Within the Margin

Next Tuesday’s election will see many seats changing hands in the House of Representatives – but Within the Margin sees very little change in the overall partisan breakdown of the House. Having painstakingly rated all 435 seats over the course of this year, we see Republicans winning 239 seats to 196 for Democrats. That equates to a +3 net gain for Democrats. Given how much ground Republicans gained in 2010 and the likelihood of some ebb and flow from that high-water mark, we spent the year figuring that it would be a little bit higher than that – more like 7-10 seats. But recruiting shortfalls in otherwise-winnable districts, coupled with newly-drawn maps that will take a bit of work for Democrats to unlock, have created a dynamic that seems likely to result in roughly equal takeover totals for both parties.

Several factors are at play in creating a scenario where the parties’ respective pickups will largely offset each other:

Cartographic Casualties (and Protections)

This is a redistricting cycle, meaning every state had to redraw Congressional and legislative lines in accordance with 2010 Census data. Some seats changed very little; some were utterly transformed. Some were eliminated (in states whose population growth lagged) while fast-growing states gained seats. With Republicans controlling state legislatures and governorships in many competitive states, they had a free hand to draw favorable maps that will, at least for now, lock in many of their gains from the 2010 midterm elections.  Examples include Ohio and Pennsylvania, two states where oodles of seats changed hands in 2006, 2008 and 2010 but where few – possibly none – will do so this time around. The Republicans went on the redistricting offensive in North Carolina, securing their 2010 pickup and giving themselves strong pickup opportunities in four(!) Dem-held districts.

Democrats had fewer instances in which they controlled the mapping process, but they used it to create numerous pickup opportunities in Illinois and to create a strong takeover chance in a western Maryland district.

States with independent redistricting processes such as Arizona and California tended to see a higher proportion of competitive seats. A court-drawn map in New York has created an abundance of closely-matched seats, though not all of the races have turned out to be particularly close.

No Wave

Every discussion of the state of play in the House this year references the lack of a “wave” favoring one party or another. After three consecutive cycles of big gains for one party of the other – Dems winning big in 2006 and 2008, Reps erasing those gains and then some in 2010 – this year does not feature a headwind for either party. Neither presidential candidate is headed for a landslide; he might have some regional strengths that pull some House candidates into office on his coattails but Romney’s not bringing as many Republicans to the House as Reagan did in 1980, nor is Obama bringing in as many Democrats as he did four years ago.

Washing Out the Crazies

Every wave election brings in some people who are woefully out of touch with their districts or who are not personally suited for higher office; 2010 was no different. People like Joe Walsh and Allen West are volatile bomb-throwers representing moderate districts; the odious Walsh is almost assuredly a goner and we think West will narrowly lose as well.

We also think Steve King in Iowa has met his match – Iowa had to lose a seat in Congressional redistricting, meaning his seat is more Democratic than it used to be. But he has certainly not adjusted his tone to his new constituents.

Republicans may have had the upper hand in terms of seats won and lost through redistricting, but they brought in so many freshman on their 2010 tide that some will be washed back out to sea, helping Democrats to eke out a small net gain this year.

In the chart below, we follow our likely/lean/tilt system, which is elaborated upon in our Senate post. Seats currently held by Republicans are listed in red and those currently held by Democrats in blue; those seats which due to redistricting pit a Democratic incumbent against a Republican incumbent are listed in purple. Some seats are brand-new because the state gained seats (i.e. AZ-9) or adopted a dramatically different map and have no incumbent; these are listed in black. So as an example, NY-24 is currently Republican-held but we see it flipping to Dems; it is depicted in red but under the Lean Dem column.

A number of seats will be changing party control that are not reflected on the chart below. That’s because we’ve rated those seats as Safe takeovers – these include Arkansas’ 4th district, where Democrat Mike Ross is retiring and seems certain to be replaced by Republican Tom Cotton; North Carolina’s 13th district, where Democrat Brad Miller is retiring after being dealt an unwinnable hand in redistricting and is virtually guaranteed to be replaced by Republican George Holding.

Likely Dem	Lean Dem	Tilt Dem	Tilt Rep	Lean Rep	Likely Rep
AZ-2	CA-9	AZ-1	CA-36	CA-21	AZ-9
CA-24	CA-41	CA-7	CA-52	CO-3	CO-4
CA-47	FL-22	CA-10	CO-6	GA-12	FL-16
CO-7	KY-6	CA-26	CT-5	MT-AL	IN-8
CT-4	NY-24	FL-18	FL-2	NY-19	MI-3
DE-AL		IL-11	FL-10	NC-8	MN-2
FL-9		IL-12	IL-10	TN-4	NE-2
FL-26		IL-13	IN-2		NV-3
HI-1		IL-17	IA-3		NJ-3
IL-8		IA-4	MA-6		NJ-7
IA-1		MI-11	MI-1		NC-11
IA-2		NV-4	MN-6		ND-AL
ME-2		NH-1	MN-8		OK-2
MD-6		NY-1	NH-2		PA-6
NY-17		NY-21	NY-11		PA-8
NY-25		NC-7	NY-18		PA-18
WA-1		OH-16	NY-27		SD-AL
WV-3		PA-12	OH-6		TX-14
		RI-1	TX-23		VA-2
			UT-4		VA-5
					WI-7
					WI-8

Brief writeups for each seat are coming up as the week continues.

Last Friday, we posted some analysis and ratings for each competitive senate seat. Today, we look at the other 18 Senate races: the ones we’ve called safe for one party or the other. Lest you think that there’s no juice to these, this group of races includes:

• One surefire Republican pickup (Nebraska) which is an important starting point for the GOP in their request to retake control of the Senate – and which didn’t have to be: Democrats made a serious tactical error here.

• Some seats (Hawaii, New Mexico) which were considered potentially competitive earlier in the year. We’ll talk about why they’re not looking that way anymore, but it should be noted that late-breaking news could shift one or two back onto our radar screen.

• An intriguing independent candidate spending big bucks in Maryland – and maybe finishing 2nd in the process.

• A quick update on Christine O’Donnell’s political ambitions.

• The Empire State. A good chunk of our readership has ties to New York, which is included in today’s rundown.

• A Republican winning from the left in Tennessee. I’m serious! Sort of.

Without further ado, our look at the safe seats. Remember, to garner a Safe rating, an election must feature fundamentals that are just too strongly in favor of the leading party – the partisan lean of the state being the biggest factor, followed by the relative popularity or weakness (baggage, poor fundraising) of the respective candidates. Something dramatic needs to happen for the favored candidate to lose – arrests or scandals might do it, but even a wave election probably wouldn’t lap up on the shores of these states.

And keep in mind that most of the Senate seats up this year feature Democratic incumbents; that’s because in the previous two elections featuring this class of senators, Democrats picked up a net of 4 seats in 2000 and 6 seats in 2006. As a result, they’re playing mostly defense this year.

 

California

The Golden State used to have competitive senate elections; in 1994, Diane Feinstein held on by less than two points. Of course, Michael Huffington spent $30 million that year to keep it close. The 2010 race looked close for a while – again, Republicans found a challenger with fundraising chops as Carly Fiorina’s campaign spent $17M against Barbara Boxer. But in the end, Boxer won by 10 points. This year, Republican recruiting was a non-event – if Fiorina and Meg Whitman, despite their business fame and all their millions, couldn’t be competitive in the most Republican-friendly cycle in generations, than who could pull off a win in California in a presidential year?

So taking on Diane Feinstein this year is Elizabeth Emken, a lobbyist for Autism Speaks. That’s not a bad launching point for a campaign in a smaller jurisdiction – state legislature, perhaps, or another shot at a Congressional bid – but scaling up to a Senate race in the country’s largest state is not easy. It’s even harder when your issue positions are rather boilerplate; a statewide Republican candidate in California needs to distinguish herself on ideas in order to have a chance at victory. Emken doesn’t do so, she has raised little money for a race of this magnitude, and accordingly polling has shown her stuck in the mid to low 30s. Feinstein will win a fourth full term despite rather mediocre approval ratings.

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

Delaware

In 2010, the First State’s Senate race provided more laughs than any other. Sadly, Christine O’Donnell opted to sit out the 2012 cycle after three failed Senate bids in a row. But fear not: she’s keeping her options open for a 2014 return. In the meantime, Delaware’s senate race has little going for it. Democrat Tom Carper captured this seat from a five-term incumbent in 2000. He was re-elected with 70% in 2006 against a guy who beat O’Donnell in the Republican primary, and he should approach that lofty number this time against Kevin Wade, a businessman with little political experience and a somewhat odd haircut.

Delaware used to be Republican-leaning, but that has changed dramatically in the last two decades. Along with that change has come the total disappearance of a GOP bench in the state. Throw in local man Joe Biden’s presence on the ballot this year, and all of this, combined with his own solid approval ratings, means that Carper can stake a claim to being the safest Democratic senator in the country this year.

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

Hawaii

Democratic incumbent Daniel Akaka is retiring, and both parties are probably running their strongest respective candidates to replace him. Three-term incumbent representative Mazie Hirono defeated Ed Case in the primary; she was the more liberal choice but that’s hardly a hindrance in Hawaii – in fact it’s the smart move, given the lengthy history of Case irking the grassroots with conservative stances and general egomania. Republicans are running former two-term governor Linda Lingle. She’s fairly moderate, and she has her own TV channel! Because everyone wants to watch more campaign ads!

In another year, maybe Lingle would have a shot. Hawaii has given Republicans a chance at the federal level before; Pat Saiki won multiple House terms in the 1980s and Charles Djou briefly held a House seat – albeit under unusual circumstances – in 2010. But this is the president’s birthplace and the state where he rolled up his highest percentage in 2008. Spring and summer polling occasionally showed Lingle making it competitive, but more recently she’s had trouble even breaking 40% while Hirono comfortably clears the 50% mark. We thought about keeping this Likely Democratic, but we were certain that in another week or so, we’d be moving it to Safe Dem. So we’re going to go ahead and pull the trigger now.

Rating: Safe Democratic 

 

Maryland

This was an open seat in 2006, and Republicans thought they had a shot with Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele. His campaign never really took off, but he did parlay it into an interesting and “empathetic” stint as RNC chairman. Congressman Ben Cardin won that election by 10 points. The question this year is whether Cardin will double that winning margin, or truly clear the bar by tripling it. He faces two opponents: underfunded Republican Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service Agent, and the rather well-funded independent Rob Sobhani, an author and president of an energy consulting firm. Sobhani has an interesting platform that seeks many worthy investments in infrastructure and research, meaning that they would go nowhere in a Congress where the GOP continues to control one or both houses. Points for trying, though.

