Tuesday, elections were held on a variety of issues and for a few major offices. From the officeholder races, four were held to elect individuals to either be Governor or to send a representative to Washington, DC as a federal representative.
There might be some confusion right out of the gate for even some of the most savvy newshounds out there. While most of you, no doubt, have heard of the Virginia and New Jersey governors' races and the race for the Congressional seat in the 23rd District of New York, you might not have heard of the fourth race decided Tuesday night. The fourth race was in the 10th District of California, where Democrat John Garamendi was elected by a sizable majority to fill the seat of Ellen Tauscher (who retired this summer to go to the State Department). Garamendi was heavily favored in a strong Democratic district, but before I move on, I do want to comment that this is an upgrade. Garamendi is the former Lt. Governor of California, a former California Insurance Commissioner and a former Deputy Secretary of Interior during the Clinton Administration. While Tauscher was a Democrat, she won her seat in a tough battle in 1996 during which she knocked off an incumbent Republican and had two equally tough battles prior to being drawn into a safer district following the 2000 census. Following redistricting, even though she was given a safer seat, she either never let go of her more moderate philosophy or actually really believed that a more moderate course was the way to go. As a result of last night, the residents of the 10th District of California have a more progressive representative representing them and it's likely he'll be more in line with their views. Congratulations, Representative Garamendi.
(BTW, for those who REALLY want to geek out -- in 2006, when Garamendi ran for Lt. Governor, he defeated Jackie Speier in the Democratic primary and Tom McClintock in the general election. In April of 2008, Speier was elected in a special election to fill the seat of the deceased Representative Tom Lantos of the 12th District of California and in November of 2008, McClintock was elected to succeed John Doolittle in the 4th District of California. With his election last night, Garamendi is now colleagues with two of his former Lt. Governor opponents. Geek moment over.)
As you no doubt saw from the newspaper headlines the morning after the election, Tuesday was a "big night for Republicans" because Republicans captured the governor's mansions of both Virginia and New Jersey. As is the DC way, this was cast, in Republican circles, as a total and utter repudiation of Obama, buyer's remorse that stunk to the high heavens, Democrat doom for 2010, and a complete and total embrace of Republican principles and values to such an extent that half the Democrat caucus in both the House and the Senate should just cave and begin caucusing with the Republicans. The Democrats, on the other hand, were a little more varied in their responses. Some said that this was an effective warning sign to the Democrats, which the Democrats would heed and be responsive towards, while others completely dismissed it out of hand, saying that each race was their own race and each individual race was helped/hurt by local/individual factors that have so little relation to the President that the discussion the next morning might as well have been about electoral races in Iceland.
This being DC, as usual, both sides got a little bit right and a little bit wrong. Let's go to the autopsy.
1. "Obama is doomed. This is so bad for him."
This argument starts at the point that Obama's party lost two major gubernatorial races in two states that Obama carried in the 2008 elections. New Jersey was carried by Obama by over 15 points while he carried Virginia by over six points. As a result, the Democratic parties of both states should have been able to identify Democrat voters, they should have been able to fine tune their political machines and they should have been able to win the turnout wars. The flat out fact is that they didn't. Since it's inconceivable that the party machines in both states could have accumulated such a high degree of rust in a scant twelve months, that must mean, according to Republicans, that voters who were classified as either "independent," "lean Democrat" or "likely Democrat" must have bolted to the comfy confines of the Republican party. Indeed, in Virginia, the Republican Bob McDonnell won Independents by 66-33%, while in New Jersey, the Republican Chris Christie won Independents by 60-30%. Additionally, there was a bit of face lost on behalf of the Obama White House, given that the President made campaign appearances on behalf of both candidates, particularly Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine in New Jersey, to fire up the base.
There are some issues to work out with this argument.
First off, the role played by Independents ignores the fact that Democratic turnout was down in key areas that Obama is strong -- namely, among African-Americans and young people. For example, in Virginia, 10% of the electorate was under the age of 30, as compared to 21% in 2008. African-Americans composed 16% of the vote this time around, as compared to last year's 20%. The Democratic base simply did not show up this time out. Secondly, voters in exit polls overwhelmingly said they did not cast their votes as a repudiation of Obama and his policies. This was born out by the campaigns run by both McDonnell and Christie, where neither one sought to nationalize the race as a referendum on Obama. In fact, both Christie and McDonnell set up webpages that look strikingly similar to Obama's webpage. For contrast, take a look at a webpage by a hardcore Republican in a decisively Republican state. Or here. Remember this guy? Notice the difference? The soothing blues vs. the bright reds?
