Within the Margin

The Times has a piece today about the GA-6 result and how it has strengthened liberal activists’ calls for the national Democratic party to compete in more of the special elections taking place in traditionally-hostile territory this spring. Of particular interest to me is the look-back at the Wichita-area special in Kansas’ 4th Congressional District last week, and the questions it raises about the party’s level of involvement in a race that was impressively close despite having been so safely Republican for decades.

The largely unspoken argument against competing in KS-4 seemed to be that once national Democrats start spending money there, it would be an opening for the Estes campaign to tie Democratic nominee James Thompson to Nancy Pelosi. Sure, but that was happening anyway: when Ted Cruz headlined a rally for Ron Estes in Wichita the weekend before the election, he called a vote for Thompson a “knee-jerk vote for Nancy Pelosi.”

The voiced argument from the House’s third-ranking Democrat, Jim Clyburn, is that “people tend to get disappointed” if you “spend resources where you don’t have a shot at winning.” Well, hey. I respect Jim Clyburn. Seems like a good dude. He’s also a dude who has spent all but six of his 24-plus years in the House in the minority, and I wonder if his complacency is a cause or effect of that. Our septuagenarian House leadership is not always the fastest to adapt to changing conditions – in this case, the changing condition is that Democrats want to experiment and compete, rather than banking on 2018 wins in the same group of suburban targets we’ve mostly failed to hold or capture for the last four cycles. Right now, I will “tend to get disappointed” if we don’t fight in more places, rather than if we try and lose. I’m going to be somewhat dismissive of financial concerns, too, given that these specials are unleashing donations from the grassroots and big donors eager for a win: in other words, we’re not spending money from the midterm pot so much as raising money we otherwise wouldn’t have.

That doesn’t mean playing everywhere. I’m deeply skeptical that we could do anything in PA-10 if it opens due to Tom Marino taking a job as Trump’s drug czar. I’m not sure SC-5 (vacated by Mick Mulvaney when he took over as Trump’s budget director) is particularly viable.  But I see a case for MT-AL, and I could see the case for KS-4 as the latter stages of that race unfolded.

First, you look at the candidate. Do you have someone who ably fits the district? It’s not solely a question of local roots, renown, or issue positions, but all all of those help and you need to have some of those in place. Then, district fundamentals. Have Democrats won anything here lately? How did Trump do in November? Republicans run the show in most of the places we’re talking about right now – how are they viewed? A universal factor is that the party that has lost the presidency tends to be more enthusiastic during special elections, and that’s the case right now. Finally, for the moment, Trump’s weak numbers are a constant. That could change, and we’ll have to change with it. But right now, the opposition party is fired up, independents are unimpressed, and some of his supporters are wondering when the winning begins.

So how do those considerations play out in each of the special elections for Republican-held seats that have taken place or are scheduled this year? Let’s take them one at a time:

KS-4: Our candidate had an interesting profile: veteran, civil rights attorney, overcame homelessness as a child. Young guy who fit the district nicely. Republicans were freaking out and calling in reinforcements. There was word of a GOP internal that only had their guy up a point. With Trump struggling to find his footing, the possibility existed that any Republican candidate would underperform. And that’s especially true of a statewide elected in Kansas, where Sam Browback’s administration has damaged the GOP brand. Estes was the state treasurer, for heaven’s sakes, for a state whose treasury has been depleted under Brownback’s disastrous watch! The Louisiana lesson from 2015, where budgetary disaster under Bobby Jindal was a factor in John Bel Edwards recapturing the governorship for Democrats, is informative here. No, I don’t think DCCC involvement would have flipped the seat, but I do think we should have found out. I desperately hope that DCCC folks are mind-melding with Thompson and his campaign team to learn every detail of what they were seeing on the ground, because there are lessons to be learned about the electoral environment as it stands in April 2017, and those lessons could be applied in further special elections this spring and quite possibly through to next year’s midterm elections.