Sobhani dropped some serious coin on a hefty ad buy last month and as a result was just one point behind the Republican candidate in a recent Gonzales Research poll. But that still left him 29 points behind Cardin. If Sobhani can generate some momentum and pass Bongino, it would be a real kick in the teeth to the already down-and-out Maryland Republican Party. Cardin will cruise here, so we’re curious about margins and whether this upstart indy candidate can put together a respectable showing in November.

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

Minnesota

When Mark Dayton retired in 2006, his Minnesota Senate seat seemed like it would be somewhat competitive. But the race between Democratic (DFL, to be precise) Hennepin County prosecutor Amy Klobuchar and Republican Congressman Mark Kennedy stayed close only briefly. Klobuchar never trailed in a poll, and was pulling away by late summer. She ended up winning by 20 points while Kennedy was replaced in the House by a crazy woman.

Sensible politicos will take the over on whether Klobuchar will exceed her 2006 margin this year against Kurt Bills, a social studies teacher and Rosemount city councilman who defeated a Democratic incumbent in a 2010 race for State Representative. Bills is a Paulist but like many of that ilk he gets confused about what “small government” actually means when it comes to people’s personal lives; he voted for an amendment to the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage in Minnesota.

Bills has raised little money. Klobuchar has a very positive approval rating in Minnesota and her lead in polls has ranged from 14 to 29 points.  After flirting with swing-state status in the early 2000s, Minnesota has been mostly friendly to statewide Democrats in recent cycles. Klobuchar wins easily; can she top 60% this time?

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

Mississippi

Former Congressman Roger Wicker had to work a bit in 2008 when he ran to fill the remainder of Trent Lott’s senate term. That year, former Democratic governor Ronnie Musgrove was competitive in funding and Democrats targeted the state aggressively in October after some close poll results. Wicker ended up winning 55-45% in the closest Senate race Mississippi has seen since 1988. He’ll win much more easily this year against Albert N. Gore, Jr., a distance relative of the former vice president who is 82 and chairs the Oktibbeha County Democratic Party. Mississippi politics are entirely race-based; white voters vote Republican and black voters vote Democratic. That means Democrats have a higher floor than in some states, especially if turnout is high in the presidential race as it was in 2008. But they also have a ceiling. Wicker will clear 60% with ease, probably pushing 70%. Democrats have a long way to go before they have the bench, money and issues to win Senate races in Mississippi.

Rating: Safe Republican

 

Nebraska

Republican Deb Fischer is a lock to pick up this seat, which Democrats have held since 1988 (and before that, from 1976 to 1987). Ben Nelson was a popular Nebraska governor in the 1990s who held this seat for Dems in 2000 when Bob Kerrey retired. He won again easily in the Dem-friendly year of 2006, but opted to retire this year rather than face a very difficult race in a state that Mitt Romney will carry easily (though it should be noted that Nebraska splits its electoral votes by Congressional district, and Barack Obama was able to win the Omaha-based 2nd district in 2008 to pick up one Nebrasks electoral vote).

Fischer, a down-the-line conservative (except when it’s personally inconvenient) rancher who serves in Nebraska’s unicameral state legislature looked like the third wheel for most of the Republican primary campaign. Attorney General Jon Bruning had eyed this seat for many years, as had State Treasurer Don Stenberg. But Stenberg is starting to feel like a perennial candidate and didn’t bring anything new to the campaign, and Bruning came under attack for ethics problems in his state office (not to mention the perceived sin of having been a liberal Democrat when he was younger). Fischer gained steam in the campaign’s final weeks and beat Bruning by five points.

But Fischer is not an electoral juggernaut. It is entirely the fault of one man’s outsized ego and the Democrats’ national senate campaign arm (the DSCC) that this race is not more competitive. Chuck Hassebrook was in the race and was a legitimate candidate. As an elected member of the University of Nebraska Board of Regents and Executive Director of the Center for Rural Affairs, Hassebrook had an interesting profile, some connections, and impeccable Nebraska ties. But the DSCC begged former governor and senator Kerrey to get into the race after Nelson retired, and Kerrey eventually agreed. Hassebrook stepped aside and effectively, the race ended. That’s because while Kerrey was extremely popular as a governor and senator, and maintained a number of businesses in his native state, he hadn’t lived in Nebraska in recent years. He had taken a job as president of the New School in New York City. That’s fine; I’d certainly like to be a university president myself. But going from making noises about running for mayor of New York to running for senator in Nebraska is a tall order. Kerrey has always been something of a celebrity politician and I suspect his ego made it hard to pass on this race. But he has not been remotely competitive despite raising a decent bit of money: Fischer’s polling lead in in the mid-to-high teens right now and barring a shocking development, it’s not getting closer. Would Democrats have won with Hassebrook in this red state? No, probably not. But he would have run a more plausible campaign, surely.

Rating: Safe Republican

 

New Jersey

In 2006, newly-appointed Democratic incumbent Robert Menendez was not well known by New Jersey voters, and he spent the year posting too-close-for-comfort leads against a Republican state senator with a famous name, Tom Kean, Jr – son of a popular former governor. Menendez ended up winning by nine points, but only after I (and others) spent the fall wringing our hands over the prospect of losing a Senate seat in New Jersey; recall that Dems were trying to flip the Senate that year and did so, 51-49…but Republicans would have maintained control had Menendez lost.

Six years later, Menendez is still not well known by New Jersey voters. I would theorize that this is in part because Chris Christie is the dominant personality in Jersey politics right now. In part it may also be because Menendez spent the previous two-year cycle chairing the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, therefore focusing on national politics more than local matters – but Chuck Schumer held that job for four years and remained ever-visible in New York throughout his tenure. Regardless, Menendez is leading a different New Jersey state senator, Joe Kyrillos, by larger margins than he typically led Kean in 2006. He rarely breaks 50% in polling, buyt Kyrillos is way behind and shows no signs of closing the gap. Folks in Jersey don’t necessarily know much about their junior senator, but clearly he hasn’t offended them, either.

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

New Mexico

This was supposed to fairly competitive. Longtime popular Democratic incumbent Jeff Bingaman retired, and both parties put forth their strongest possible candidates.  Republicans nominated former Congresswoman Heather Wilson, an Air Force fighter pilot with relatively moderate credentials, and Democrats selected her successor in New Mexico’s 1st district, Congressman Martin Heinrich. Both candidates had won in a swingy district in tough years (Wilson in ’06, Heinrich in ’10).

But after being a presidential swing state in 2000 and 2004, New Mexico really isn’t one anymore. Sure, Republicans fared well here in the strong Republican year of 2010. But Obama carried the state with ease four years ago and is doing so again.  Tom Udall won an open senate seat by 22.6% in 2008. And Heinrich has basically led from the start in the Senate race – first by smaller leads, now by a double-digit margin. The Republicans’ National Republican Senatorial Committee has stopped spending here, so it doesn’t see a path to victory for Wilson. I don’t either. Young Martin Heinrich’s upward career path looks set to continue into the Senate without much difficulty.

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

New York

Another young Democratic up-and-comer, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, was appointed in 2009 to this seat (formerly Hillary Clinton’s), won a special election in 2010 to serve the remainder of Clinton’s term, and is about to win a full six-year term this November. Republicans nominated attorney and conservative activist Wendy Long, who has gained no traction whatsoever. It took Gillibrand a while to build up statewide name recognition, but her leading role on an impressive array of legislative initiatives Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell repeal, the 9/11 first responders’ health bill, the insider trading ban for members of Congress, and her continued work on the farm bill) has changed that, and her approvals have risen steadily upward as a result. The question for this year is whether Gillibrand can top her 62% showing from two years ago; it seems likely that she will.

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

Rhode Island

In 2006, this was a hotly contested seat: Lincoln Chafee, the most moderate-to-liberal Republican in the Senate faced a tough re-election bid – first against conservative primary challenger Steve Laffey, and then against Democratic attorney general Sheldon Whitehouse. Chafee survived Laffey’s strong challenge and kept it relatively close against Whitehouse, but the Democrat pulled away for a seven-point victory. Chafee is now the Obama-endorsing independent governor of Rhode Island, and Whitehouse is the incumbent in a safe senate seat. Software company founder and president Barry Hinckley trails by huge margins in a race that appears on no one’s competitiveness radar.

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

Tennessee

When Bill Frist retired in 2006, it set up a tight race between Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker, a Republican, and Democratic Representative Harold Ford, Jr. Corker was always favored in this Republican-leaning state, but Ford kept it close to the end and may have been undone by a race-baiting ads in the final days of the campaign. Democratic fortunes have gotten much worse in the Volunteer State since then, and this year, Tennessee has never been considered in play at the presidential or senate level. Accordingly, Democrats failed to recruit a strong challenger here this year. So in a Democratic primary with few voters and zero name recognition for any candidate, the winner was the man whose name appeared at the top of the ballot – Mark Clayton. He’s the president of a conservative organization called Public Advocate USA that is considered an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. So this is the only state in the union in which the Republican senate candidate is the more liberal of the two major party options. Clayton was immediately disowned by the state and national Democratic parties; Corker will likely top 70% to easily win a second term.

Rating: Safe Republican

 

Texas

Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison is retiring after 19 years in the Senate. Former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz is replacing her. Yes, Texans still have to vote to make it official, but Democrats didn’t recruit a serious candidate. Former state representative Paul Sadler trails by high double-digits in most polls to the Tea Party’s latest up-and-comer in Cruz, who won a difficult Republican primary to earn the right to walk through the general election. It’s possible that in a decade, every statewide race in Texas will be a battle, assuming Democrats can continue to fare well among the state’s exploding non-white population. But demographic shifts take time, and for the moment, Texas will continue to elect two Republicans to the U.S. Senate.

Rating: Safe Republican

 

Utah

The action in Utah’s recent Senate races has been in the Republican nominating conventions and primaries, where incumbents have had to fend off strong challenges from the right. Robert Bennett failed to survive in 2010, but Orrin Hatch learned from his colleague’s travails, struck alliances with Tea Party activists, and easily defeated his challenger this year. His Democratic opponent has a great resume: Scott Howell served in executive posts with IBM and as a state senator. He’s running as a conservative Democrat in a deeply conservative state. But that’s going to be enough in Utah, especially with Mitt Romney atop the ticket  with his ties to the LDS Church and the Salt Lake City Olympics. Hatch will win his seventh term next month.

Rating: Safe Republican

 

Vermont

Bernie is beloved in Vermont. That’s first-term Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.  An avowed democratic socialist, Sanders gained popularity as the mayor of Burlington in the 1980s before being elected to the House in 1990. When Senator Jim Jeffords retired in 2006, Sanders made the jump with ease, winning 65% of the vote. He’ll do something similar this year. For a time it looked like Tom Salmon – Vermont’s State Auditor and a Democrat-turned-Republican – would mount a challenge, but he ultimately passed. The mantle was taken up by John MacGovern, served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives for eight years in the 1980s and early 1990s. He has tried running for the Vermont state senate a couple of times and lost; he’ll lose this one, too.