In 2006, Democrats won races they had no idea they would win. And a great number of those races were won because those Democrats ran with Bush as a cudgel which they used to beat their Republican opponent. They ran ads that linked up the incumbent with Bush at every chance they had. It would almost be fair to say that Bush starred in more Democrat challengers' ads than the Democrats did.
There was no similar effort put forth by either Christie or McDonnell in terms of tying an "anvil" of Obama to the necks of their opponents. But while that news might make some Democrats more comfortable, it shouldn't.
What Tuesday's vote means is that Republicans have figured out a way to sell themselves to the public. McDonnell took the nicer route. He ran on a (gasp!) platform, while Christie presented both his own platform while tearing after his opponent in a rather vicious (but extremely New Jersey) race. For the past two election cycles, Democrats have had a pretty easy argument. "I am not of the party of Bush!" is all a Democratic candidate has needed to say in the past two elections and they immediately gained a degree of credibility. What the election results from Tuesday show is that those heady, halcyon days for Democrats are over. Indeed, Governor Corzine of New Jersey tried again and again to make the link between Christie and Bush and it failed.
The bigger story, though, is not what the rejection of Democratic nominees in both New Jersey and Virginia means for Obama in 2012. It has everything to do with what it means for Democrats running for reelection in 2010.
The Tuesday election shows that when Obama is not on the ballot (and when Bush is not in the White House), there will be a natural depression of turnout. This is to be expected. Off-year elections typically depend more on turnout and see only the more passionate voters showing up at the polls. Passionate voters tend to be those unhappy with government and those unhappy with government don't display a strong preference for incumbents.
In 2006, riding a wave of deep dissatisfaction with Bush, Democrats captured 31 House seats. Over the course of the next year, they swept three special elections. In 2008, with Obama on the top of the ticket, Democrats won a net gain of 21 House seats. This past Tuesday, they added one more House seat to their ranks. When Obama won, he won 64 Congressional districts that John Kerry had lost in 2004. Congressional Democrats presently hold 49 Congressional districts won by John McCain (although, if you go back and look at the districts lost by Kerry but won by Obama, the number would be higher), while Congressional Republicans hold 33 seats won by Barack Obama.
The math, however, is even better for Republicans. Of the 49 districts represented in Congress by a Democrat that were won by McCain, 21 of these Democrats were elected within the past two election cycles. For the Republicans? Of the 33 seats held in the House of Representatives that were won on the district level by Obama, only three were won by Republicans in the past two election cycles. In other words, Republicans who are sitting in "Obama-districts" are far more entrenched incumbents and are less likely to be knocked off, especially in a mid-term where the Democrats have less incentive to turn out to vote.
Members of Congress care very deeply and very obviously about winning re-election. And members of Congress who are relatively new to Congress and represent districts that voted for John McCain have reason to be nervous. These representatives represent districts that would be more than happy to vote for a Republican -- they just need to find the right Republican.
And here's the hidden story of Tuesday's results. Aside from netting two more governors' mansions, the Republicans have a more excited base to contend with and, most importantly of all, a strong argument to use in candidate recruitment. Some of the candidate who ran on the Republican side in the 2008 elections were laugh-out-loud choices. Stronger candidates passed on those races because they looked back at 2006 and looked forward to 2008, saw the writing on the wall, and decided to keep their powder dry. That's the second thing that's gone now. After Bill Foster won a special election in 2008 and captured the seat of former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, Democrats were optimistic. When that victory was followed by the special election victories of Don Cazayoux in Louisiana (subsequently defeated in the 2008 general election) and Travis Childers of Mississippi, it was hard to ignore that a Democrat wave was building. By winning two governorships on Tuesday night, Republicans have demonstrated that they can be viable again and can use that viability in candidate recruitment.
While Obama has a healthy majority in the House of Representatives, I very much doubt that anyone on his team wants to suffer through a heavy loss of seats. But given the nature of some of these Congressional districts, I have a hard time believing there will not come a point where the voters of some of the districts currently occupied by Democrats in the House of Representatives will not revert to more traditional form.
One last point and I'll move on. A theory is being floated around that, during the Bush years, a number of Republican voters felt such a sense of shame or isolation from the Republican party that, instead of self-identifying as Republicans, they identified as Independents. As a result, the sample of current "Independents" is currently skewed more rightward than they traditionally would be. Even if that's the case, it's still an issue for Democrats. No matter what the secret underlying electoral philosophies of Independents are, what matters the most is the lever they pull in the ballot box.
2 "Candidates matter and the candidates who lost on Tuesday ran lousy campaigns."
This is the flip side of the "Obama is so doomed" argument. This is what Democrats who are feeling gloomy can console themselves with.
