How long has it been since the Northeastern United States really mattered from an electoral standpoint? In 1960, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller could dictate the terms of Richard Nixon’s presidential nomination but there’s been a lot of economic and political down-hill since then. For decades, the story of American politics has been written in the high-growth Sunbelt and the burgeoning exurban metropolises of California, Texas, Florida and Georgia. The Northeast, with its high taxes, decrepit industrial base and shrinking share of the national population, became something of a Hollywood-East, reduced to the status of piggybank for candidates from other parts of the country and the leading exporter of losing Democratic Party nominees for president.
The next reapportionment is poised to take another bite out the Northeastern delegations to the U.S. House of Representatives. The region will probably lose another 4 seats while states in the South and Southwest will gain 8. Yet, like a scene out of The Last Hurrah, the I-95 corridor is about to take center stage just before it receives another demotion.
From New Hampshire to the North Carolina line, there will be at least 24 strongly contested House races and four knock-down-drag-out, last-man (or -woman) -standing races for the Senate. These figures represent almost a third of all the House races that currently meet the threshold of “competitive” and just under half the toss-up campaigns for the Senate. Voters with a low tolerance for negative campaign ads living in the Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore media markets ought to consider suspending their cable service for September and October, 2010. It is going to get very ugly.
Start in New Hampshire and work your way south to Richmond. For all intents and purposes, the Granite State will be subject to three state-wide campaigns for federal office simultaneously. Senator Judd Gregg’s retirement has drawn first-tier contenders from both parties: New Hampshire Republican Attorney General Kelly Ayotte and Democratic Congressman Paul Hodes, each of whom will raise and spend money prodigiously – and have it raised and spent for and against them by outside entities. Hodes’ Senate bid creates a vacancy in one of the state’s two House seats for which several Democrats and Republicans have already filed, potentially including former Congressman Charlie Bass. In the other slightly more Republican seat, the National Republican Congressional Committee has declared Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter one of its top targets in this cycle and recruited the Republican Mayor of Manchester, Frank Guinta , to run against her.
New York and Connecticut are similarly thick with campaigns. Christopher Dodd, long-time Democratic senator, has been seriously hampered by being simultaneously chair of the Senate Banking Committee and in receipt of a below-market mortgage from a now-disgraced bank president. Freshman Connecticut Democrat Jim Himes has drawn a challenge from Republican state Senator Dan Debicella and several other Republicans. Across the Sound in New York, Long Island Democrat Tim Bishop will face businessman Randy Altschuler. Bishop had a rough summer with his town hall meetings including one that got so rowdy he had to be escorted to his car by five state police officers. Rounding out the suburban/exurban New York races is the contest between incumbent Democrat John Hall and Republican state Representative Greg Ball. Both of these seats are historically Republican and tilt slightly to the right at the presidential level.
Further upstate, there are six more seats in play including the special election held in November to fill the seat of President Obama’s new Army Secretary, former Republican Congressman John McHugh (more on that below). To the west, incumbent Democrat Eric Massa, elected in 2008 with just 51 percent in a district that hasn’t elected a Democrat since 1913, faces a strong challenge from Corning’s Republican Mayor Tom Reed and a number of other GOP challengers. Two other newly elected upstate New York Democrats, Tom Arcuri and Scott Murphy, who won their previous races with 52 and 50 percent, are also GOP target.
Without a doubt, the epicenter of the I-95 fracas is the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Delaware suburbs around Philadelphia. In one media market, there will be no fewer than nine House seats (five Democratic and four Republican) strongly in play. Adding to that toxic brew are two highly charged Senate races. In Pennsylvania, party switcher Arlen Specter (should he survive his primary) is headed for a shootout with former congressman and Club for Growth president Pat Toomey. Meanwhile, in Delaware, Democratic crown prince Beau Biden’s coronation has been interrupted by uber-popular Republican Congressman Mike Castle’s decision to enter the Senate race. This World Wrestling Federation-like free-for-all of House and Senate races will be a confusing orgy of every sort of campaign media under the sun, most of it negative. My advice: put your money in Philadelphia television stations and get some galoshes.
At the southern end of the I-95 corridor are House contests in Virginia and Maryland. Virginia’s Democratic incumbent Tom Perriello, having won his seat by just 727 votes in 2008, is in perilous condition after a yes vote on the coal-unfriendly “cap-and-trade” bill. Four Republicans have jumped into the race so far including State Senator Robert Hurt. Democratic Representative Glenn Nye is also being challenged in the Tidewater with at least 7 Republicans eyeing the race. Finally, across the Chesapeake, the Salisbury, Maryland-centered district of Democratic freshman Frank Kratovil, who squeaked through with 49 percent of the vote after a brutal Republican primary unseated the incumbent, may face a rematch with State Senator Andy Harris.