Rating: Safe Independent (effectively Safe Democratic)

 

Washington

Remember RealAudio? Yeah, it wasn’t the best piece of software you’ve used. But Maria Cantwell did pretty well as an executive at RealNetworks, the company that created it. From there, she defeated incumbent Republican Slade Gorton to win this Senate seat in 2000. Her tenth-of-a-percentage-point margin was one of the slimmest in the country that year; her 17-point reelection margin in 2006 was quite a bit more comfortable. She’ll do about the same against State Senator Michael Baumgartner this year: her polling lead has doubled from the start of the year as she closes in on a 60% vote share. Republicans made a game effort to win a Senate race here in 2010, but fell about five point short in the best year for Republican in a generation. It’s certainly not happening for them this time around.

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

West Virginia

The Mountain State is a fascinating one. Not long ago, it was usually blue at the federal level: Carter won it twice, Dukakis carried it, Clinton won it twice with ease. It was somewhat surprising when Gore fell short here in 2000. Bush dramatically expanded his winning margin in 2004, and in 2008 both major party candidates saw their vote shares fall but Obama fell further than McCain. Clearly a red state then, yes? But political observers know that West Virginia remains overwhelmingly Democratic in registration and in its state legislature. Republicans did pick up a Congressional seat in 2010, but Dems held the Senate seat by a comfortable margin after a heated campaign. In 2011, Democrats held the governorship – albeit narrowly. West Virginia remains very happy to elect Democrats, but of a certain type. Allegiance to the coal industry is a must. Same goes for supporting gun rights. Pro-choice candidates are frowned upon.

Joe Manchin fits the bill. He won two smashing gubernatorial victories, with 64% and 70% even as Bush and McCain were carrying the state the same year. After the death of the legendary Senate Robert Byrd, Manchin ran in the 2010 special election. In an anti-Obama state and a tough year for Democrats, it looked dicey for a while…but Manchin ended up with a 10-point victory over wealthy businessman John Raese. This year is a rematch between the conservative Democrat and the Florida-residing Raese, and this time it’s truly going to be a blowout. Manchin has led by as much as 52% in one poll. That’s a stretch, but Manchin can count on winning a full six-year term this fall. Whether his more liberal colleague Jay Rockefeller can do the same in two years amidst Republican efforts to paint the Democratic Party as anti-coal is a much more complicated proposition.

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

Wyoming

John Barrasso was appointed in 2007 to replace Senator Craig Thomas’ term after the latter man died of leukemia. He won a special election in 2008 to serve out the remainder of Thomas’ term, and is now running for his first full term in the Senate. Barrasso previously served in the Wyoming legislature and now consistently ranks as the one of the most conservative members of the Senate. That works just fine in Wyoming, where there hasn’t been anything resembling a competitive Senate race since 1996.

Democrats do sometimes win statewide here: just recently, Dave Freudenthal served two terms from 2003-2011 as one of the most popular governors in America. Democrats in fact won seven out of nine  gubernatorial races from 1974 through 2006. Gary Trauner ran very competitive races for Congress in 2006 and 2008. But Freudenthal was term-limited in 2010 and Democrats did not make a serious play for that House seat. Democrats are running an elected official for this seat in Albany County Commissioner Tim Chesnut, but he lacks money and Barrasso has no weaknesses in a state that likes its federal representatives very, very conservative.

Rating: Safe Republican

Overview – The Competitive Seats

+1 net gain for the Republicans; Democrats projected to maintain control of Senate

In our first batch of Senate ratings, we see Dems holding on to their majority. Reps need to pick up 3 (if Romney wins the presidency) or 4 seats (if Obama is reelected) in order to control the Senate in January. At is stands now, this appears unlikely. We have the Reps gaining a net of one seat, or two if Maine’s Angus King caucuses with them, which seems unlikely.

Democrats picked up six seats in their 2006 wave, meaning that a number of freshman are facing their first attempt at re-election – including some in classic swing states. Five of those 2006 pickups are indeed hotly contested seats again this time around. One of those purple-state freshmen, Jim Webb of Virginia, is retiring. Two others, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jon Tester of Montana, are facing extremely tight re-election contests. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania seem more secure, but they’re not out of the woods yet. Additionally, Democrats face difficulties in holding open seats in Nebraska and North Dakota, where incumbents are retiring and Democrats rarely face an easy path to victory. Dems have to work to hold a number of other seats in Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Michigan, and Wisconsin, but right now they hold the edge. At this time, we see the Republicans picking up the Montana, Nebraska and North Dakota seats – and the latter just barely.

But while the Republicans have many more targets, they’re playing defense in a few places, and we have them losing a pair of seats in Maine (to an independent who is more likely to caucus with Democrats than Republicans) and Massachusetts. That gives Republicans a net gain of a single seat, allowing Democrats to maintain control of the Senate in 2013.

What follows below is a description of the state of play in each competitive senate race – each race is rated as Tilt, Lean, Likely or Safe; the safe seats will be summarized in a future post. We don’t do tossups: if it’s that close, we try anyway, rating it as a Tilt to one party or the other. Anyone can tell you Montana’s  tough to call; someone has to go out on a limb and make their best guess, and that’s what we’re doing. Charlie Cook and Stu Rothenberg and Larry Sabato can play it safe, but that’s not our way.

• If a race is Tilt Dem or Tilt Rep, it’s on a knife’s edge. We’re looking at all the usual candidate factors, state political fundamentals, national influences and polling to predict a winner, but those things are either all very close or are working at crosswinds to muddy the outcome. These are the races most likely to see a rating change between now and November, and we won’t be shy about updating accordingly. The idea is to be right, not to hedge.

• If a race is Lean Dem or Lean Rep, we feel one party has the advantage as the race stands now, but that the race is still fluid.

• If a race is Likely Dem or Likely Rep, we feel one party has a strong advantage and the trailing candidate will need something unexpected to happen, or a wave election to occur that currently no one sees coming.

• If a race is Safe Dem or Safe Rep, then the fundamentals are just too strongly in favor of the leading party. Something dramatic needs to happen for the favored candidate to lose. We’re talking arrests or enormous gaffes, not just an unexpectedly close poll or a tough new attack ad.

We’ll update the Senate ratings as events warrant between now and November.

Arizona

Incumbent three-term Republican Jon Kyl opted not to run for reelection this year. Mesa-area Congressman Jeff Flake won the Republican primary to succeed Kyl. Flake won all of his general elections fairly easily in his deep-red House district, and hasn’t had a tough election since his first House primary in 2000. Flake is a libertarian-flavored conservative, with strong opposition to federal spending of almost any kind but support for comprehensive immigration reform rather than the hardline policies his home state has become known for. He has a mixed record on social issues, voting to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell but also voting twice for a Federal Marriage Amendment. By one statistical reckoning, Flake’s record is the most conservative in the House; others find him a bit closer to the middle depending on how some of his “lone wolf” votes are calculated – a similar phenomenon to Ron Paul.

Democrats made the most of a limited bench, nominating former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona. Having served in the Bush administration gives Carmona some bipartisan credibility, while having done so in what was primarily a non-controversial post gives him none of the lingering taint of the Bush years. But forget that stuff: Carmona has a fascinating background, as a high school dropout who enlisted in the Army at 16, served in Vietnam, and became a physician before holding public office. That narrative can appeal across party lines and demographic groups.

Public polling consistently shows a tight race, with Flake slightly ahead. The campaigns have spent recent weeks releasing dueling internal polling, each showing their man with a lead. On balance, the numbers tilt this race slightly toward Flake’s favor. But we’re only now starting to see a pivot to a really aggressive attack strategy from Flake, one designed to not only damage Carmona, but to do so among women by painting him as a raging man who made life difficult for a female boss. Democrats obviously have to perform well among women to win just about any race so this could effectively disqualify their candidate. If Carmona weathers this storm with convincing denials and an effective return salvo, we could be looking at a change to Tilt Democratic; if not, we’ll be changing this to Lean Republican before long. Also helpful for Carmona would be if the Obama campaign actually targeted the state; that possibility was still being floated at the start of the month. But that seems increasingly unlikely now that Obama is on the defensive in the narrower band of must-win swing states. Close polling keeps our rating at Tilt for the moment

Rating: Tilt Republican

 

Connecticut

Joe Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats but has technically been an “Independent Democrat” since his 2006 reelection victory, is retiring after four terms in the Senate. That creates an open seat race in a state which has been increasingly blue over the last 20-25 years, but which has shown substantially weaker polling numbers for President Obama than he had four years ago.

At the start of the year, few expected this Senate race to be particularly close. The Republican frontunner, Linda McMahon, had lost by almost 12 points in the deep-red year of 2010…after spending $50 million from her personal WWE fortune.  She then spent primary season positioning herself to the right in order to defeat former representative Chris Shays. As long as Democrats put forth a reasonable candidate, they should win easily, right?  That was our expectation, and they seemed to have that candidate in the form of Representative Chris Murphy, a three-term Congressman from the 5th district in the northwest portion of the state. Murphy had beaten a popular incumbent in a swing district in 2006 and held the seat fairly easily against a pair of sitting state senators in 2008 and 2010.  He dispatched the laughable CT Secretary of State, Susan Bysiewicz, in the  Democratic primary (laughable because she wasn’t very good at her primary job – overseeing elections – which is something I happen to know a bit about from a bureaucratic perspective). It was all falling into place for Murphy.

But McMahon wasn’t done. She had many more of her millions to spend, and spend she has: $11M as of the pre-primary filing over the summer; she has signaled that she’ll pour much, much more than that into the race by the time she’s done. Some of that has been spent crafting a more positive image for herself after the ugliness of 2010; the rest has been spent beating up Murphy for problems with late rent and property tax payments.  Murphy’s financial woes were fairly standard-issue stuff and he paid up. But the sheer volume of hits, as much as the content, it took its toll-  McMahon took the lead in a number of polls, and Democrats started talking about shifting money into a race they figured Murphy could win on his own.

Yet it turns out McMahon had similar tax payment  issues – along with a 1976 personal bankruptcy that cost her creditors more than a million dollars – which she says she will repay (no word on whether she’ll include interest). The result is that Murphy seems to have righted the ship somewhat. The narrative has been reset – they’re talking more about social issues lately, on which there’s not as much difference between them as on fiscal matters.  And Murphy hit 51% in a recent Rasmussen poll, turning around that outfit’s previous three-point McMahon lead.

