill for proof of birth certificates for the president.
Republicans who thought they would win more votes by acting more like democrats can certainly blame themselves for the outcome of the last election. If they continue to believe the lie that they must move closer to the left in order to win we will continue to lose seats in congress. We are desperate for republicans who are not afraid to act and vote like republicans. The republican party collectively needs to GROW A PAIR!!!
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