There are other regions of the country with clusters of interesting races. Ohio has six contests cutting a northeast-to-southwest diagonal across the state, including two races that are already too close to call and a high-profile Senate campaign in which former Congressman and OMB chief Rob Portman is seeking to replace the retiring Senator George Voinovich. There are three first – and second-term incumbent Democrats in heavily Republican Mississippi and Alabama districts who should follow the old Washington adage of “rent, don’t buy.” Four of Arizona’s eight seats could be seriously contested. And in Southern California, previously safe Republican incumbents like David Drier and Dana Rohrabacher did not win convincingly enough in 2008 to take the question marks away for 2010. How the Republican position in those “safe” California districts has eroded to this degree is an interesting question all by itself. But each of these clusters pale in size, intensity and stakes next to the I-95 campaigns.
As much fun as the I-95 horse race is, it is not just a horse race. A serious issue is on the table, namely the GOP’s ability to reach beyond its bases in the South and the interior and reassert its national party status. Much of the talk about Republicans recapturing the House next year will remain just that – talk – if they are unable to coalesce around candidates who can occupy the political center of evenly divided districts. The need to capture these seats on the way to a majority is an emerging political fact of life. For instance, even if Republicans were, say, to hold all their incumbents next year and win every other currently competitive Democratic seat – two good sized “ifs” – they would still be about 10 seats short of the 218 they need to choose a Speaker much less form a stable, governing majority. This electoral math helps make the point that as hard as it is to govern with Northeastern moderates and liberals in the coalition it may be impossible to govern without them.
The McHugh open seat race is an important case in point. As the night wound down on Tuesday, the victor in the race for New York’s 23rd District was Democrat Bill Owens. In other words, straining every political tendon, in a low-turnout, off-year contest with a favorable political climate, the pro-life, anti-tax conservative still lost, thereby ceding yet another historically Republican northeastern district to the opposition. Like other similarly situated districts, this one will be very difficult to reclaim.
In the aftermath of this disappointment, Republicans might stop to consider the model Democrats adopted in the 2006 and 2008 cycles: swallow hard and accept that electing the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader is more important to governing than unanimity on social and economic policy. The result of this strategy was to capture enough marginal, Republican-held seats to help undo the Republican majority and install Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid along with a host of liberal committee chairs. One of the hallmarks of conservatism is a practical, as opposed to utopian, social and political outlook. An acceptance of moderate Northeastern Republicans as part of a governing coalition may be the only practical way for the GOP to regain a majority in the foreseeable future.
At the presidential level, the GOP is and will remain a conservative party, and conservatives should take some comfort from their dominant position in national leadership and policies. To insist, however, that all Republican candidates for the House and Senate adhere to economic and social conservative orthodoxy is a pathway to long-term minority status. If conservatives at the national and local level give moderates in the I-95 swing districts room to maneuver, the House majority and a substantially strengthened Senate minority is within their grasp. If they don’t, they may have to settle for the more limited satisfactions of having been right.
12 responses so far
1 ottovbvs // Nov 4, 2009 at 5:58 pm
…….Mr Orrell needs to read the spin from the right on NY 23……they won by losing…….there are going to be many more Hoffmanns……Cornyn’s announcement today from the NRSCC essentially caved to to the right…….they are not going to be involved in supporting candidates in primaries for Republican senatorial seats…….well you can bet the Toomey crowd will be and you know what you’re going to get……lots more Toomeys and Santorums.
2 Socrates // Nov 4, 2009 at 7:18 pm
If the economy does not pick up soon, 2010 will be a bloody year for the dems; of course, this may change if the gop continues to eat their own like in ny23.
again, the main factor will be the economy, and that is the wake up call for everyone, especially the dems: get the economy back on track and don’t be sidetracked by all of these social issues. People tend to vote with their tummy!
3 steelyblades // Nov 5, 2009 at 4:30 am
That’s nice logic when the disparity between the two parties isn’t as pronounced as it appears to be now, but the reality is that the social issues *really* matter. There are plenty of people who approve of the principles of limited government, lower taxes, fiscal responsibility and a strong defense who just can’t square these concerns with an out-of-control religious right that is determined to enforce it’s own standard of morality on the rest of society. The arguments about fiscal, foreign and domestic policy sound okay on their own, but they deflate completely when we hear the absurd rhetoric about “Christian values” and “preserving the family” as an excuse for discriminatory and bigoted legislation and a government that wants to pry into our private lives.
