Rothenberg Highlights Dangerous Not Quite Dozen Open Seats

By Stuart Rothenberg

For a number of cycles now, I’ve periodically focused on open House seats as a way of evaluating the direction of the overall cycle. No, there still aren’t a dozen open seats that could possibly flip party control. But there are enough open seats worth rating. The list below starts with the seats most likely to change party control. I’ll revisit these opens — and others that will develop — throughout the cycle.

Ohio’s 15th: Republican Rep. Deborah Pryce barely held on last time, defeating Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy by half a percentage point in a come-from-behind win. Kilroy is back for a rematch, but Pryce has decided to call it quits. Two obvious potential Republican candidates quickly indicated no interest in the seat, and the GOP is still looking for someone who can keep it in the party’s column next year. While George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) were in a virtual dead heat three years ago, Franklin County (Columbus) has been moving toward the Democrats. Given that, this district looks like the top takeover possibility in the nation so far.

Minnesota’s 3rd: Rep. Jim Ramstad’s retirement adds to Republican woes given the competitiveness of the suburban district that takes in a chunk of Hennepin County, west of Minneapolis. The district went for Bush by 3 points in 2004. State Sen. Terri Bonoff is a credible Democratic candidate, while state Rep. Erik Paulsen is expected to carry the banner for the GOP. A tossup.

New Mexico’s 1st: Republican Rep. Heather Wilson’s run for the Senate opens up a seat that she has held, though with significant difficulty, since a June 1998 special election. Last year, she was re-elected by 861 votes. The open seat has Democrats salivating, figuring that the combination of the vacancy and the public mood should put the seat into the Democratic column. So far, two Democrats are in the race, Albuquerque Councilman Martin Heinrich, whose Web site describes him as a “natural leader,” and former state Health Secretary Michelle Lujan Grisham. But Republicans are upbeat about their chances, with Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White already in the race and others looking. Kerry carried the district with 51 percent in 2004. A tossup.

Illinois’ 11th: Bush carried the district by 7 points (53 percent to 46 percent) in 2004, and Republicans can’t take an open seat for granted. State Senate Majority Leader Debbie Halvorson (D) already is in the race, while the GOP field isn’t yet settled.

Arizona’s 1st: GOP strategists breathed a sigh of relief when embattled Rep. Rick Renzi (R) announced he wouldn’t seek re- election, but that still means this district is in play. Former state Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick probably will carry the Democratic banner, while the Republican field is still taking shape. Bush won the district by 8 points, 54 percent to 46 percent, in 2004.

Ohio’s 16th: Republican Rep. Ralph Regula’s retirement was expected, and it isn’t clear whether it helps or hurts Democratic takeover chances. State Sen. John Boccieri should be a strong Democratic nominee, but Bush won the district by 8 points in 2004 (54 percent to 46 percent), and Republicans are likely to have a strong nominee. State Sen. Kirk Schuring and Ashland County Commissioner Matt Miller are competing for the Republican nomination.

New Mexico’s 2nd: Rep. Steve Pearce’s district is more reliably Republican than Wilson’s, and the race in this district is only starting to form. Bush carried the district 58 percent to 41 percent over Kerry, so any Democrat would have an uphill, though not impossible, fight.

Illinois’ 18th: Democrats insist that they’ll have a shot at winning Republican Rep. Ray LaHood’s district, but the odds are long. Two Republicans, state Rep. Aaron Schock and former Peoria City Councilman John Morris, will battle it out for their party’s nomination. Democrats think former basketball coach Dick Versace will surprise in a district Bush won 58 percent to 42 percent in 2004.

Aren’t there other opens? Sure, but when the chances of a partisan takeover start to approach zero, they don’t belong on this list.

Democrats haven’t given up hope about competing in retiring Rep. Terry Everett’s very Republican Alabama Congressional seat (if they can recruit the mayor of Montgomery into the race), but they probably should. Former Speaker Dennis Hastert’s (R-Ill.) seat will be open, but it is likely to be filled in a late winter/early spring special election.

Republicans dearly would like to snatch away a Democratic open seat, but the two current prospects, Maine’s 1st district, currently represented by Tom Allen, and Rep. Mark Udall’s 2nd district in Colorado, don’t look very promising right now.

Finally, where is Rep. Tom Davis’s Virginia district? The seven-term Republican has been readying for a Senate race for years, so why isn’t his 11th district seat on the list?

It now appears certain that Davis will not run for the Senate. But will the Congressman run for re-election or walk away from Congress? He hasn’t announced his decision yet, but the odds are he’ll run again. So I’m not treating Davis’s seat as open unless and until he says that it is.