Both Murphy and McMahon have weaknesses, but Murphy come with a smaller sticker shock, and he has proven to be a closer in his career. It might not be as blue as 2008, but Connecticut will still give Obama a win this year, probably in the high single-digits. Pending further developments, that should add up to a Dem victory here.

Rating: Lean Democratic

 

Florida

Senator Bill Nelson picked up this seat for Democrats in 2000, succeeding Connie Mack III (that’s Cornelius McGillicuddy III, grandson of the Hall of Fame manager of the Philadelphia A’s). He obliterated the infamous Katherine Harris – yes, the one who wasn’t very good at overseeing elections in Florida – in 2006 but brought middling approval ratings into this year’s bid for a third term. The Republican establishment was faced with plenty of candidates but none they liked, so they flailed about in search of a savior before finally settling on Connie Mack IV, because Americans love a political dynasty no matter how much we say otherwise. Mack, a four-term representative from the Fort Myers area, had a tragicomic entrance into the race: he has enough shenanigans in his past that a GOP primary rival called him “the Charlie Sheen of Florida politics.” Maybe a stretch, but Mack certainly comes across as something of an entitled political scion. A thin legislative record and bland campaign do nothing to overcome that image, and no one seems to think he can win this race. Nelson won’t skate by as easily as he did in 2006.  But most polling shows a double-digit lead for the incumbent, and that feels about right.

Rating: Likely Democratic

 

Indiana

Longtime Republican Senator Dick Lugar was known as a foreign policy expert and a statesman committed to establishing bipartisan support for arms reduction treaties. That involved working with President Obama rather than criticizing him at every turn. It also involved a focus on the arcana of international diplomacy rather than Indiana-centric matters. Perhaps unsurprising for a man who hadn’t faced a tough race in 30 years, Lugar no longer keeps an actual physical residence in Indiana. All of that combined to provide an opening for state treasurer Richard Mourdock to primary Lugar from the right. Lugar is widely adored in Indiana, but it soon became clear that the Republican base had grown tired of him. Mourdock ended up winning the primary comfortably, and has made little to no effort to pivot back to the center for the general election.

Republicans controlled redistricting in Indiana, and drastically altered three-term Representative Joe Donnelly’s South Bend-area district. Faced with a much redder House race or a shot at the Senate – and possibly Mourdock rather than the beloved Lugar – he chose to run statewide. With a moderate record in the House and and a much more centrist tone than Mourdock, Donnelly represents the Democrats’ second-best chance at a Senate pickup this cycle (third, if you count the tricky Maine race). Polling has borne this out: in eight polls since the start of summer, each candidate has led in four, and never by more than three points.  The Obama campaign has effectively conceded Indiana, his most surprising 2008 win. Will Romney coattails carry Mourdock to victory? They’ll be worth something. It’s a given that some longtime Lugar voters will not vote for the sharply partisan Mourdock – but the question is whether the skip this race, or go with Donnelly. In a race that sits on a knife’s edge, with no momentum for either man, the state’s partisan fundamentals seem likely to give Mourdock a narrow edge. This is one of the hardest Senate races to call this year, meaning we could change our minds a few times in the coming weeks…or that no further clues will appear, and we’ll be especially eager to see how this one plays out on Election Night.

Rating: Tilt Republican

 

Maine

Here’s an interesting one. Moderate Republican senator Olympia Snowe is retiring after three terms. Republicans nominated Secretary of State Charlie Summers; he was also a state senator in the early ’90s. Democrats nominated Cynthia Dill, a state senator who happens to have been born in my native Hudson Valley (Carmel, specifically).

And neither the Republican nor the Democrat will be elected. That’s because independent former governor Angus King will win, and probably in a walk. King ran the state from 1995-2003, after a career as a lawyer, public television host and an alternative energy developer.  He generally stakes out liberal positions on social issues and more moderate stances on fiscal matters. He certainly tilts left-of-center, and endorsed Obama for president in 2008 and again this year. The assumption is that King will ultimately caucus with Democrats in the Senate, but he refuses to commit to one or the other, and has in fact intimated that he could operate independent of both. If so, he won’t have any committee assignments and he’ll find it’s hard to get work done – that being said, it’s not like a lot of work gets done in the senate anymore as it is.

King has led polling since Snowe announced her retirement. The margins jump around – sometimes his leads approach 30 points over Summers; some Republican polls have shown a single-digit race – as did one surprising survey from PPP in mid-September. Dill has always placed third in polls, because King draws so much support from Democrats who see him as their de facto candidate.

While indies usually poll better than they actually perform on Election Day, in King’s case we’re talking about a well-known quantity – a two-term governor who has been the established frontrunner since entering the race. His lead is real. The only reason we’re going Likely Independent here, and not Safe, is that Republican-affiliated groups continue to spend money on this race, and King has been out of office long enough that he could be rusty if the unexpected occurs. But it’s hard to find anyone who thinks that will happen. We’ll probably change this to Safe Independent in the coming weeks. Afterwards, this blog will be intrigued to cover his approach to Senate business and see how this independent navigates a hyper-partisan DC landscape.

Rating: Likely Independent

 

Massachusetts

AKA: The Big One. For Democrats to hold the Senate, they probably need a pickup or two to offset likely losses elsewhere. In a cycle where most of the seats up for reelection are held by Democrats, many of them in reddish states, Massachusetts is a rarity: Scott Brown is a Republican, elected in January 2010, who is trying to hold in a state Obama will carry by roughly 20 points next month. But Brown breaks party lines relatively often for the modern era, maintains a centrist demeanor, largely avoids gaffes, and has as much money as any candidate could need. He plays the pickup truck card as well as any candidate we’ve seen.

His opponent makes no bones about being a progressive flag-bearer. Elizabeth Warren is a lawyer and academic whose publications include the prescient The Two-Income Trap, co-authored with her daughter. More recently she led the fight to create the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which – if allowed to do its job – will regulate financial products and services and in theory avoid a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis. Beloved by grassroots activists, Warren has oodles of campaign money and favorable state dynamics. She also is an uneasy campaigner at times; the Cherokee heritage issue never goes away. Brown also taps into America’s strong anti-intellectual currents by mocking her for being a Harvard professor. For some, the fact that Warren grew up in a working-class, hard-luck family in Oklahoma insulates her from that attack. But for others, Brown has staked a claim to blue-collar affiliation since his first campaign.

Brown led polling for most of the summer, and before the Democratic convention this race was Tilt Rep or maybe even Lean Rep in my mind. But in early September, Warren started moving ahead, and she has led in 11 of 15 post-convention polls. Maybe coattail effects are baked into that, in which case this is probably a turnout battle – and it’s a state where the presidential outcome is a given, so the ground game of the respective senate candidates will be important. We know Brown is a good closer from his 2010 win, but we also know that Warren is a stronger campaigner than Martha Coakley, who Brown defeated that year. That adds up to a Warren edge, but not a large one.

Rating: Tilt Democratic

 

Michigan

Second-term Democrat Debbie Stabenow faces off with former Republican Representative Pete Hoekstra. There’s not a lot to say about this race, whose only exciting moment came during the Super Bowl when Hoekstra ran a bizarre ad starring overt racism. Hoekstra took some heat for that, fell back in the polls, and hasn’t really recovered. Michigan was a swing state in 2000 and 2004, but McCain bailed early in autumn ’08 and Romney has never appeared particularly close in his native state this time around. We’re leaving it Likely Dem rather than Safe, simply because a national collapse on Obama’s part could put the state back in play down the stretch. But even then Stabenow would probably win…we’ll probably be adjusting this call to Safe Dem in the coming weeks.

Rating: Likely Democratic

 

Missouri

Freshman Democrat Claire McCaskill won a tough race in 2006 but entered this cycle as her party’s weakest incumbent senator: her reddish state just didn’t care for the job she was doing in DC. Not helping matters were revelations that she had failed to pay property taxes on a private jet her family owns. “Air Claire” spent most of the spring trailing in hypothetical polls against each of the three Republicans seeking to replace her.

But Republicans didn’t have a slam-dunk challenger to take her on. The three-way primary was closely contested, and Representative Todd Akin emerged as the winner. Then he told the world how little he knew about human reproduction. Then he refused to leave the race, no matter how much Republicans begged him too. Then, given a real drop-dead date to exit, he refused again. And then he said more dumb things about abortion. Meanwhile, state and national Republicans have gradually gotten behind him again, because they know this seat is nearly a must-win if they want to take back control of the Senate with this election.

So McCaskill now leads in most polling, usually by 6-7 points, and Democrats might end up holding a seat they had started to figure was gone. Akin is a national joke. But I’m reluctant to bet on an incumbent who is as strongly disliked as  McCaskill. I wouldn’t be shocked to see Akin chip away and keep this race competitive, especially if national Republicans blink and reopen an advertising barrage.

Rating: Tilt Democratic

 

Montana

Jon Tester is another freshman Dem who won a tight race in a reddish state in 2006. He’s a rural farmer who brings a moderate voting record and has retained a folksy charm. Republicans are running their best potential challenger: wealthy rancher and at-large representative Denny Rehberg. He has also hewed to the center, standing out as one of the few Republicans in Congress to vote against the Ryan budget.

This is one of our tougher races to call, and it would probably a be a legitimate tossup if we were inclined to include those. It’s been largely drama-free, and the perpetually-close polling reflects that neither candidate has been able to open a big advantage or generate significant momentum. Rehberg has lead more often, so we have to give him the edge, especially with the advantage he holds in the state’s fundamentals: Democrats had a lot of momentum here in the last decade, electing a Democratic governor twice and controlling the state legislature for a few years. Obama only narrowly losing the state four years ago. But that momentum has dissipated. Tester will outpoll the president, but will that be enough? Republicans fared well here in 2010, and Romney is expected to carry Montana more easily than McCain did. That should only help Rehberg.

Rating: Tilt Republican

 

Nevada

The wretched and scandal-plagued Republican John Ensign resigned in 2011 in the middle of an ethics investigation. Republican Congressman Dean Heller was appointed to serve the remainder of that term and now faces reelection. This shapes up as one of the few Democratic pickup opportunities of the cycle, and longtime Las Vegas Representative Shelley Berkley stepped up to carry the blue flag.

Heller has hammered Berkley on the ethics investigations she’s undergoing – she sought federal funds to keep a kidney transplant center open; her husband is a physician in the employ of this center. It looks dodgy on paper, but less so when you realize that the services provided by this center are scarce in Nevada, meaning that the facility is critical for the care of many Nevada residents. FactCheck.org echoed the sentiments of many in concluding that she was trying to help her constituents, not herself. Heller knows this; he also advocated on behalf of the same center! But appearances matter in politics, and one can always do more to inoculate oneself against these types of charges. And having the phrase “ethics investigation” in every discussion about you makes it hard to win an election. Accordingly, Heller has led almost every poll of this race.