The Republican Party is saddled with a lot of folks who want to use their Bibles to beat other people over the head, and until those idiots get put in their place the GOP will be a regional party at best, and a joke at worst. Once again: the GOP’s backward, discriminatory and un-American stance on the social issues absolutely does matter.
4 midcon // Nov 5, 2009 at 8:12 am
Actually, they do not need to embrace moderates either in the electorate or in their candidates. The more marginalized they become the better the chance of a 3rd party rising. The further right the candidates the better it will be for the nation in the long run by creating the necessary critical mass in the middle. Then we can go to work on the far left. But first things first…
5 Independent // Nov 5, 2009 at 8:51 am
i am not a fan of the club for growth or that brand of conservatism which places tax policy at the head of all govt decision-making, but i think there are very few lessons or opportunities for the democrats or far left to crow about in the ny-23 outcome. the gop candidate was picked in a smoke filled room, she was so far to the left of the democrat on some issues that she wasn’t even a standard gop rino or gop progressive, the far right ran a candidate who had to airlifted into the district, had no natural local base, dismissed the issues most important to ny-23 voters, was aided by a group and segment of the political spectrum that is often abrasive and contentious in the face of pragmatic politics and then burned the gop candidate so badly she endorsed the democrat in a fit of spite and pique.
the democrats will have to work hard to keep the seat in the next election and, from what Ms Pelosi has been saying about all the left agenda items that still need attention, the ny-23 congressman isn’t going to get any help from her.
i’ve not found the gop to be either “backward, discriminatory and un-american” as motor-mouth above thinks. i think the lesson from ny-23 for the gop is to not allow local kingmakers to make decisions and advance candidates without sufficient staff input from the rnc or hrcc. that is the role of those guys and it’s what they’re getting paid for. i think mr steele learned that lesson from the ny-23 results.
as for rinos being pushed to the side, i can only remind the trolls here that now nj governor chris christie first off thanked two major, prominent rinos for helping him win election: former nj gov tom kean and former nj governor christy tood whitman. doesn’t seem like the rinos inside the gop are being pushed to the margins, does it? i think all that talk from the far left here is just wishful thinking and political manipulation on their part.
6 ottovbvs // Nov 5, 2009 at 9:07 am
5 Independent // Nov 5, 2009 at 8:51 am
‘i am not a fan of the club for growth or that brand of conservatism which places tax policy at the head of all govt decision-making, but i think there are very few lessons or opportunities for the democrats or far left to crow about in the ny-23 outcome.’
………..Last weekend Pelosi had 256 votes, this weekend she’ll have 258……the Dems won both races that have any impact on the national agenda…….meanwhile the internal GOP waves from NY 23 are only just starting
7 jabbermule // Nov 5, 2009 at 9:54 am
Independent: “from what Ms Pelosi has been saying about all the left agenda items that still need attention, the ny-23 congressman isn’t going to get any help from her.”
Well said and right on target.
ottovbvs:
Keep thinking this way – I want the left to continue with their arrogant misreading of the results of the ‘08 election. Please continue thinking that the election results of ‘08 gives you a “mandate” to exponentially increase the size of government, socialize big business, and tax away more and more private property from citizens. Please continue to assert that Marx is more relevent today than Madison.
Please keep it up. Your defeat will be more pronounced in ‘10 as a result of your delusional thinking. But take heart – when Congress flips back to the GOP next year, that will probably save Obama from defeat in ‘12, and allow him to serve another term (although he’ll be relatively powerless, thank God).
8 sinz54 // Nov 5, 2009 at 10:07 am
steelyblades:
It’s unlikely they can do this.
But what they advocate can be both embarrassing and frightening.
Embarrassing, as when nationally known conservatives say on TV that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is false. (That stance isn’t going to play well with the college educated in the Blue states.)
Frightening, as when social conservatives advocate giving Fourteenth Amendment rights to embryos.
Independent:
Have you read the GOP Platform? On social issues, it’s hard-right, not center-right. It advocates a Constitutional Amendment–the Human Life Amendment–which would not only overturn Roe v. Wade but make abortion illegal everywhere in the nation, even in its most liberal areas.
