In the Delta, Everyone’s Buzzing About Barbour

By Stuart Rothenberg

GREENVILLE, Miss. — Politically interested folks in the Mississippi Delta spent the last few days of May wondering about whether Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln will survive today’s Democratic runoff against Lt. Gov. Bill Halter and whether Democratic Rep. Travis Childers of Mississippi’s 1st district can win in a Republican wave in November.

With Democrats controlling both chambers of Congress, Lincoln and Childers are regarded by many in this region (even Republicans) as crucial advocates for Southern agriculture.

But more than anything else, political junkies throughout the Magnolia State seemed intrigued by the future of their own governor, Republican Haley Barbour.

“What’s Haley going to do?” they ask at the drop of a political hat, clearly ready to chip in with their own comments about the governor’s political future.

Barbour, first elected in 2003 and re-elected in 2007, is finishing his second term. Since he is precluded from running again, political junkies in the state have already started to handicap next year’s election to replace him.

Not that anyone thinks that the next occupant of the state’s top office can actually replace Barbour, who has a larger-than-life reputation in Mississippi and among some people in the nation’s capital.

At a time when many governors have seen their poll numbers and reputations tumble, the 62-year-old chief executive is still viewed by Mississippi political observers as hugely successful.

So it isn’t surprising that movers and shakers in the Mississippi Delta, where politics has replaced cotton as king, are wondering what is in store for their governor when his term ends next year.

Barbour, who currently chairs the Republican Governors Association, chaired the Republican National Committee from 1993 to 1997, putting him at his party’s helm during the 1994 midterm elections, when the GOP swept control of the House and Senate.

After the RNC, Barbour opened up an influential lobbying firm in the nation’s capital, and Barbour continues to have a legion of political allies in Washington, D.C., and nationally ready to do battle for him.

Barbour considered a presidential run in 2008 but wasn’t all that serious about it. This time, insiders say, he is taking a long look at 2012. Admirers of the governor — and there are many — note that he has a long list of assets in a presidential race.

Barbour has been active in his party for so long that every Republican activist seems to know him and like him. He is well-liked by state and local GOP party leaders, and his popularity is unmatched, according to one veteran Republican insider, as a fundraiser, particularly among high-dollar GOP contributors. His current role at the RGA only increases his contacts.

As a debater, Barbour certainly can hold his own against any Republican now mentioned for 2012, and some think his combination of substance and style would allow him to stand out from the rest of the field. Anyone who knows the governor is aware that he seems equally at home talking with folks at the local diner and with corporate CEOs in a boardroom or at a gala.

And of course, Barbour earned good marks for his handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, adding to his reputation for competence and his ability to get things done.

Barbour’s fundraising ability, reputation of political savvy, conservative views and national Republican contacts all make him a credible contender for the Republican nomination. But as a nominee, he would begin with some serious liabilities.

Barbour’s lobbying wasn’t a big enough liability in Mississippi to destroy him, and it may actually have helped him, given the state’s need for federal dollars and Barbour’s understanding of which buttons to push on Capitol Hill.

But nationally — and in the current environment — Barbour’s business dealings would be a far, far bigger issue. The governor is often portrayed as a Washington insider and power broker, and unless the public mood changes dramatically over the next two years, that’s not an ideal résumé for a presidential candidate.

Mississippi is home to many fine people, but the state’s rankings in a number of categories paint a less-than-flattering picture for any state politician hoping to jump from Jackson to the White House.

Mississippi ranked 50th in per capita personal income in 2007, 48th in average annual pay (2007), first in infant mortality rate in 2006, first in people below the poverty level (2008), fifth in traffic fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles (2007), fourth in the 2008 unemployment rate, and 48th in people 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree (2008).

If Michael Dukakis’ Massachusetts Miracle turned into a political liability, imagine what Barbour’s critics could do to him given the stereotype of Mississippi and a few figures from the 2010 Statistical Abstract.

Interestingly, few Mississippi insiders I talked with recently in the Delta see Haley in the Oval Office. But they also don’t see him taking his fishing pole and entering a peaceful, largely invisible retirement, either.

Some talk about Barbour running for Senate in 2014, when the current term of 72-year-old Thad Cochran (R), Mississippi’s senior Senator, ends. Barbour ran for the Senate many years ago, in 1982, against veteran Democratic Sen. John Stennis.