Obama won big here in 2008; this time around, the presidential outcome is in doubt in this high-unemployment state. Heller has largely kept the pressure on Berkley and Romney may yet squeeze out a win…but at the same time, we saw that 2010 polling consistently underestimated Harry Reid’s eventual margin of victory. An incredible Democratic turnout machine fueled that surprising Reid triumph after the majority leader was left for dead by many pundits earlier in the year. But he was also helped by the fact that his opponent was a right-winger far, far from the mainstream. Dean Heller is not Sharron Angle, and appears positioned to hold this seat. It’s more likely that we shift the race in his favor than in Berkley’s in future updates.

Rating: Tilt Republican

 

North Dakota

Democrats held both of North Dakota’s senate seats from 1986 to 2010. But then Byron Dorgan retired, and ultra-popular Democratic-turned-Republican governor John Hoeven cruised to an easy pickup of his seat, winning a ridiculous 76% in the 2010 GOP landslide. Kent Conrad is joining his old friend Dorgan in the ranks of the retired, opening up another open seat in this usually red state. But the pickup won’t come so easily this time. Democrats nominated former attorney general Heidi Heitkamp, a proven vote-getter who was running basically even with Hoeven back in 2000, when he first sought the governorship. But Heitkamp left the campaign trail that year after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Having successfully vanquished that scourge, she’s mounting a political comeback. Her common touch is playing well on the campaign trail; she is not viewed as an ultra-partisan. Freshman Representative Rick Berg, on the other hand, contrasts with both her and Hoeven in that he is a down-the-line conservative whose campaign seems predicated on linking Heitkamp to Obama. It should be noted that Obama contested North Dakota in 2008 and received 45% of the vote, the best showing for a Democratic presidential candidate in decades. This time around, polling shows that he is unlikely to keep Romney’s margin below twenty, making Heitkamp’s road that much tougher.

The question here really is whether North Dakota will adhere to a long history of ticket-splitting that saw many Democrats reelected to Congress even as Republican presidential candidates generally won the state with ease, or if enough North Dakotans want unified Republican control of Washington that they elect both Romney and Berg. North Dakota is a lightly-polled state, with only seven published surveys for the senate race this cycle. Heitkamp has led in five, Berg in one, and they were tied in the other. Most of those Heitkamp leads came from Dem internals, which gives pause…but not as much as it would give if Berg ever responded with his own internals. He never does, so either he has an unconventional approach to these things and doesn’t like to tell people he’s actually winning…or he’s not actually winning.

Republicans have recently shifted resources to North Dakota from other senate races, signalling that they know Berg needs help to get over the top. Let’s see how that help plays out – right now we’re weighing North Dakota’s GOP-friendly fundamentals over Heitkamp’s polling advantage, but I’m looking for a narrative shift. If none appears, and Heitkamp’s performance on the trail continues to win praise, this might end up tilting to the Dems.

Rating: Tilt Republican

 

Ohio

Sherrod Brown is a freshman Democrat running in a classic swing state after decisively dispatching incumbent Mike DeWine in 2006. Brown’s record is of a pretty liberal, labor-friendly bent, meaning he has plenty of grassroots manpower in his corner. He also has what has turned out to be a fairly weak opponent in Iraq War veteran and Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel. The young, smooth-talking Mandel has quite a resume at an early age, but he has shown much arrogance and very little in the way of policy specifics; he makes dodging questions into something of an art form. He’s getting hit for it now, as Politifact and various Ohio media outlets are getting tired of his games.

Various SuperPACs have spent enormous sums trying to make this race competitive. They have succeeded, insofar as polling has Mandel still within low double-digits of the incumbent despite being an abysmal candidate. But Brown has hit back on Mandel’s absenteeism in doing the job he was elected to and some dodgy appointments of his buddies to state posts. The momentum seems to be with Brown, even as Romney is tightening the presidential race once again in the Buckeye state. It’s getting hard to see a path to victory for Mandel. It’s also hard to see any Senate challenger his year who is less deserving than Mandel of being in a close race.

Rating: Likely Democratic

 

Pennsylvania

Before Rick Santorum was making Mitt Romney sweat a bit in the GOP primaries earlier this year, he was an ex-senator from Pennsylvania. State Treasurer Bob Casey destroyed two-term incumbent Santorum in 2006, coupling liberal issues on spending and taxes with a pro-life and pro-gun positions on cultural issues. Casey’s a good fit for Pennsylvania, able to perform well in the blue-collar Anthracite Kingdom, Lehigh Valley and Pittsburgh metro areas. Those advantages gave him huge leads all year over coal executive Tom Smith, despite Casey’s weak job approval ratings. Smith is a long-ago Democratic township supervisor and now running as a hardcore across-the-board conservative who makes strange abortion analogies. But as October dawned, Smith started surging even before Romney did, and polls now show a lead of only 2-3 points for Casey.

One assumes that Casey has material waiting in the wings to create some separation with Smith, but the incumbent has little ground game of his own and possesses a general blandness that doesn’t generate much enthusiasm among the Democratic base. Unions will be there for him, and Pennsylvania will go for Obama again, barring a total collapse of the president’s campaign. But Casey seems to be fumbling on the goal line, and it’s an open question how well he’ll respond to the first real challenge he’s faced in his two senate campaigns.

Rating: Lean Democratic

 

Virginia

Jim Webb narrowly picked this seat up for Democrats in 2006, but didn’t find Washington politics much to his liking. He’s retiring after one term, and former governor and DNC chairman Tim Kaine is the Democrat looking to succeed him. Kaine is no Mark Warner, but he was still generally popular when he was running the state. The man opposing him is the man Webb beat six years ago: former governor and senator George Allen.

Allen was undone by the infamous “macaca moment” in 2006 but people forget how strong a resume Webb had, and how forcefully his message resonated in the darkest days of the Iraq War. Allen has avoided anything as destructive this time around, while Kaine has hewed to the center and run a largely mistake-free campaign. In purple Virginia, that has meant a race that was basically even all year, with virtually every poll showing a tie or a margin within two points in either direction. Kaine appeared to be opening a lead in late September, finally posting a handful of polls with leads ranging from 5-10 points. Then came the Romney surge, and now the race appears to be reset at its previous even state.  As a result, forecasting it is is nigh-impossible: both will be funded as much as needed, and both will be hoping their party’s presidential nominee helps nudge them to victory. Virginia probably won’t be as blue as it was in 2008 when Obama won by a decent margin and Warner trounced his way to a Senate victory, but it doesn’t need to be. Going back to Allen would seem strange for the “new Virginia” but not shocking; Bob McDonnell is arguable more stridently conservative than Allen’s Bush-era orthodoxy. In a race that is seemingly tied in every way, we’ll give the edge to the only candidate who has shown the ability to open a lead – however fleeting that was. For the moment, this tilts to Kaine.

Rating: Tilt Democratic

 

Wisconsin

A month or two ago, this seemed like one of the Republicans’ best pickup opportunities. They had nominated the once-popular four-term former governor Tommy Thompson. Democrats had nominated Tammy Baldwin, a very liberal congresswoman from a safely-Democratic Madison-based district – in other words, little experience chasing independent and Republican voters. In my mind, this race was at least Lean Rep in late August.

But after the primary, Thompson did…nothing. He barely made any public appearances, ostensibly rebuilding his warchest and “resting” after a difficult primary that at one time seemed poised to be won by upstart businessman Eric Hovde. He’s back on the trail, but he’s making mistakes, like forgetting how many houses he owns. It increasingly feels like Thompson got into this race thinking it would be easier, and that now he doesn’t feel like fighting for it. Accordingly, Baldwin has led in every poll but two in the past month – usually by 2-4 points, but occasionally by significantly more.

Should Baldwin emerge victorious, she will be the first openly lesbian senator in the United States. It’s not the outcome I expected six weeks ago, and she surely hasn’t seen the last of negative advertising barrages. But Thompson, as popular as he once was, is yesterday’s news and his last public service was in the Bush administration – not a winning resume item in his home state. If Romney can pull ahead in Wisconsin as he occasionally threatens to do, that will help Thompson to muddle through. But right now, the advantage is with Baldwin.

Rating: Tilt Democratic

When Matt and I started this up, we wanted a quick-and-dirty working title. Using our respective surnames seemed simple and appropriate enough. However, the flexibility of the name “Kelly” means that one could just as easily mistake our site for the work of someone named “Kelly Clausen.” There are in fact Kelly Clausens out there – it’s a good Irish name, of course – which makes it even less helpful to use that moniker for our own branding. So with a packed fall schedule on the docket (more on that in a minute) now is a good time for a change.

Within the Margin evokes the thought of polling data, and obviously if you’re going to talk about campaigns and elections, you’re going to talk about polls. But they are really good number-crunchers out there, putting out quality work that helps to inform our own, so our focus is not purely data-driven. We want to look at stories, character, and ramifications for governing.

And we want to put together some ratings and predictions. We want to be your go-to source for finding out the state of play in the House and Senate races across the nation. So we’ll have lots of coverage to that effect between now and November 6, along with some discussion of debates, messaging and so forth. Everything’s fair game. Time permitting, we’ll take a quick look at the gubernatorial races around the country, and bring it all back to the local scene for the New York state assembly and senate races. And I suppose we’ll weigh in on the presidential race too. It’s ambitious, but the adrenaline is flowing as summer gives way to fall and E-Day approaches.

Obviously, we want to call the outcomes correctly, but the goal is also to bring some tasty tidbits about the political geography and demography we’re dealing with. An enormous quantity of hours has been spent assembling a database of present and historical facts (ok, sometimes it’s more like trivia) to inform our race ratings and make for interesting reading. I’m optimistic that there’s something we can bring to the table for a diverse group of readers, from those with a casual interest in elections to the junkies who have their own strong opinions about how things will turn out on any given early-November Tuesday.

So update your bookmarks, kids: https://withinthemargin.wordpress.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

If you’re an Obama supporter, or even a fence-sitter who dislikes Romney personally (there are plenty of these people), what frustrates you about tonight’s opening debate is Obama’s disinclination to eviscerate his opponent. Or, put in friendlier terms, to fact-check him until he begged for mercy.