This column first appeared in Roll Call on October 25, 2007. Copyright 2007 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Partisan Politics and Democrats’ Turkey Problem

By Stuart Rothenberg

If there is anything that points out the difference between most Republicans and most Democrats, it is Congress’ effort to pass a resolution that labels Turkey’s slaughter of Armenians almost a century ago as “genocide.”

The White House has opposed the action, which has been pushed by House Democrats. While some Republicans have been supporting the measure (and supported previous attempts to please Armenian-Americans by embarrassing Turkey), the current resolution is primarily a Democratic initiative on Capitol Hill.

But if you cut through all of the politicking and even put aside the specifics of the current controversy, you see that fundamentally, the issue is this: For Republicans, politics is never having to say you’re sorry. For Democrats, politics primarily is about an endless number of apologies and condolences, and a feeling of unquenchable guilt, though it tends to be institutional, not personal.

Republicans apparently figure that what’s past is past, so you might as well forget about it. You got a problem? Deal with it. As a party, the GOP isn’t big on apologies, reparations or public assertions of sympathy.

It’s not that Republicans never experience guilt. Actually, they are drowning in it. But it’s personal guilt, some of it apparently coming from original sin (except for Rep. Eric Cantor [Va.] and Sens. Arlen Specter [Pa.] and Norm Coleman [Minn.], no doubt).

As former President Bill Clinton proved, Democrats are much better at publicly feeling people’s pain, even if it occurred more than 100 years ago and all of the people actually involved in the incident are long gone. It doesn’t even matter whether the United States was involved. Democrats pretty much are ready to apologize or commiserate for anything, anyplace and anytime.

Luckily for Democrats, we’ve had centuries of people oppressing people around the world, so there is almost an endless supply of brutalities and injustices deserving of attention, classification, condemnation and apology.

In fact, so many unfortunate things have happened over the past few centuries that the next Democratic Congress can spend pretty much all of its time, if it wants to, apologizing to groups and demanding that other people apologize, too. Democrats have only begun to scratch the surface on groups they want to apologize to.

The problem for the Democrats is that the controversy over Congress’ steps to assert that Turkey was guilty of a policy of genocide isn’t a laughing matter — at least it isn’t to the Turks. Instead, it is the first truly dumb thing that Democrats may have done since the party won both chambers of Congress last year.

It now looks as if House Democrats may put the Armenian genocide measure in the deep freeze, hoping that everyone forgets about it. But while that may limit the damage that the party could cause itself, burying the measure wouldn’t inoculate Democrats completely from the fallout caused by their initial efforts to pass the resolution.

I recently asked a couple of Democrats — an incumbent Member of Congress from a Democratic-leaning district who is on record supporting the measure and a long-shot Congressional challenger in a Republican district — whether they now favored the genocide resolution, and both acted as if the measure were infected with botulism.

The resolution has strained U.S.-Turkish relations at exactly the worst time, when a Turkish incursion into Iraq could complicate the already complicated American military and political mission in Iraq.

“Democrats are harming the future of the United States and are encouraging anti-American sentiments,” Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan asserted about 10 days ago.

Democrats, of course, have been criticizing President Bush for years for allegedly contributing to an increase in anti-Americanism around the world, so Erdogan’s comment gives Republicans ammunition to use against Democrats.

If Turkey’s military forces cross into Iraq to attack Kurdish guerillas, Republicans could well try to change the subject of Iraq by blaming Democrats for antagonizing the government of Turkey and undermining the U.S. effort in Iraq.

Democrats have been successful for the past few years by keeping the focus on GOP failures and by criticizing Bush administration policies. But the House leadership’s miscalculations on the “genocide” resolution points out both that making policy is more difficult than criticizing and that House Democrats are likely to make their share of problems when they become more ambitious.

This column first appeared in Roll Call on October 22, 2007. Copyright 2007 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

It’s Still Clinton & Romney in New Saint Anselm Survey

By Stuart Rothenberg

A new poll conducted by SRBI Research of New York City for the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College shows New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton holding a commanding 21-point lead in the state’s Democratic primary and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney with a smaller, but still considerable, 10-point lead in the GOP race.

In an ominous sign for Republicans in the general election, almost 46% of respondents who say they are paying “a lot” of attention to the campaigns say they plan to participate in the Democratic primary, while only 36% say they will vote in the GOP contest. Among those paying “some” attention, 38% plan to vote in the Democratic contest, while only 34% plan to vote in the GOP primary.

