CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
July 7, 2008 – 5:19 a.m.
Bob Benenson’s Jigsaw Politics: Dem Takeover Bids Dominate List of Top 5 Vulnerable House Seats
By Bob Benenson, CQ Staff
Our mission at CQ Politics is to provide unbiased and comprehensive coverage of the election contests that affect national politics, including all of the races for Congress. That’s a lot to absorb, so we try to boil things down by breaking the races up into lists — such as the charts showing how we rate the Senate races and the House races that are permanent features of this site.
Still, even this requires wrapping your mind around dozens of different races across the nation. So this version of Jigsaw Politics provides a more microscopic look at this year’s competitive race landscape with a list of the five House seats that currently, based on CQ Politics’ ratings and reporting, appear the most vulnerable to take over by the challenging party.
The districts (with links to more details on the races) are:
• New York’s 13th District, in which Republican Rep. Vito J. Fossella was forced to quit his re-election bid after admitting he had a daughter from an ongoing extramarital affair.
• Illinois’ 11th District, where Republican Rep. Jerry Weller is retiring — and the GOP candidate nominated in the primary dropped out of the race a couple of weeks later.
• Arizona’s 1st District, where Republican Rep. Rick Renzi announced his retirement not long before he was indicted on pending federal corruption charges.
• Virginia’s 11th District, where popular Republican Rep. Thomas M. Davis III is retiring, and the GOP’s nominee to succeed him, a well-funded newcomer who pledges a vigorous campaign, nonetheless faces a very well-known local Democratic officeholder with a track record of electoral success.
• New York’s 25th District, where Republican Rep. James T. Walsh is retiring; the Democrat who almost unseated him in 2006 never stopped running; and Republicans had recruiting problems that typified the struggles they have faced in many of their trouble races this year.
Yes, all five of these seats are currently held by Republicans and are being pursued by Democrats. This is a reflection of how we perceive the national campaign is trending, as the Democrats seem to be maintaining the momentum they built in taking over 30 Republican seats in the 2006 elections and gaining control of the House. While special elections are imperfect bellwethers, the Democrats’ takeovers this year in formerly rock-solid Republican districts in Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi hardly contradict that sense of momentum.
In fact, the first four races on the Top 5 list were easy picks, as they are the only races so far this year in which either party is rated as having a clear edge to take over a seat. New York’s 25 was a tougher call, as it is currently rated No Clear Favorite.
This scenario is not meant to suggest that Republicans are absolutely certain to lose these seats — they have four months to put together a serious push in any of these districts — nor does it mean their bids to take over Democratic seats cannot penetrate the Top 5 list (which is subject to change and will be updated over the remaining four months of the campaign season).
New York 25 was a close call over some of the five Democratic-held districts with races currently rated as tossups, such as Kansas 2, a longtime Republican stronghold where freshman incumbent Nancy Boyda faces a tough re-election fight; Louisiana 6, another conservative bastion where Don Cazayoux will be defending the seat he won in a May 3 special election; and Florida 16, where Tim Mahoney , another first-term Democrat, must disprove Republican claims that his 2006 win was a fluke resulting solely from the sex-related scandal that forced the resignation of his predecessor, Republican Rep. Mark Foley.
But the trend so far this year has clearly favored the Democrats. The vast majority of rating changes made by CQ Politics this year have moved races in the Democrats’ direction. Overall, the races for 33 Republican-held seats are rated either Democrat Favored, Leans Democratic, No Clear Favorite or in the competitive Leans Republican category, while 25 contests for Democratic seats are either tossups or Lean Democratic. The competitive gap widens further with the addition of the longer-shot bids, with 20 races for GOP seats rated Republican Favored and only 12 for Democratic seats rated Democrat Favored. The other seats — 199 Democratic and 146 Republican — are rated Safe for the incumbent party.