But others, noting that the Senate would be less appealing to Barbour after serving as his state’s chief executive, offer a far different scenario. They see him as a sort of super vice president, who could offer counsel to a Republican commander in chief about everything from policy to politics, or as a powerful White House chief of staff.

I’m guessing that Barbour hasn’t made a decision about his future because he doesn’t need to make one yet. As savvy as he is, he’ll look at all the angles before deciding on his next step.

This column first appeared in Roll Call and CQPolitics.com on June 8, 2010. 2010 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

We Come to Bury Sodrel, Not to Praise Him

By Stuart Rothenberg

Mike Sodrel has been in my life forever. Or maybe it just seems that way.

Every two years for almost a decade, the Republican businessman has been on the ballot in Indiana’s 9th district, either trying to oust Rep. Baron Hill (D) from Congress or, once, seeking re-election to the House.

But with his bizarre primary defeat earlier this month, Sodrel, a 64-year-old trucking company owner, probably ends a political run that featured more downs than ups.

Sodrel first took on Hill in 2002, four years after the Democrat won an open-seat contest to succeed highly regarded Democrat Lee Hamilton in a Congressional district that includes much of southeastern Indiana.

Hill won that contest narrowly, 51 percent to 46 percent, and Sodrel presumably figured that he’d do better in a rematch. He did, nipping Hill by half a point (49.5 percent to 49 percent) to win the House seat in the presidential year of 2004.

Hill, figuring that he’d do better in a midterm year, came back for a rematch of his own, and he won back his seat, 50 percent to 45 percent.

Sodrel, not content to move on with his life, ran again in 2008. But this time Hill, riding a big Democratic wave, went on to draw 58 percent of the vote and win by about 20 points, a true landslide in a district where Hill previously had won by just a few points.

You might have thought that Sodrel would see the writing on the wall, and for months it seemed as if he had run his last race in the 9th district. But with the Republican field in the district very thin this cycle (attorney Todd Young and real estate investor/outspoken Christian Travis Hankins), Sodrel once again jumped into the race.

He came in for an interview in late March, his eyes focused squarely on Hill and the general election, not on the primary.

He was armed with a Wilson Research Strategies poll of 400 likely general election voters (with an oversample that included 300 likely GOP primary voters), conducted Feb. 28 to March 4.

During the interview, Sodrel and his consultants dismissed his primary opponents, preferring to talk about how and why the former Congressman was going to defeat Hill. In fact, the WRS polling memo included four “Key Observations” — the first three about how well-positioned Sodrel was to defeat Hill.

Only the fourth point — “With the Primary Election in 41 days, it is very unlikely that Young or Hankins can catch-up” — dealt with the primary outlook.

According to the WRS poll, Sodrel’s 46 percent showing in the Republican primary put him far ahead of Hankins’ 19 percent and Young’s 13 percent. Both primary opponents had been running for more than a year, the WRS memo pointed out dismissively, promising that the former Congressman should “sweep” his primary opponents away in the early May contest.

Part of Sodrel’s optimism about the primary is that, as he told us, he is “98 percent known” by the Republican base. Because he said that it takes years to build up name ID in a district that includes multiple media markets, he didn’t plan to spend much money or run paid media during the primary campaign.

Of course, as Sodrel found out, there is a difference between being known and being liked.

Apparently, 9th district Republican voters knew Sodrel but were ready for a change.

Sodrel ended up finishing third, with 30 percent of the primary vote, behind Young (34 percent) and Hankins (32 percent). Hankins had raised a total of $184,000 through April 14, yet he finished ahead of a former Congressman who was allegedly leading the contest handily six weeks earlier.

National Republican strategists weren’t all that upset when Sodrel lost the primary. They figured that voters had already tired of him and that he didn’t have all that appealing a profile given the dynamics of the 2010 cycle.

If Sodrel’s defeat proves anything, it is that candidates can’t take anything for granted and that any candidate who thinks he doesn’t need to win over the voters is a candidate who probably won’t win over the voters. It also raises questions about some early polling.

This column first appeared in Roll Call on June 1, 2010. 2010 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

A Primary Loss Does Not Equate a Lost Cause

By Nathan L. Gonzales

Democrats are reveling in the primary losses of candidates preferred by the National Republican Congressional Committee in the last couple of weeks. But they only have to look back four years within their own caucus to see that upset primary winners can get elected to Congress.