These numbers suggest that Democrats are already invested in the Democratic race, while Republicans are less engaged. It’s uncertain, of course, whether Republican voters will become more interested in the GOP primary as the actual vote approaches, or whether they are generally less interested in the 2008 election, which could mean depressed Republican turnout in November.

New Hampshire’s undeclared voters, who are allowed to select the party primary in which they wish to participate, currently are more than twice as inclined to vote in the Democratic primary. Almost 41% of undeclared votes say that they now plan to participate in the Democratic primary, while just under 19% say that they are planning to vote in the GOP contest.

Clinton’s standing in the survey is impressive. She attracts the support of more than 42% of Democratic primary voters, with Illinois Senator Barack Obama winning just 22% and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards attracting only 14%. Polls conducted over the past few months in Iowa show Obama, Edwards and Clinton much more closely bunched.

Clinton leads among both men and women, in all parts of the state, among both Catholics and Protestants and among self-described conservatives, moderates and liberals participating in the Democratic contest.

In the Republican race, the new poll shows Romney drawing over 32% to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s almost 22%. Arizona Senator John McCain comes in third with over 15%, while libertarian Congressman Ron Paul draws over 7%, good for fourth place.

McCain’s showing in the new survey undoubtedly is affected by the fact that so few undeclared voters have at this point decided to participate in the Republican race. He won the Granite State GOP primary in 2000, in part, because of a strong showing among undeclared (Independent) voters.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee finishes fifth in the GOP primary poll with just under 6%, and former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson finishes sixth with less than 5%. Neither has demonstrated the kind of movement in the Granite State that would suggest they are becoming factors in the state’s Republican race.

The survey found that Romney’s lead among self-described conservatives is even larger than among all GOP primary voters. He draws over 35% among conservatives, while Giuliani is just under 20% among those Republican primary voters.

While Romney continues to trail in national surveys of Republicans, he leads in Iowa and New Hampshire. Victories for him in both states would make him a formidable force for the Republican nomination.

A Clinton’s win in the Granite State Democratic primary would all but guarantee her the Democratic nomination if she also wins the Iowa Democratic Caucuses.

The telephone survey of 1,514 likely primary voters was conducted October 15-21. The margin of error for the total sample is +/- 2.6%. The margin for Democrats is +/- 4.1%, for Republicans is +/- 4.5% and for undeclared voters is +/- 4.8%.

New Print Edition: New Hampshire Senate & New York 19

The October 22, 2007 print edition of the Rothenberg Political Report is on its way to subscribers. The print edition comes out every two weeks and the content is not available online. Subscribers get in-depth analysis of the most competitive races in the country, as well as quarterly House and Senate ratings, and coverage of the gubernatorial races nationwide. To subscribe, simply click on the Google checkout button on the website or send a check. Here is a brief sample of what's in this edition...

New Hampshire Senate: ’02 Part Deux
By Nathan L. Gonzales

The match-up in New Hampshire’s Senate race is nothing new, but the environment couldn’t be any more different.

In 2002, President George W. Bush was popular in the wake of the September 11 tragedy, and Cong. John Sununu (R) defeated Gov. Jeanne Shaheen (D) in a hard fought Senate contest. Thinking her political career was over, Shaheen moved to academia, while Sununu went to work in the Senate.

Five years later, President Bush and the Republican Party are incredibly unpopular and public is growing more and more dissatisfied with the war in Iraq. Democrats took over the Senate in 2006, but now have their sights set on getting to 60 seats, and New Hampshire is near the top of the takeover list.

Sununu already faced long odds for reelection in a region where Republicans are becoming an endangered species. But now, with former Gov. Shaheen finally in the race after initially refusing Democratic entreaties, Sununu starts the race as the underdog. For the rest of the story, you must subscribe.

New York 19: [Insert Music Pun Here]

It’s easy for Republicans to look at New York’s 19th District as a pick-up opportunity. President Bush won the district by seven points in 2004 and freshman Cong. John Hall (D) is often described for his musical talents before his political acumen.

But Hall is not a political novice, and he’ll be running for reelection as an incumbent – with all of the advantages of incumbency – in a national environment that, so far, continues to favor the Democratic Party. Last year, he defeated incumbent Cong. Sue Kelly (R) who, unlike some of her GOP colleagues, was not tainted by scandal.

This cycle, Republicans who spend every waking moment strategizing about how to win back the House are dreaming about the prospects of wealthy businessman Andrew Saul (R), with his considerable personal resources. Subscribe now to the newsletter to get the whole story.