The Giffords race
The Republic analyzes:
“Giffords will have to use all of her considerable campaign-trail talents to defend her votes for the stimulus package and the health-care and energy bills in a district that has a track record supporting ‘middle of the road’ candidates,” wrote analyst David Wasserman for the “Cook Political Report.”
Giffords, whose 8th Congressional District encompasses parts of Tucson and communities in Arizona’s southeastern corner, voted with the president 90 percent of the time last year, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan publication Congressional Quarterly.
Although Democratic Reps. Harry Mitchell and Ann Kirkpatrick also are considered vulnerable, they are less closely identified with Obama at a time when his priorities have been losing support in public-opinion polls and at the ballot box.
The paper notes at the end of the story that she has $1.6 million on hand.
4:20 PM
How will Arizona's House delegation do in the 2010 elections?
(Update below.)
Over at 538.com, Tom Shaller has posted an overview of the most vulnerable Democratic House seats in 2010. The site doesn’t do on-the-ground political analysis so much as crunch numbers and assess macro factors like fund-raising.
In this case, Shaller took numbers on the races from the Cook Political Report and then added a few factors. In all, they included: The rep’s votes on health care and cap and trade; the traditional political nature of their districts; their most recent win margin; and the cash on hand they and their potential opponents have.
The bad news for Arizona Democrats is that two local House seats by these measures look vulnerable. Indeed, Harry Mitchell, of the Arizona fifth, is one of the nine most vulnerable across the country.
Gabrielle Giffords, from the eighth, is one of fifteen members on the next-most-vulnerable tier.
Their districts are superficially similar, with urban anchors in the affluent eastern parts of Phoenix and Tucson, respectively.
The Cook report is a very sophisticated operation (as 538.com is as well); I’d just make one observation that neither seems to have noted in the case of these two races; that the Arizona Republican vote in 2008 was skewed because of McCain’s favorite-son status.
McCain got less than 52 percent of the vote in Mitchell’s district, and just above 52 percent in Giffords’. It seems arguable that both would have gone at least slightly Democratic were anyone else running on the GOP side.
That said, the 2010 campaigns will be run in a much different political climate, and one without the energized folks who came out for Obama. Both parties are prepared for significant Democratic losses next year, and it’s possible two of them will come from Arizona.
For a GOP perspective on the race in the eighth, Greg Petterson points to the recent deposing of a longtime Democratic city council person in Tucson and offers this assessment:
When you are trying assess how Tuesday’s election will affect the 2010 race, remember that Tucson is the Democratic core of Gabby Gifford’s district. Yet, if the election were held today, Giffords would have to struggle to win an election in Tucson itself. Add back the Republican portions of the district and CD 8 is looking like solid Republican territory.
p.s. : As I noted above, the 538.com analysis wasn’t on-the-ground political prognosticating. It was all about crunching the numbers. Here’s the EVT’s Le Templar, who is on the ground, on an Arizona House race that didn’t get the blog’s attention:
The vice president is raising money today for one incumbent not included on that most-vulnerable list: Ann Kirkpatrick. The Congressional District 1 race is flying under the radar because Democrats have more registered voters and Kirkpatrick’s potential challengers haven’t raised much money, yet. But the district is quite conservative and Kirkpatrick won her first term in the fallout from former Rep. Rick Renzi’s criminal indictment for political corruption. There’s also this video where Kirkpatrick literally walked out of a meeting with her constituents. Expect that video to get a lot of air time and blogger references in the coming year.
My guess is Kirkpatrick will be at least as vulnerable as Mitchell and Giffords next year.
Arizona’s polity is obviously in a state of upheaval from top to bottom, and as it moved from red-state to swing-state status there will certainly be volatility. But speaking generally about the Democrats from the national perspective, it strikes me that what too often isn’t noticed is that bad times for the Democrats and the new president came conveniently early.
Just a year from the election the country seems to have hit bottom. The health-care debate and unemployment are still drags, of course. (And might turn out to be game-changers on their own if they are not resolved by next summer.)
Still, it’s an odd advantage, but an advantage nonetheless, that the party has a year to deal with the problems rather than a period of months or even weeks. That they might be resolved during that time is a possibility that is too-infrequently raised, I think.
7:29 PM
Joe Biden is in town today
Republic report here.
During a visit to Phoenix Monday morning, Vice President Joe Biden praised the federal stimulus for its early effects in Arizona and reminded state Democrats how well the economy has already responded.
“Only 12 states have gotten more money obligated than the state of Arizona has,” Biden said of the state’s $5 billion in federal aid.
Biden spoke to several dozen supporters at the downtown Wyndham Phoenix Hotel, where he attended a fundraiser for Democratic Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick and Harry Mitchell.
Emphasis added. Biden’s words are a reminder that Arizona, for all the states-rights bravado spouted by its Republican political representatives, is one of those states who get a lot more back from the U.S. Government than it puts it.
(Indeed, with the exception of Washington D.C., virtually all the whiny traditional “red states” benefit from taxes in this way. Details here—with an easy-to-comprehend map—and here.)
Le Templar, in the EVT, notes the political aims of the visit:
Vice President Joe Biden is in Arizona this morning, trying to build support for the White House economic stimulus efforts and attending a fundraiser for some Democrats in the state’s delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives. Biden’s visit coincides with a growing national consensus that Reps. Harry Mitchell and Gabrielle Giffords could be especially at risk to a national shift in voter sentiment back to the Republican Party.
12:00 AM
Biden holds fundraiser for Gabrielle Giffords
At the event, in Delaware, Biden raises worries of a GOP re-takeover of the House of Representatives. This story, in Roll Call, details the supposed vulnerability of three Arizona Dems:
Democratic members of Congress hold 49 districts that McCain won in 2008, including three in Arizona. Giffords’ district and that of Rep. Harry Mitchell (D-Ariz.) gave McCain 52 percent of the vote; Rep. Anne Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.) won despite McCain taking 54 percent of the vote in her largely rural First District.
[…]
The fundraiser, held in Greenville, Del., will benefit Giffords’ bid for a third term. Giffords beat state Sen. Tim Bee® by a 55 percent to 43 percent margin in 2008, as both parties spent heavily on behalf of both candidates.
It doesn’t pay to argue with Roll Call on political matters, But I don’t think the argument applies quite so strongly to the Arizona delegation. McCain’s results here were outsized because of his favorite son status. And in the event, of the three only Mitchell got less than 55 percent of the vote.
Right now it’s entirely to the Democratic’s advantage to have hyperbolic worries like this come into play. It’s best to be in trouble—or look like you’re in trouble—14 months out. The party has an entire year for the impact of the presumed health care reform sink in and the economy to be on firmer ground.
The ruling party is always supposed to suffer in the first mid-year elections; the Democrats could take hits in the off-year New Jersey and Virginia governor races in November; and of course new troubles, like Afghanistan, may come to the fore and strain the administration’s ability to lay the blame on the mess on the previous administration. (Where it of course belongs.)
But given the ebb and flow of political difficulties I think the Democrats can only be happy what seems like a major ebb is happening this far out from the next round of elections.
6:00 AM