In Idaho’s 1st district, Iraq war veteran Vaughn Ward had reached the top level of the NRCC’s “Young Guns” program and had a significant lead heading into the May 25 primary. But he made a series of serious missteps in the final days and lost to state Rep. Raul Labrador, 48 percent to 39 percent.

Ward’s “loss calls into question the competence of the NRCC’s political skills,” the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee charged in a press release, which noted other Republican establishment candidates who have lost in primaries this year. But that doesn’t mean Republicans can’t win in the Idaho district or elsewhere.

Back in 2006, there were several instances where House Democrats’ top recruits lost in the primary, yet the party still picked up the seat in that fall’s Democratic wave election.

In California’s 11th district, Navy veteran and former airline pilot Steve Filson was one of 22 initial challengers on the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” program, the Democratic prototype for the GOP’s Young Guns program.

Six weeks after being added to the list in 2006, Filson lost the Democratic primary in a dramatic fashion to wind turbine company executive Jerry McNerney, who took 53 percent to Filson’s 29 percent.

The DCCC went on to spend a meager $217,000 in the general election, but McNerney defeated GOP Rep. Richard Pombo, 53 percent to 47 percent. The challenger had considerable help from the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, the Sierra Club and other environmental groups.

McNerney wasn’t the only Democrat that cycle to defeat the establishment candidate in a primary and win the general election with little or no help from the national party.

In New Hampshire’s 1st district, social worker and community college instructor Carol Shea-Porter trounced state House Democratic leader Jim Craig, the national party’s preferred candidate, by a whopping 20 points in the September primary.

The DCCC didn’t spend a dime on independent expenditures in the general election as Shea-Porter defeated then-Rep. Jeb Bradley (R) 51 percent to 49 percent in November.

In New York’s 19th district, attorney Judy Aydelott was the early frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in 2006, but she lost the primary, 50 percent to 27 percent, to former 1970s band Orleans frontman John Hall. The DCCC didn’t spend any money in the general election, and Hall defeated Rep. Sue Kelly (R) by 2 points.

These Democratic examples from 2006 do not necessarily mean that Labrador will defeat Rep. Walt Minnick (D) in Idaho or that Keith Rothfus, another upset GOP primary winner, will unseat Rep. Jason Altmire (D) in Pennsylvania’s 4th district. But with the national political climate trending in their favor, it is unwise to dismiss these GOP nominees out of hand, according to one veteran Democratic consultant.

“We are in denial,” according to the Democratic source, who is concerned about a prevailing “arrogance” among party operatives. The political winds working against the party in power can be enough to help flawed nominees win.

In Kentucky’s 3rd district in 2006, newspaper columnist John Yarmuth (D) wasn’t an upset primary winner, but Republicans believed they drew the Democratic candidate with the most baggage.

Iraq war veteran Andrew Horne (D) generated significant attention for being one of many veterans running for Congress that cycle, but Yarmuth won the primary, 54 percent to 32 percent.

“We were concerned with Horne because of his military background and lack of a voting record,” said Terry Carmack, then-Rep. Anne Northup’s (R) chief of staff at the time. “As it turns out, it didn’t matter because the campaign became a referendum on George Bush.”

Yarmuth defeated Northup by 3 points in the general election.

Sometimes strategists at the campaign committees may have picked the wrong horse in the beginning or the establishment candidate simply was not the best general election nominee.

In the case of Ohio’s 18th district, Chillicothe Mayor Joe Sulzer was supposed to be the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in 2006 even though Republicans were eager to run against him because of his personal baggage. Attorney Zack Space ended up winning the nomination with 39 percent, while Sulzer finished third with 24 percent.

Space was the less experienced politician but had a sufficient clean slate compared to embattled then-Rep. Bob Ney (R), his initial opponent, and then-state Sen. Joy Padgett (R) after Ney dropped out and then finally resigned.

Overall, instant, post-primary analysis can be dangerous when looking too far ahead to the general election. There are plenty of examples to show that candidates can win primaries and general elections without the support of the national party, particularly with the wind at their backs.


This story first appeared in Roll Call and CQPolitics.com on June 1, 2010. 2010 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

PA 12 Special: Only One Piece in Bigger Picture

By Stuart Rothenberg

Less than a day after the polls closed in the May 18 Pennsylvania special election, I left the country.

But e-mails followed me everywhere, and I read with some surprise the post-election assessments of the meaning of Democrat Mark Critz’s substantial victory over Republican Tim Burns in the race to succeed the late Rep. John Murtha (D).