The way I see it, Mitt Romney is running one of the more vapid presidential campaigns in the modern era. His budget numbers don’t add up, and he doesn’t even try to make them do so. He even spent a few minutes tonight singing the praises of vagueness. The same goes for his running mate, a ballyhooed cruncher of numbers who has spent recent days dodging very simple questions from friendly media outlets about the Romney-Ryan tax plan. That’s on the issues side. On the messaging/political combat side, the Romney campaign has spent months harping on an out-of-context Obama quote about how government builds infrastructure like bridges and roads that allow businesses to function. The Republican Convention featured a full day dedicated to the “You didn’t build  that” concept. That’s a full day of campaign messaging dedicated to twisting a statement into something that it patently was not. These things happen in politics, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a presidential campaign that relies so much on verbal misdirection. Or lying, but I strive to be polite. This is the campaign Romney has run, and Obama doesn’t have to stoop to that. But he can use debates to call him out on this lack of substance.

With that in mind, I think a lot of Obama supporters wanted to see the president go to town on Romney for a few things. He hit him on the lack of specificity in taxes and budgeting and health care reform, but didn’t get Romney on the ropes about any of those. I probably wasn’t alone in wanting some lines to the effect of, “How can you stake your claim for the presidency on business sense when you’re telling us numbers don’t matter? You’ve been running for president for the better part of six years. You’re telling us you don’t know which deduction cuts will offset your tax cuts to avoid further ballooning the deficit? You’re telling us you might not end up cutting the top marginal tax rate from 35% to 25%…then why have you campaigned on it all this time? You claim to be a turnaround man. When you turned around companies, did you research them first? Did you have a plan of action when you invested in them?”

And that, of course, would lead into some Bain-based attacks if Obama wanted to go that route. I don’t think he wanted to, obviously. I think he wants to be the nice guy and let the advertising in swing states handle Bain and outsourcing and the 47%. But the price you pay for that is the perception that Romney just stole a march on you. And that you sure as heck don’t care about debating. Because someone who cares about debating would have nailed Romney-Ryan to the wall for the fact that their budget relies on the same $716B “cut” to Medicare that they’re always decrying, and that Romney referenced several times tonight.

Look, I don’t think this was any sort of game-changer. Debates usually are not, despite how hyped they are by media outlets seeking eyeballs. But in the meantime, we’re going to see a good couple of days for Romney in terms of both messaging and the horserace, and that probably didn’t have to be the case.

A quick one for tonight – I’m not linking to this James Hohmann piece to kick Romney when he’s a bit down, but rather because it includes some interesting historical background. I had a good sense of most of what Hohmann discusses, but I thought this description of the 1980 electoral map painted an intriguing picture of a somewhat unique moment in American politics:

“Virtually every state in the country was in play as of October 1980,” said Shirley. “Carter was campaigning in California, and Reagan was campaigning in New York City…Texas was in play. Now its routinely Republican, but Carter had taken it in 1976.”

Fewer electoral votes are in play for Romney now. The country is more polarized. Obama has a lock on certain demographics and states. There’s no chance Romney will come close in California or New York.

I think everyone knows that the map has undergone pretty significant changes over the last couple of decades, but 1980 is a great example of the extent of that. Four years earlier, Carter had won ten of the eleven states of the Confederacy. Only Virginia escaped him as he parlayed his home field advantage to almost completely undo the progress of Nixon’s Southern Strategy. By 1980, his grip on the South was fraying, and Carter could only hold onto his home state of Georgia. But most of his Southern defeats that year were quite narrow, whereas Reagan thumped him on the west coast and won most of the Great Lakes and New England, albeit by mid-single digit margins in most cases. It’s also interesting to hear of Reagan campaigning in places like New York City – not simply dropping in on a high-dollar fundraiser, but actually paying a visit to the bombed-out South Bronx in August 1980. That’s not to say Reagan was popular in the inner city, and he brought plenty of condescension with him (“Lady, I can’t help you unless I get elected.”) But he did carry the state of New York – twice – while simultaneously undoing Carter’s Southern firewall. A presidential campaign that tries to win in both the Deep South and the Empire State? Interesting times. There were no web sites where you could play with electoral math back then; it was pencil and paper stuff. But I imagine the political junkies had a good time imagining all the different scenarios to get to 270 that autumn.

Welcome. I’ll be keeping an eye on various races as they play out tonight. Polls closed at 9 p.m.; results should start rolling in around 9:45 or 10:00.

10:00 update: First returns have rolled in, and with them the first surprise: Saland leads DiCarlo only 56-44 with about 20% of precincts reporting. We’ll see if it stays that close throughout the night, but I fully expected a bigger margin there. Much bigger.

10:10 update:  Katz is cruising as expected in the 94th – rolling up a 2:1 margin over Dario Gristina in the Putnam portion of the district. Oddly, Saland is actually faring a bit better in Putnam (59%) than in his home county of Dutchess. I can’t imagine this will last. In the other Marriage Wars, Grisanti is comfortably ahead in western NY’s 60th in both primaries (Rep and Indy). McDonald’s ahead in the Capital Region’s 43rd, but he’s not out of the woods yet: 52%-48% with 30% of precincts reporting.

10:15 update: All of Putnam’s precincts in the Saland-DiCarlo races have now reported. Saland only carried the county 52-48. We could expect some difficulty as that’s all new territory for him, but that’s a much stronger showing for DiCarlo than anticipated. But Dutchess is not coming through in great numbers for Saland either – it’s a 51-49 race overall right now, according to YNN’s numbers – which are further along than the AP results.

10:20 update: Katz is in like flint; 65-35% w/ 81% reporting. That’s the last I need to check in there. We now have signs of life in the GOP’s 105th AD primary: Kieran Lalor is up big over Manning, 54%-27%, with Wager trailing at 19%. I thought Lalor could pull it out with his dogged ground game, but not by this margin. Crazy night in Dutchess County.

10:26 update: DiCarlo’s not quite going to get over the top. I’ve got two differing sets of totals to work with. According to the individual county websites, with only 9 EDs left to report in Dutchess, Saland leads by 38 votes there plus a 29-vote lead in Putnam. The YNN aggregate shows a more comfortable Saland lead of 98 votes. With such low turnout, I think Saland survives. But I’m eating plenty of crow. Never did I think the homophobes had this much strength with in the Dutchess Republican party.

10:30 update: Up in the 43rd, McDonald’s lead is down to 77 votes. It looks like Saland is going to win the machine county tonight, but the question on everyone’s mind is how many absentees are out there. Probably not many, considering how low machine turnout was – clearly voters were not terribly engaged here.

10:37 update: Out in Erie County, Grisanti is comfortably ahead in the GOP primary. On the Dem side, the race has been called for Mike Amodeo, meaning that Dems will have an actual Dem, rather than rogue operator Chuck Swanick, as their nominee. But Swanick remains in the race on the Conservative line. That’s going to be a hard race to call come November: where do the Stocker voters go? Grisanti (to avoid a Dem winning)? Swanick (over the marriage vote)?

10:40 update: All EDs have reported in the 105th. Lalor wins the GOP nomination going away. There are a huge number of write-in votes on the Conservative line, so perhaps Lalor has united the belts and will have all three lines (Rep/Con/Ind). But will voters prefer the moderate Democrat over the volatile Republican in this red-leaning district?

10:45 update: All EDs have no reported in the 41st. Saland carried Dutchess by 13 votes and Putnam by 29. There’s 45 write-ins, which could be for either candidate or neither. And then absentees. This one’s headed to the courts.

10:57 update: In the Albany-Troy 44th, Neil Breslin is dispatching his latest primary challenger with ease: 74%-26%. I thought Morse had more juice, but I was wrong. McDonald’s lead is now up to 102 votes in the 43rd. In the Kingston-to-Amsterdam 46th, Cecelia Tkaczyk is comfortably ahead, 54%-31% so Dems appear likely to get their strongest nominee in that one.

11:00 update: So of the races I’m focusing on, two are too close to call right now. In the Saland-DiCarlo race, we await recanvass, write-ins and absentees. In the McDonald-Marchione race, we await the actual, you know, results. Things are moving slowly in Renny and CoCo tonight.

11:05 update: It took a while to get new numbers out of the 43rd, but when they came, they were awfully good to Marchione. She now leads by 75 votes with about 74% of precincts reporting.

11:10 update: Marchione doubled her lead with the addition of a few more precincts. Up by 150 votes with 76% of EDs in.

11:20 update: There’s been an adjustment to YNN’s numbers in the 43rd: same number of precincts/EDs reporting, but only a 134-vote lead for Marchione.  By the way, she easily won the Con primary, so no matter what happens here, she’s on the ballot in November.

11:27 update: The Poughkeepsie Journal reports that there are 553 absentee ballots to be counted in Dutchess County for the Saland-DiCarlo race. Typically, these follow the machine count, but if a good number of tonight’s write-ins were for DiCarlo, the race may essentially be tied rather than the 42-vote margin we’re seeing right now. One thing is certain: Saland will have an ace legal team. The Senate GOP has been through plenty of close counts in recent years…though usually not in September. Elsewhere, Marchione’s lead has expanded to 198 votes with 82% of precincts in. It’s getting harder to see a path for McDonald. Is Robin Andrews ready to rumble? She’s the first-term supervisor in the Town of Claverack, and the Dem candidate for this seat. She’s probably still better known than Marchione or McDonald in her base of Columbia County, but can she scale up to a district-wide fight?

11:48 update: The great result out of NYC tonight is that the corrupt Shirley Huntley of Queens, charged with helping relatives to steal taxpayer funds and steering them toward the nonprofit she runs, is going down in defeat. James Sanders leads 55%-42%. Always good when Dems take out the trash. Sadly, they have to do it a couple times a year with their city caucuses. Sadly, Assemblyman William Boyland of Brooklyn, who gets charged with bribery every few months or so, is surviving. He only has 36% of the vote but that’s plenty against a split field of six challenger who couldn’t figure out how these things work: don’t divide the vote against an incumbent!

11:50 update: Also in NYC, challenger Mark Gjonaj leads Assemblywoman Naomi Rivera by 137 votes. Rivera is another one accused of misusing taxpayer funds. I’ve been ready to see her gone for years.

12:15 update: Two precincts still outstanding, and a 138-vote lead for Marchione. She’ll have two ballot lines in November, with one for McDonald and one for Andrews.

Not all of today’s intriguing primaries revolve around the Conservative Party’s opposition to the 2011 marriage equality vote. Plenty of other assembly and senate primaries are on tap today. I’ll focus here on those in and near the Hudson Valley, which I know best. We start with a rollicking Republican race in southern Dutchess County.

