Within the Margin

In the United Kingdom, it’s fairly routine for folks to represent a parliamentary constituency (what we in the states would call a district) other than the one in which they’ve been living and working. The parties will often work to find a safe constituency for a rising star, frequently after he or she does the party a solid by running a respectable campaign in a hopeless constituency. Hence Labour’s Tony Blair, as a young party operative in the Hackney area of London, running in the safe Tory constituency of Beaconsfield in suburban Buckinghamshire before finally landing in the Labour stronghold of Sedgefield, way up north in Durham. Or Boris Johnson decamping for Henley, an Oxfordshire seat, at the start of his political career despite hailing from London and knowing nothing of the local area. Then, during Johnson’s second term as London mayor, there was talk of him needing a Tory seat somewhere in the country to open up in a by-election so that he could return to Parliament (ultimately he waited until the 2015 general election and found an open seat in outer London).

It’s a basic part of British political culture, but in the United States brazen carpet-bagging is often frowned upon by commentators – though voters seem to care more about party than geography when push comes to shove. So we see Alex Mooney winning a Congressional seat in West Virginia in 2014, after serving in the Maryland senate and then as Maryland GOP chair until 2013. But he ran in a red seat in a red year, and won accordingly. In my neck of the woods, Congressional bids by new arrivals are quite common and often successful. Antonio Delgado captured NY-19 two years after arriving from New Jersey – his upstate roots from his childhood in Schenectady certainly helped, but he was new to the district. Kirsten Gillibrand had roots in the capital region and a career in New York city, but ran for Congress in 2006 in the upper Hudson Valley’s old NY-20 – close to but not including her childhood home and certainly not where she had been living until she was getting ready to run. In a swing district in a Dem year, she won and became quite popular. The Hudson Valley’s two Seans offer divergent results: Sean Maloney moved into the region and won in 2012 against the unpopular Nan Hayworth; Sean Eldridge tried to replicate that and lost in a landslide in 2014 to the popular Chris Gibson.

But those are folks who were getting ready to run for Congress for the first time. The new push, at least in Republican circles, seems to be suburban members fleeing districts where they could no longer win in search of redder digs. Late last month, it became clear that Darrell Issa will be running in California’s 50th district, a very red seat currently inhabited by indicted incumbent Duncan Hunter while he awaits trial for illegally using campaign funds to pay lavish personal expenses. Until this year, Issa was the representative for a district including parts of Orange and northern San Diego counties; after a near-defeat in 2 016 he retired last year rather than be washed away in the coming blue wave as it became clear that most of the GOP’s SoCal seats were in danger. Trump nominated Issa to head up the United States Trade and Development Agency, but he is considered unlikely to be confirmed due to “problematic and potentially disqualifying” information in his FBI background file, according to the LA Times. With that option seemingly foreclosed and his old seat looking bluer by the minute, Issa is headed to a southern San Diego County district where, “potentially disqualifying” information or not, he still presents a more attractive option for his party and for voters than the more clearly corrupt Hunter.

This week brings word that a Republican who was defeated before he could escape a rapidly blue-ing district, Pete Sessions, is eyeing am entirely new district. Sessions was the longtime incumbent for Dallas’ 32nd district and held an assortment of leadership positions and committee chairmanships during his time in the House, before losing to Colin Allred by six and a half percentage points last year. Once a solidly Republican district, it has moved quickly to the left in the Trump era: a 57-42 Romney district in 2012, it narrowly voted for Clinton four years later. But Sessions isn’t ready to be done: he’s looking to migrate south to TX-17, a Waco/College Station district with a bizarre tentacle into the northernmost part of Austin. Sessions did grow up in Waco – and is set to move back – but that was a long time ago and this seat is nowhere near his old turf in Dallas’ northern and western neighborhoods (as well as Highland Park and University Park). But it is soon to be open, as five-term incumbent Bill Flores is retiring. For what it’s worth, Flores is not too impressed with the idea. As powerful as Sessions was just 10 months ago, this is not the sort of place he can just walk in and expect the field to clear: central Texas is full of ambitious Republicans who have tended local fields and are now eager to move up with Flores’ departure.

Issa and Sessions are attempting more dramatic moves than some of the folks vying to replace Chris Collins in NY-27. Collins finally resigned yesterday under indictment for insider trading, and two of the candidates in that race lived outside the district. But state senator Rob Ortt only lives half a mile outside NY-27 and currently represents much of the Congressional district in the senate. And Chris Jacobs, a Buffalo state senator whose district also overlaps with part of NY-27, announced today that he has bought a house inside the district he wants to represent next year. Will Issa join Jacobs and Session in at least going through the motions of relocating to the communities they think they can best serve? I’m skeptical. And will they ultimately win their parties’ primaries? Because that’s the real question: Americans will furrow their brows at extreme carpetbagging but they’ll turn around and vote for their party’s candidate in the end.

***Addendum: I had completely forgotten that Bobby Schilling was district-hopping too. He was elected to a single term in Illinois’ Quad Cities-based 17th district in 2010 and lost re-election two years later. Now he’s seeking the GOP nomination for the open seat IA-2 across the river. Different state, though some overlap in metropolitan area as the Quad Cities region crosses the border.