Bob Benenson’s Jigsaw Politics: Dem Takeover Bids Dominate List of Top 5 Vulnerable House Seats
There are multiple reasons for the continued Republican congressional malaise. First and foremost is that the nation’s political atmosphere has not changed much, and in some ways has gotten worse, for the Republicans since their 2006 downward spiral. President Bush’s job approval ratings remain dreadful, and he will for the duration of the campaign continue to symbolize what many, many Americans don’t like about the Republican Party in general. Despite credible claims by Bush and presumed Republican presidential nominee John McCain that the situation on the ground in Iraq has improved, polls show that the public’s exhaustion with the long war has not abated. Meanwhile, the general economy has slumped and gas prices have gone through the roof.
An NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll conducted June 6-9 showed 52 percent of the respondents wanted the Democrats to continue running Congress to 33 percent who favored returning the Republicans to power. Generic polls asking if respondents would vote for an unnamed Democrat or Republican for Congress showed Democratic edges ranging from 10 percentage points (in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll conducted June 4-5 and USA Today/Gallup Poll done June 15-19) to 15 points in a June 12-15 ABC News-Washington Post poll. Even a poll done by the Republican firm of McLaughlin and Associates June 26-29 showed a 9-point Democratic advantage on that question.
House Democratic strategists, meanwhile, have seen the party’s new majority status help it build a huge fundraising advantage over the Republicans. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), according to its most recent report to the Federal Election Commission, showed $99 million in overall receipts through the end of May to $74.3 million for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). More impressively, and importantly, the DCCC had way more remaining cash on hand at that point — $47.2 million to $6.7 million — leaving it much better positioned to play offense in Democratic takeover bids while defending the party’s vulnerable incumbents.
Given this unfavorable political landscape, the Republicans hardly need for much to go wrong for a race to tip the other way. Even so, the contest that currently tops the list of most vulnerable House seats sets a standard for party misfortune that will be hard to outdo this year.
The unraveling in New York’s 13th District began when Fossella, an 11-year, 43-year-old incumbent long deemed a GOP rising star, got arrested on a drunk driving charge in early May. Bad enough, but after some dissembling about where he was headed on his late-night jaunt in Washington’s Northern Virginia suburbs, the married father of three admitted that he was also the father of one born to another woman with whom he had a long-running relationship.
Fossella, who had been a solid favorite for re-election in a Staten Island-based district that by far is the strongest for the Republicans in New York City, announced in late May that he would retire after being pressured by party leaders to do so. GOP officials turned to a series of well-known figures to try to persuade them to run, but none of them jumped in. They then turned to Frank Powers, a 67-year-old retired Wall Street executive and behind-the-scenes Republican player who started to organize a campaign — then died suddenly of a heart attack on June 22. That left the party just 18 days before the July 10 candidate filing deadline to come up with a new consensus candidate, and as of Thursday, they had not done so.
It’s hard to imagine things getting any worse than that for either party, but we’ll let you know if they do.
Comments
I am very suprised that you failed to list the open KY 2 seat. Republican Ron Lewis is retiring. State Senators David Boswell (D)and Brett Guthrie (R) are in a statistical dead heat in this one. Last Survey USA Poll has Boswell ahead. It should be noted that Boswell is the former State Agriculture Commissioner and may have the best name recognition. Also, the district has several precincts in Louisville/Jefferson County which are expected to go for Obama and the Democrats which could make a difference in a tight race. In respect to listing Yarmuth in KY 3 as close, polling has him 17 points ahead of Northup.
Shouldn't forget that the entire congressional delegation from New Mexico is up for grabs. Heather Wilson's seat is certainly a potential pick up. If the Dems hold on to Udall's seat and can pick up Schiff's seat it will be a clean sweep. Yay!
It appears to me that many Democratic cheerleaders are anxiously counting their eggs before they hatch. Good luck with that. It's a long road that doesn't have a turn, and Nov. 4 is far away. I t seems many cheerleaders have especially bitter tears when their team crashes and burns; we' ll see then, won't we?
The IL 11 seat is no longer such a sure thing for the Dems. Marty Ozinga is raising incredible amounts of money - $800k in the second quarter, and he was just barely a candidate when Q2 started. Gov. Rod Blagojevich makes George Bush look wildly popular in Illinois. Debbie Halvorson is so closely tied to the toxic governor that anyone with money who could get that message out has a very good chance of taking that seat. And what Ozinga can't raise, he can put in himself.
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