Assembly District 105: Southern Dutchess County 

Those who follow New York politics know that Democrats draw the Assembly map every ten years, and Republicans draw the Senate map. In the most recent redistricting, the Assembly effectively eliminated Joel Miller’s district, using pieces of it to make the old 103rd into a new, bluer 106th while conceding a likely-Republican 105th district in southern Dutchess County. Naturally, that attracted a host of GOP candidates:

• Former six-term 103rd district Assemblyman Pat Manning jumped in, seeing a good opportunity to stage a political comeback after the dramatic events of 2006: that year, Marc Molinaro narrowly defeated him in a bitterly-contested primary. It was a victory made possible by Manning’s abortive run for governor and by controversy surrounding Manning’s marriage and mistress. Before that, Manning was a rising prospect: elected as a young man to the county legislator, re-elected with ease to the Assembly term after term, and father of the state’s popular STAR program to aid seniors with rising property taxes. He’s been itching to get back in the game, sniffing around a county legislature bid in 2011 but ultimately deciding to pass. The chance to return to his old haunt at the state capitol was too good to pass up – but the local GOP establishment has little love for Manning these days. The county committee was remade by Molinaro ahead of the 2006 primary, and some still feel a general “ickiness” over the public fallout from Manning’s personal life.

• Kieran Michael Lalor (also my high school economics teacher, a night watchman and Iraq War veteran) originally intended to primary Joel Miller, but the latter’s retirement rendered that moot. The new district lines mean that Lalor could conceivably win a general election, but he is a deeply conservative and volatile figure who appeals to the party base but frightens its establishment. This is Lalor’s second run for elected office: he lost to John Hall by eighteen points in a 2008 Congressional race. Lalor’s reputation as a bomb-thrower limits his appeal, but that might not matter in a low-turnout, base-fueled race: remember that Carl Paladino fared rather well in the 2010 primary in Dutchess County.

• Richard Wager is a former Bloomberg aide who ran for Molinaro’s assembly seat in a special election in March. Wager was heavily favored, but lost to Didi Barrett for the first Democratic win in that seat in living memory. He lacks local ties and his surprise defeat has removed some of his luster. He doesn’t come with the baggage of Manning or Lalor, but does he have enough going for him to break through?

• Fishkill mayor and county legislator Jim Miccio wanted the seat, but dropped out before petitioning amidst the wrangling over party endorsements and third-party ballot lines.

There has been no public polling of the primary, but it was implied to me by one insider that Manning has the edge and Wager sits in third, but that Wager could take enough of the vote from mainstream Republicans that Lalor is able to squeak out a victory.

The story doesn’t end there, however. Wager has received the Conservative endorsement, so he’s on the ballot in November…unless he is defeated by a write-in candidate (either Lalor or Manning) in today’s Opportunity to Ballot primary. Lalor is unchallenged on the Independence line, so we’re definitely seeing him again on November 6. Meanwhile, the district is a Republican vote sink…but it’s actually not impossible for the right Democrat to win. And Paul Curran might be that candidate: he’s an MBA with who started his own company that develops renewable energy projects on brownfield sites. Whereas there could conceivably be three different Republicans on the general election ballot – and even if there’s only two, ill-will may linger from this campaign – Curran has the party united behind him. So this race is really just getting started with today’s voting.

 

Assembly District 94 – eastern Putnam, northern Westchester

When Greg Ball moved up to the state senate in 2010, his old 99th seat was captured by Steve Katz, a veterinarian from Mohegan Lake. A firm Tea Partier, Katz’s district was changed slightly by redistricting (trading Pawling for Putnam Valley) but remains a strongly Republican district. He flirted with a challenge to Ball, but opted to stay in the Assembly, where he has his own primary challenger in the form of Dario Gristina. A businessman who emigrated from Italy as a young child, Gristina has an interesting narrative and an interesting ex-wife who used to run a lucrative prostitution ring. He has raised a substantial warchest, though much of it was a $200,000 self-loan of which he has paid back about a third, so read into that what you will.

I think it’s pretty hard to get to the right of Steve Katz, so I suspect the incumbent is safe here. Gristina is also mounting a write-in bid to take the Conservative line from Katz, but I doubt that will be successful, either. Additionally, Katz’s wife has become a mini-celebrity for her video denouncing Ball’s Facebook censorship and for posting pictures of herself with firearms. I think people want to keep her around as much as they do the assemblyman himself.

 

Senate District 44 – Albany/Capitol Region

Neil Breslin has represented the Albany County senate district since the mid-1990s, and has become accustomed to primary challengers in this safely Democratic seat. This year, he’s facing strong opposition from firefighter and Albany County legislator Shawn Morse. Morse has raised a respectable sum of money – enough to be competitive with Breslin. The incumbent also faces a new map: Republicans decided to break up Albany County, even though it has the right population for its own standalone district as has historically been drawn. The new district removes a healthy chunk of Albany County towns and replaces them with Troy and Rensselaer across the river. These towns are sufficiently entwined with Albany that they are surely familiar with Breslin, but that differs from having habitually voted for the man. And it’s not like Breslin’s made his own life easier – struggling in past campaigns to discuss legislation, a situation which repeated itself at a debate earlier this month when he forgot that he co-sponsored pay raise legislation. Morse has also hit the incumbent on a lack of progress in mandate relief, public safety issues and campaign finance reform. It’s not a purely ideological primary; it’s more that he’s taking on an incumbent he feels has been in too long. Finally, Morse has the endorsement and financial backing of the Independent Democratic Conference, the quartet of breakaway Senate Dems led by Jeff Klein. Their ideology and priorities have proved inscrutable thus far, but claiming Breslin’s scalp would be something of a breakthrough.

Breslin has the endorsement of Governor Andrew Cuomo, and in a low-turnout primary that could prove decisive. Cuomo does not always generate a great deal of enthusiasm among the party faithful, but impressions of Albany are improving under Cuomo’s governorship so anti-incumbent sentiment is probably not running high enough to take out Breslin. So I think Breslin survives, but I wish I had followed this one more closely from the outset.

 

Senate District 46 – Kingston to Amsterdam; parts of Ulster,  Albany, Schenectady counties; all of Greene and Montgomery counties

It has become a decennial rite of passage: Republicans look at their Senate map, fear for the sanctity of their majority, and use the arcana of the state constitution’s reapportionment formula to create a new senate district. They used one set of numbers in 2002 to arrive at a 62nd district, and a completely different set of conditions to conjure a 63rd in 2012. And this seat, the sprawling Catskills/foothills/Mohawk-based 46th, is the new seat. It’s designed for Republican Assemblyman George Amedore to win in November, and indeed, he’s a pretty good bet to win it.

But Democrats haven’t given up hope. After all, though designed by Republicans for Republicans, it’s still a district that would have given Barack Obama 53% of the presidential vote in 2008. Three challengers are competing for the right to take on Amedore. The Ulster county portion of the district is the largest segment, and the Ulster Dems have endorsed Cecilia Tkaczyk, the school board president in Duanesburg (Schenectady County). She has a diverse background: a degree in Agricultural Science, and work as a legislative analyst in the state senate, and in the field of affordable housing before that…and she owns a flock of sheep on her small farm, so obviously I’m a fan. Geographically, she comes from the rural part of Schenectady County, so she does not necessarily cede that area (part of which is represented by Amedore in the Assembly). Also in the race is Tom Dolan, a Coeymans town councilman, and Monica Arias Miranda, an activist from Schenectady County.

Tkaczyk has raised the most money of the three primary candidates, in excess of $100,000. Arias and Dolan have raised much smaller sums. I would assume that Tkaczyk wins the primary fairly easily and gives Amedore a competitive face in the fall. She would be exactly the sort of upstate senator that Democrats to offset some of NYC’s dominance in their caucus.

***

I’ll be back tonight after polls close to offer some commentary as results roll in.

Thursday marks the third statewide day of polling in New York so far this year, thanks to our insane legislature’s bipartisan inability to agree on a consolidation plan. We’ll have a fourth come November, obviously. And in my home town of Red Hook and in a scattering of others across the state, we had an special election in March, too, to cover Assembly vacancies. On tap for today: primaries for the state senate and assembly. I’m going to cover the interesting ones, with a particular focus on the Hudson Valley, but I’ll separate them into two categories: this post will cover those inspired by the June 2011 passage of a marriage equality bill, while a later post will look at the rest.

Four Republican state senators cast votes in favor of marriage equality last year. The state Conservative Party promptly promised to find primary challengers to each. It hasn’t played out quite that cleanly, and the respective challengers vary widely in skill and funding. One, Jim Alesi from the Rochester area, chose not to run for re-election to his seat amidst other problems back home. We’ll take a look at the other pro-marriage equality Republicans and the challengers they face today. They are varying shades of delightful, with two of them offering plenty of drama.

District 41 (parts of Dutchess and Putnam) – Steve Saland

Saland has held down this seat with ease since 1990. Redistricting removed Columbia County and gave him more of Dutchess (he now has the whole county save Beekman and Pawling) and three towns in western Putnam. This – well, this and the marriage vote – inspired Neil DiCarlo of Brewster to get into the race. No, DiCarlo still does not live in the new district. But he lives close enough to make a run and move into the district if he has to, post-election. DiCarlo’s previous run for office was a primary challenge to presumed frontrunner Nan Hayworth for the 19th Congressional District seat in 2010. His campaign focused on abortion, rather quixotically for a district known for sending pro-choice Republicans to Congress. Hayworth outspent him significantly and beat him 69%-31%; I assume he blamed the gays for his defeat. Now he’s back to challenge Saland for his marriage vote and his pro-choice views, while vaguely referencing taxes and Saland’s lengthy tenure in Albany as another reason to ditch the incumbent. And this time he’s packing an endorsement from Carl Paladino – never one to shy away from a challenge to the GOP establishment.

Anecdotally, I’m told Saland had a bit more trouble than usual in gathering petition signatures this summer, with the marriage vote regularly cited as the reason why. The question is whether DiCarlo can tap into that minority of Republicans and get them to the polls in significant numbers to topple the incumbent. I will answer that question for you: he cannot. DiCarlo has barely raised any money – $31K in total as of his 11-day pre-primary filing. Most of that seems to be spent on signs of various kinds. Normal-sized signs, which he or his supporters have been known to place in front of roadside memorials to victims of car accidents (I moved one last month in Hyde Park). Enormous signs, like the banner a supporter (or hostage) was awkwardly hoisting by the side of 9G in Hyde Park yesterday. Signs saying “RETIRE SALAND” with no accompanying information as to why one might be inclined to do so. Signs referencing DiCarlo’s support of “Faith. Family. Country.” – the third of which I’m sure was enlightening for anyone who thought he might be a hip-hop or electronica fan. Signs, to DiCarlo’s chagrin, cannot vote, and in fact his signs are so plentiful that they may exceed the number of votes he receives today. That hasn’t stopped him from focusing on them in the final days of the campaign, though: click here for some amusing local shenanigans and a Chuck Palahniuk reference while we’re at it.