I understand that we live in an era when exaggeration is the norm, but characterizing the GOP loss in that special election as evidence that Republicans can’t win the House is about as misguided as the pre-election assessments that the special was a “must win” for Republicans.

Critz’s victory was very welcome news for Democrats and a good reminder that candidates, campaigns and district fundamentals matter. Conservative Democrats, at this point in the cycle, can still win in conservative Democratic districts, even if President Barack Obama isn’t popular.

But while the result certainly ought to be a dose of humility for Republicans who have talked nonsensically about gaining 50, 60 or even 70 seats in November, the result in Pennsylvania wasn’t a game-changer.

From the time Republicans won the House in 1994 to their loss in the 2006 elections, the GOP never held Murtha’s district. Since that district wasn’t a “must win” for them then, it can’t possibly be regarded as one now.

The argument about whether Pennsylvania’s 12th is a swing district or a Democratic district obviously is important. Not surprisingly, the answer is somewhere in between the two alternatives.

Republican Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) carried the district very narrowly in 2008, and state Attorney General Tom Corbett (R) exceeded 50 percent of the vote there in his re-election that same year. Democratic Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) only squeezed by George W. Bush in the district in 2004, while then-Republican Sen. Arlen Specter carried the district (without winning a majority) in 2004. In other words, Republicans can run very competitively in the district, even winning it.

But at other times, the district’s Democratic heritage shows. Democrat Al Gore defeated Bush in the district in 2000 by a solid 11 points (54 percent to 43 percent), and Bill Clinton carried it comfortably twice.

More recently, 2009 state Supreme Court nominee Joan Orie Melvin (R), a western Pennsylvania native who won her race by an unexpectedly comfortable 8 points statewide and carried Chester, Delaware and Bucks counties in the southeastern corner of the state, drew only 48.5 percent of the vote in the 12th.

This is a picture of a narrowly Democratic district that moves toward the GOP when Republicans can establish a clear ideological contrast. When they can’t — and they didn’t last week — they don’t win.

Of course, the much ballyhooed “mood for change” should have boosted GOP prospects in the special election and given voters an opportunity to send a message of dissatisfaction to the president. They didn’t do that.

Did Critz win because the state’s competitive Senate primary pulled Democratic voters to the polls, or did the Congressional contest drive turnout? Partisans on both sides are certain of the answer, but I’m not. I remain agnostic about the question.

Critz’s victory boosts the prospects of moderate Democrats running in swing districts, whether in Western Pennsylvania, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula or nonurban Ohio.

But it doesn’t necessarily offer equally good news for Democratic Reps. Tom Perriello (Va.), Betsy Markey (Colo.), Steve Driehaus (Ohio), Mary Jo Kilroy (Ohio), Suzanne Kosmas (Fla.), Carol Shea-Porter (N.H.) or others who have cast votes that are unpopular back home.

And Critz’s victory doesn’t say anything about Democrats running in Republican-leaning districts or about districts with large numbers of independent voters, who are more likely to vote on mood than anything else.

As regular readers of this column know, election cycles develop over time, not overnight. In both 2006 and 2008, to say nothing of 1994, a number of races broke late, as voters turned their attention to the elections. I expect the same thing to happen this year, and that could change the arithmetic of the midterms.

There are dozens of reasons why the political environment might improve, or deteriorate, for Democrats between now and November — ranging from an improving employment picture or Republican stupidity to growing financial troubles in the European Union, political fallout for the administration from the BP oil disaster or a double-dip economic slowdown.

Some of these developments would help boost Obama’s standing and give Democratic candidates a better chance to localize their contests, while others would undermine the administration’s standing and create an even bigger wave for political change that would overwhelm many Democrats who run strong re-election campaigns.

Much has been made by some of Republican special election victories in Oklahoma and Kentucky prior to the 1994 midterms and of the Democrats’ win in Pennsylvania last week. But, unlike the one in Pennsylvania’s 12th, both of those 1994 specials occurred in districts that George H.W. Bush won comfortably in 1992 and overwhelmingly (by 60 percent) in 1988. The comparisons, in short, don’t hold.

It’s understandable that we all look for deep meaning from a single event. But with Election Day more than five months away, the die for November is not yet cast, no matter the results in Pennsylvania’s 12th district.

This column first appeared in Roll Call and on CQPolitics.com on May 27, 2010. 2010 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.