It is widely acknowledged that Creigh Deeds, who was the Democratic nominee for Governor in Virginia, ran a weak, poor campaign. Not only did his opponent run a sharp, focused campaign but Deeds compounded matters by running a flat out bad campaign. While his opponent was articulating policy positions, Deeds focused on a master's thesis in which McDonnell took the position that working women were detrimental to the family. That largely seemed to be his argument. "That's it! That's the difference! That's how we're better than the other guy!" Well, sure, maybe if that kind of bombshell came out in the last week of the race and it was a one point race, this would be the kind of thing to drive up the numbers in the Democratic base, educated voters and women. But McDonnell's thesis was unearthed in late summer. Deeds was still making this a focal point by the last days of the campaign. I paid attention to Deeds's race. Hell, I volunteered on Deeds's race and I still struggle to talk about any significant reason why Deeds should have won over McDonnell outside of the thesis.
The problem was the reverse in New Jersey. New Jersey voters knew Jon Corzine and flat out didn't like him. Throughout the race, his approval ratings hovered in the 30s. He had a string of broken promises behind him, such as failing to lower property taxes.
Add in the fact that the Democratic candidate who won in the 23rd District of New York (more on that later) was solidly of the ideology and philosophy of his district and, case closed! All politics is local! Besides, Democrats can argue, it's not like the states have any influence on what passes in Congress or who is sent to Washington, DC and state elections are decided on state matters, not national matters. In fact, if you look at the two people who were elected to federal office on Tuesday night, both are Democrats. It's hard to interpret the results of Tuesday night as a repudiation of the federal government when the ranks of Democrats in Congress are +2, with a net yield of +1.
Not so fast.
Two big important points come up here. First of all, looking at recent elections is instructive. Personality deficient governors and governors running states that have been struggling have been able to win in recent years. The fact that Rod Blagojevich was, ahem, suspect, was not exactly the best kept secret in the world when he won re-election in 2006. The Democrat governors Ted Strickland won election in Ohio, Chet Culver won election in Iowa and Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, Jim Doyle of Wisconsin and Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania won re-election in 2006 when Rust Belt states were suffering. But part of what swept all of these governors along was the gale force of the 2006 elections and running against Bush. As I already said, Bush is no longer a relevant weapon in the Democratic arsenal. To say that all politics is local ignores the fact that, for example, in 2006, politics were not local.
This argument is counterbalanced by 2002, where Democrats scored a net gain of eight governors' mansions. The main issue driving voters, however, in 2002 was terrorism and national defense, issues that rarely cross a governor's desk. In the 2010 election, the issue likely to be the most important to voters, if present conditions stand, is going to be the economy. And the economy, coupled with shrinking state budgets, deficits, spending freezes and possible raised taxes, is very much an issue that faces governors.
Some might say, "Well, so what? So what if Democrats lose governors' races in 2010? That doesn't affect what happens on Capitol Hill." Putting aside all relevant policy points, the necessity for Obama to have advocates at the state level, the possibility of any healthcare reform that includes a public option having an opt-out measure, etc., there is one vital reason for election watchers to care about what happens to governorships in 2010. In 2010, the United States Census will complete their decennial census. After that census, state legislatures will have to redraw congressional districts, which will need to be signed into law by state governors.
As things presently stand, the following states are projected to lose Congressional representation in 2012: OH (-2), IA (-1), IL (-1), LA (-1), MA (-1), MI (-1), MN (-1), MO (-1), NJ (-1), NY (-1), PA (-1). The following states are projected to gain Congressional representation in 2012: TX (+4), AZ (+2), FL (+2), GA (+1), NV (+1), SC (+1), UT (+1).
Leaving out Iowa (Iowa redistricts by nonpartisan panels), each one of these states redistricts by the legislative process. Of the states that are losing seats, New Jersey, Louisiana and Missouri do not have governors up for re-election in 2010. Of those three states, only Missouri will be controlled by a Democratic governor during the redistricting process and, thus, will be the only state where the possibility of forcing two Republicans into the same district or eliminating a Republican district upon the retirement of a Republican is likely. By 2010, both Louisiana and New Jersey will be represented by Republicans, thus making it more likely that any redistricting will be done in a way that protects Republican districts and harms Democratic districts (New Jersey has a strong Democratic state legislature, and thus a bulwark exists). The remaining seven states all have governors up for re-election in 2010. Of these, only one (Minnesota) presently has a Republican governor. In 2010, in addition to Minnesota, both Michigan and Pennsylvania will have open seats and open seats are tougher battles than protecting incumbents. As if that were not enough, the governors of Ohio and Iowa are already facing tough polling, while the incumbent governors of New York, Michigan, and Massachusetts are facing poll numbers that are even tougher. If voters want to change the course of the economy via the ballot box in 2010, Democrats could face a very tough time retaining control of these governorships.