Seriously, though, the reality is that Saland is a giant in these parts. No high-profile Republicans have endorsed his challenger. Most Hudson Valley Republicans are motivated by fiscal issues, not social issues. DiCarlo has no real connection to the district and nothing to distinguish him besides a set of starkly conservative views on social policy that will net him, I suspect, no more than 30% of the vote today. There’s also an Opportunity to Ballot election for the Conservative line in this race in which voters can write in either man’s name (or technically anyone else’s). One would think DiCarlo could do a little better with these folks, but I doubt he has the organization to actually beat Saland on this line, either.

District 43 (Columbia, parts of Rensselaer, Saratoga and Washington) – Roy McDonald

Joe Bruno’s successor in the state senate saw his district stretched out a bit – it used to be more focused on the capital region, but now it reaches south all the way to the Columbia/Dutchess border, while taking in two towns in Washington County and fewer people in Saratoga than previously. His challenger is Saratoga County Clerk Kathy Marchione. She’s an experienced candidate running a more professional campaign than DiCarlo; it helps that she has raised a great deal more money – about $175,000 as of her pre-primary filing. McDonald will comfortably outspend her, but that’s certainly enough money for her to break through.

The issues page on Marchione’s campaign website makes no explicit reference to marriage – but it’s definitely her lead line of attack, as seen during the only debate between the candidates. McDonald notes, quite rightly, that it wasn’t a matter of selling out, as Marchione says; after all, Democrats haven’t come close to winning this seat in past years so by casting this vote, he was making his life more difficult by inviting a challenge from the right.

McDonald does seem to be scrambling a bit, offering an attack on license plate issuance that resulted in a smack-down from several of Marchione’s fellow county clerks. More compelling is his attack on Marchione for potentially double-dipping if elected. This is because her pending retirement as county clerk will commence pension payments for this longtime public employee – and these would be on top of her state senate salary if she were to win in November.

Curiously, there is also a Conservative primary here, but it’s not between Marchione and McDonald: it’s between Marchione and Edward Gilbert, a first-time candidate who, according to Marchione, was placed on the ballot by McDonald operatives as a stalking horse.

A delightful race. I don’t think the Gilbert Gambit will succeed, in which case Marchione will appear on the November ballot regardless of what happens in the GOP primary. And as for that…my gut tells me Marchione has the momentum, but admittedly, it’s a damn hard thing to predict a state legislative primary (well, unless it’s Steve Saland obliterating Neil DiCarlo).

District 60 (Part of Erie) – Mark Grisanti

I’m not sure it gets much tastier than eight candidates competing in primaries across four different ballot lines. Grisanti defeated a scandal-plagued Democratic incumbent in 2010 by an ultra-narrow margin. He was a Democrat running on the Republican line, but he re-registered with the GOP for 2011. His speech in favor of marriage equality was the most touching of the four Republicans, but that does him little good in the primary. Since that day, his district has been radically altered as the Senate GOP attempted to shore him up for November: no longer is the seat based in inner-city Buffalo and Niagara Falls; now it features only a sliver of Buffalo, Niagara Falls is gone, and it stretches south into the suburbs and exurbs along Lake Erie. It’s not nearly the Democratic stronghold that Grisanti managed to conquer last time around. It’s still not a lock for Reps to hold in November, but Grisanti has to navigate the primary first. There, he faces Kevin Stocker, a Tonawanda attorney who ran a competitive underdog race for state assembly in 2010.

On the surface, Stocker’s campaign is not about marriage: he takes no specific position on the issue, other than saying it should be left to voters in a direct referendum, which New York does not actually have for matters other than constitutional amendments. He focuses instead on Grisanti’s “broken promises” and reform issues like term limits and legislative pay cuts. But marriage has worked its way in the campaign in ways so ostentatious as to draw national attention. I’m primarily referring to this mailer. Yeah, pretty amazing stuff. Homophobes are a gruesome lot, but bizarrely, this might not be coming from a homophobe per se, but rather a bisexual man who simply hates Grisanti and wants to tap into other people’s bigotry to get rid of the man. Then came news Wednesday of this letter, which condemns both Grisanti and Stocker on the marriage issue and appears to be an attempt to suppress primary turnout – a phenomenon which I assume would aid Grisanti as the incumbent and better-known, better-organized candidate.

It should be noted that Grisanti has faced other controversy, in the form of his involvement in a casino brawl; no charges were filed but Grisanti’s image was tarnished.  But all things considered, the ugly turn this race has taken, the murky battle lines surrounding it, and a significant money advantage make for a situation where I think Grisanti squeaks through.

On the Democratic side, there’s no incumbent but marriage is still an issue. That’s because Erie County legislator Chuck Swanick received the Conservative endorsement as a foe of marriage equality and is assured of appearing on the ballot in November. Can he also claim the Democratic line? He faces Michael Amodeo, who supports same-sex marriage and advertises himself as the endorsed Democratic candidate. He claims to have knocked on over 5,000 doors. I believe him, because he certainly didn’t spent that time raising money – Swanick is outspendng him by a considerable margin. But that”s not all. The race also features perennial candidate Al Coppola. But this is a different sort of perennial candidate…because he actually once won this seat, or at least its precursor! He captured the seat in a 2000 special election, before losing the primary later that year for a full term. Coppola has gone on to lose many primaries since then, some against his cousin Marc, who also briefly held the seat. Sometimes he has run on the Republican line, and lost. His campaign didn’t come back to life until recently, and he has only raised $19,000 this cycle. But he has some name recognition and presents an interesting wild card. My guess is that Swanick wins, after months spent using his money advantage to, remarkably enough, knock Amodeo’s progressive credentials.

Grisanti also faces an Independence Party challenge from Marie Clark and Brian Siklinski. As near as I can tell neither of these are real contenders, so Grisanti should hold onto the IP line with ease.

And then there’s a Working Families primary, where Gregory Davis appears on the ballot but the opportunity for write-ins is presented. He’s our eighth candidate in this zoo of a race. I can’t begin to guess whether the three or four WFP voters who show up today will vote for him or write someone in.

***

I checked in with Matt about this menu of internecine warfare, and we’re in agreement that Saland cruises, Marchione takes out McDonald, and Grisanti survives. I’m looking forward to watching the results come in for these.

The political press is moving on from talk of speeches and messaging and production values, in favor of polling bounces and job numbers and debate preparation. But I wanted to offer a final wrap-up of my convention experience in more detail than my final missive to the Poughkeepsie Journal last week allowed.

I’ve already talked about how the Rural Council, aside from letting me laugh and clap along with the incomparable Brian Schweitzer, rekindled my spirit and helped me remember why I was even in Charlotte in the first place. I’ve written about the excitement of Bill Clinton’s take-down of four years of myth-making by the opposition. I want to close out my ramblings on the convention by talking about 6 or so minutes  from the first night – the Kennedy tribute.

Now, I’m not as enamored with the idea of the Kennedy family as many Democrats. I never have been. In part, that’s simply generational; in part, it probably owes to the reality that I’m a largely abstemious person with less time than some for the personal dramas associated with the Kennedys over the years. But I’ve always had a healthy respect for Ted Kennedy’s legislative record, and more so after this convention. On Tuesday night, the first night of the convention, touching tribute was paid to the senator’s life and work – and it was all tied in to the accomplishments of the Obama administration. The video – worth a watch if you haven’t seen it – hit on so many key points, opening with the famous “the dream shall never die speech” from 1980*. It then launched into a chronicle of Kennedy’s legislative achievements and leadership on so many progressive causes, and praise for his place in history from Bill Clinton. Then came a show-stopping clip from Kennedy’s 1994 debate with Mitt Romney when the latter challenged him for his Senate seat. Romney’s vagaries and shifting positions, we were reminded in living color, are a longstanding phenomenon.

From there we saw his endorsement of Obama in 2008, and then – and this brought down the house – a smooth segue into Barack Obama’s achievements in the last four years. So many of these represented the next step forward from things Kennedy had worked on; these parallels were powerful in both an intellectual and emotional sense. Sitting in the audience, I could hear people’s breath catching as the video rolled and illustrated Obama’s place on this historical trajectory. Eyes were welling up all around. It was a powerful moment. Sometimes, the glitz and pomp of the political convention actually has something behind it, some real emotional and historical heft, and this was one of those times.

It’s the sort of moment that helped me understand why so many people were so happy for me when I was selected as a delegate. Conventions today are largely rallies – as delegates we’re not battling for our preferred nominee via floor demonstrations and closed-door arm-twisting; the official nomination is a formality by the time the convention rolls around. But there’s something to be said for rallying one’s spirit, and there’s real value in helping party leaders and activists to take stock of where they’ve been and where they’re going.

I was able to see first-hand the almost-spiritual connection so many of the delegates have with Michelle Obama, not just applauding but talking with her as she gave her speech, helping her along, praising her as she went. I was able to see the fire that burns in Cory Booker, who spoke hours before the networks were broadcasting on Tuesday. I was able to feel the energy on the streets of Charlotte, from store clerks excited by good speeches to the goodwill evident in so many local volunteers who wanted to make this work and help out in any way they could. I was able to enjoy great conversations with delegates from the around the country – Pat Jansen from Otsego, Minnesota; Wayne Manske of Mesa, Arizona; Bill Bonner of Meridian, Idaho.

So I’m energized again and looking forward to hitting my nearby swing states – Pennsylvania and New Hampshire – to lend a hand this fall. I will even try to make it out to Ohio one weekend to knock through a packet for Matt Clausen, the other man whose name appears on this blog, as he devotes himself to the OFA cause out there in the Buckeye State – where, thanks to people like him, there’s a palpable sense on the ground that Obama is opening a lead in the state perhaps most critical to his chances for reelection. Yes, everything feels a bit different this time around. Believe me, few are more  acutely aware than me that it’s not 2008 any more. But that different feeling exists because we’ve already done some of the hard work of governing – making difficult choices and tirelessly defending them from well-meaning and spiteful foes alike. In a few months, if we’ve done our job, we’ll have the opportunity to make more of those tough choices.

 

* Perhaps more interesting to me than the words Kennedy spoke in 1980  is a simple but powerful gesture: after Kennedy finishes speaking, he offers a brief, confident, authoritative nod – one which signaled that he meant exactly what he was saying, that he had much work ahead of him, and that he looked forward to completing it. He had made his run for the presidency, it hand’t worked out, but he was ready to move on and continue his work. It’s such a subtle gesture, and maybe I’m projecting something onto it, but I think it resonates as much as anything he was saying that night. Of note as well is the grandfatherly nod he offered at the end of his 2008 convention speech, when he spoke of new lights continuing the work. He conveyed a different sort of confidence now – the confidence that others could carry on the work and see it to completion.