GA-6: This is the one where we were always going to play, once the dust settled after the November election and revealed that this long-safe Republican territory had given Trump only a 1.5% (48.3-46.8) margin of victory in November. Jon Ossoff, the Democratic candidate has an interesting if imperfect profile, is a district native who went on to work as a Congressional aide and documentary filmmaker. He’s easily presented as a young, inexperienced, urbane liberal. But this isn’t a rural district. It’s Georgia’s best-educated district and has long been affluent and cosmopolitan, so the urbane part won’t hurt, and the inexperienced part might not, either, given Ossoff’s familiarity with national security issues stemming form his work with another suburban Atlanta congresssman, Hank Johnson. It remains to be seen how the “young, liberal” aspect plays over another two months of campaigning after this past Tuesday’s all-party primary, but that he got to 48% in a district where Democrats have not competed in decades is awfully intriguing. And they’re going to spend a lot more money to find out just how far they can take Ossoff (or he can take them).

The guy’s basically the Marlboro Man with a banjo. How can we pass on his race?!

MT-At Large: Again, start with the candidate. Rob Quist is quintessentially Montana, as a native-born fellow who went on to a successful career as a bluegrass and country musician. He was also a Bernie Sanders supporter during the 2016 primaries. Remember, the idea is to be experimenting right now: let’s see if a less-than-traditional candidate profile can find traction in 2017 with a populist message. There’s also a case to be made that however impossible it might be to win the support of certain Sanders supporters, here we have a chance to show that the party is united behind one of Sanders’ guys. Montana voted heavily for Trump (56-36) but it simultaneously re-elected Steve Bullock for the fourth consecutive Democratic gubernatorial victory here. Senator Jon Tester won re-election in 2012, and Democrats have held various other state-wide offices in recent years despite the ups and downs of the national party’s fortunes. Voters just rejected the Republican candidate, Greg Gianforte, in the gubernatorial race this past November, so it’s not like he’s a champion vote-getter. In fact, he’s a rather flawed candidate, as observed in the Times article I linked above. To pass on investing in this race would be irresponsible. So far, the party is committing exactly that sort of malpractice.

SC-5:  Archie Parnell has to get through the May 2 primary and potential May 16 runoff first, but he is expected to be the Democratic nominee come June 20 (the same data as the GA-6 runoff). He’s a tax expert with private and public sector experience. The state’s Democratic luminaries, who are few in number, are lining up behind him. At 57-39 for Trump, this is not the most Republican- or Trump-friendly place to have a special election in the first half of 2017, but nor is it the easiest for Democrats, either. Once Mick Mulvaney captured it from 28-year incumbent Dem John Spratt in 2010, he held it with double-digit victories. Then again, each of his four wins was under 60%, which is unusual for a solidly Republican district that Democrats were not putting any resources behind. Were SC-5 voters somewhat less than enamored with Mulvaney, whose Freedom Caucus budget-hawkery might not have sat well with everyone in a district that has its share of struggling old textile towns and might not be so sure that the free market solves all ills? Would a less ideological Republican suit them better, or is there a ceiling above which Republicans simply can’t climb here? If it’s the latter, things get interesting if Parnell could replicate the sort of swing Thompson managed in KS-4. I’m not so sure that’s possible; I think Thompson is a more interesting candidate and that the eventual GOP nominee won’t have the baggage that Estes did as a mediocre candidate from a state government that no one likes right now. Right now, Clyburn would probably say we shouldn’t devote national resources to this race (which is next door to his own district) and I’d probably agree. But if Parnell can muster the sort of groundswell that Thompson did, or Republicans nominate a flawed candidate as they did with Estes, I’m prepared to change my mind. The Republican field is currently fighting over the Confederate flag, or at least Sheri Few wants them to be. She could well be that “flawed candidate” to which I just alluded.

PA-10: We don’t yet know for sure if this seat is opening up; the Tom Marino news referenced above is not official. And we have no idea who the Democratic candidate would be, so we can’t really proceed with an evaluation of competitiveness, except to say that this district has always been conservative and is ever more so now. Dems actually did win the predecessor to this district in 2006 and 2008, when Chris Carney replaced a scandal-tarred Republican incumbent. Carney was a great recruit, but the district was always going to be tough on Dems once the national tide swung right again, and sure enough Carney was defeated in 2010. Romney won this district 60-38 and then Trump blew the doors off with a 66-30 win that makes it hard to imagine Democrats can be competitive here. But for the moment, we’re still at the rule-nothing-out stage.