As if that were not enough, of the seven states projected to gain Congressional seats, all, with the exception of Florida and Nevada, strongly voted for John McCain in 2008. Not only that, all seven states presently have Republican governors. In 2010, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina are presently going to have open seats. While the incumbents in Arizona and Nevada are deeply unpopular, it assumed that neither will survive their Republican primary.
This is why winning governorships in 2010 is, from an election perspective, critically important to Democrats. Given that the majority of losses of Congressional seats in 2012 will come from states that are currently governed by Democrats and that the majority of gains of Congressional seats in 2012 will go to states that are currently governed by Republicans, in order to, at best, minimize losses, the Democrats cannot afford to lose too many governors' mansions in the 2010 election cycle. In addition, states that do not have a net gain or loss of seats in 2012 will have to reapportion their districts in order to ensure proportionate representation. In doing so, districts can be drawn in such a way that vulnerable incumbents lose voting blocs that favor them and gain voting blocs that disfavor them. Retaining governors' mansions is one of the single most important factors in securing a long-lasting Democratic majority.
3. "Ideological purity in the parties is the way to go." "Ideological purity leads to an intraparty firing squad."
Everyone focused their eyes on the 23rd District of New York in this past election. The Congressional seat came open because President Obama appointed long-serving Congressman John McHugh to the position of Secretary of the Army.
In a nutshell, the following happened: After McHugh's selection as Secretary of the Army was announced, 11 Republican leaders in the 23rd District of New York got together and chose Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava as their nominee. Passed over in the nominating process was Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, who has the added distinction of not living in the 23rd District. Hoffman decided to run as a third party candidate. Democrats nominated attorney Bill Owens.
All party hell broke loose on the Republican side when Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and others realized that Scozzafava had a voting record in the State Assembly of being pro-choice and pro-gay marriage, as well as a few other liberal positions (while blithely dismissing the areas in which she was to the right of her colleagues in the State Assembly). The far-right revolted and subjected Assemblywoman Scozzafava to such abuse that, the Saturday before the election, she suspended her campaign and the Sunday before the election, she endorsed the Democrat. Doug Hoffman then received the full backing of the Republican party, even though he showed a complete lack of concrete understanding of the issues facing the 23rd District. In the final contest between the Democratic party candidate and the Conservative party candidate on Election Day, Democrat Bill Owens captured the seat for the Democrats for the first time in about 150 years.
There are several things to take from this. The first is, once again, a reminder that all politics can be local. Voters in the 23rd District had already demonstrated enough of a trust and belief in Assemblywoman Scozzafava to send her to the State Assembly time and again. They knew her, they liked her, and I'm pretty confident that they did not enjoy watching their favored candidate get ripped to shreds by outsiders demanding party purity. Similarly, I don't think that voters in the 23rd District of New York viewed the race as a chance to tell Obama off (at least not yet). Doug Hoffman, as a candidate, displayed a very flimsy grasp of the issues that were of importance to the 23rd District of New York, including the necessity of securing earmarks for the district's Ft. Drumm. He ran largely as an ideologue, while Bill Owens ran as someone who was "of" the district and "for" the district. He displayed an understanding of the issues important to the district's residents and, to my mind, that is why he is en route to Congress today.
The takeaway from this, distressingly, for both sides seems to be, "Run further to the right!" or "Run further to the left!" in order to motivate the base. I don't think either one is the answer. I think the answer is more in the fine print than it is in the bigger ideological picture. The point from this smorgasbord of elections seems to be that legislators are going to need to do the hard work of actually connecting to their constituents and listening to their concerns, rather than hiding behind a big, ideological push to count on getting them across the finish line.
The number one concern cited by most voters in exit polls on Tuesday was, shockingly (not really), jobs and the economy. For all the sturm and drang coming out of Washington, DC these days, healthcare ranked a distant fourth in terms of the top concerns motivating voters. While I do not disagree that health care is an important issue that demands immediate attention, I do pause to consider what, exactly, the current occupants of the White House and the Congress are doing on the issue of jobs. Bob Herbert of the New York Times has been sounding the alarm on the need for those in Washington to do something comprehensive, in lines with a sweeping jobs bill, for some time now. It might be worth starting to listen to him.
Ultimately, the results in the governors' races might end up not mattering, as some have argued. But there is a growing national sense of frustration brewing over the "change" that voters voted in in 2008. The tempest might be relatively small now, but it's brewing. And, this time, Democrats don't have the same tools they had in the last two elections.
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