But it goes even further. It advocates Federal legislation which would extend Fourteenth Amendment rights to “the unborn”–fetuses and even embryos. If that ever became law (extremely unlikely), than any woman who was seeking to get pregnant by In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) could be arrested by the FBI and end up in Federal prison, because most of the embryos used in IVF are eventually discarded and end up dead. Her physician could end up in Federal prison for aiding and abetting.
Social conservatives, remember, weren’t just against abortion. They were against IVF, and even against birth control. Kathryn Jean Lopez, new editor of the National Review after Buckley passed away, is continuing to write columns even now about what a disaster the birth control pill has been.
Given that zillions of American women are “on the Pill,” to hear the premier conservative journal denouncing it could well frighten them.
The conservative movement has to make its peace with the Pill and IVF. That much is necessary in the 21st century. To wistfully look back on the years before 1960 when women were afraid to have sex isn’t conservative. It’s reactionary.
9 MI-GOPer // Nov 5, 2009 at 11:18 am
automaticBS at 6 contends: “Last weekend Pelosi had 256 votes, this weekend she’ll have 258……the Dems won both races that have any impact on the national agenda”.
Like Independent said above, Madam Speaker’s far Left radical agenda won’t help her party hold onto to those seats, nor as many as 62 blue dog seats in red-trending states. Self-preservation tells a politician that the first rule of staying in office is “do no harm”… and NancyBoTox is a one-woman wrecking crew for many of these blue dogs.
For instance, in Michigan, the state GOP has been hammering away at our 2 newest blue dogs, Schauer and Peters, on their votes to astronomically raise the deficit, raise taxes, increase govt interference in the private sector, undercut our military and put them in greater Harm’s Way, embrace wholesale vote corruption and engage in petty partisan warfare instead of fixing the economy, win the wars that Bush was winning, reign in Wall St and end the divisiveness ripe in Congress and the White House. This weekend, Schauer said to a group of small biz supporters: “I wish the health care public option would just go away and stay away”.
So it’s working on him, clearly. Those two blue dogs have a 41% and 43% approval rating even though they’ve been in office less than 1 yr. Ouch, that’s gotta hurt even as thick a partisan hide as your’s automaticBS.
Meanwhile, GOP congressmen like Upton, Camp, Rogers, Ehlers, Miller and McCotter enjoy an average of 53% approval ratings –higher than the Obama.
Like Independent said here, NancyBoTox and her radical agenda and record of shameful corruption won’t be an aid to the blue dogs; even if she can stiff arm them to vote her way. It’ll be a trail of tears leading back to Washington for the blue dogs if they follow her like lemmings to the sea.
10 MI-GOPer // Nov 5, 2009 at 11:27 am
sinz54, fresh from the nitrous oxide lounge hyperventilates with:
“Have you read the GOP Platform? On social issues, it’s hard-right, not center-right. It advocates a Constitutional Amendment–the Human Life Amendment–which would not only overturn Roe v. Wade but make abortion illegal everywhere in the nation, even in its most liberal areas. But it goes even further. It advocates Federal legislation which would extend Fourteenth Amendment rights to “the unborn”–fetuses and even embryos. If that ever became law (extremely unlikely), than any woman who was seeking to get pregnant by In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) could be arrested by the FBI and end up in Federal prison, because most of the embryos used in IVF are eventually discarded and end up dead. Her physician could end up in Federal prison for aiding and abetting”
Hyperbole much, sinz54? Gheesh. Far Right goons sending the FBI to arrest women using IVF procedures? Get off the nitrous oxide and start breathing oxygen again, ok?
11 DFL // Nov 5, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Reading threads at this site with the usual claims that the “religious right” is forcing its “standard of morality” on the rest of society leads me to ask-
1) In the Republican Party, which groups achieve most of its agenda of which do not? (hint- it is not the Religious Right)
2) When has not an American majority, or even a minority, forced its values down the throats of other Americans? Moral issues of the American past include slavery, segregation, democratcy for white males, voting rights for women and blacks, the 8 hour work day, unionism, minimum wage laws, Social Security for the old, medicare for the old, medicaid for the poor, food stamps for the poor, determination age of consent for sex and marriage, smoking, drunk driving, affirmative action, fair housing laws etc., etc. American history is filled with examples of government legislating some sort of morality or another.
12 sinz54 // Nov 5, 2009 at 1:00 pm
mi-goper:
If Fourteenth Amendment rights are extended to embryos and fetuses (a.k.a. “the unborn”) as the GOP Platform demands, what do YOU consider to be the implications of that?
Wouldn’t it mean that any pregnant woman who interferes in any way with her developing embryos or fetuses would be guilty of violating the Constitution? And isn’t that a very serious criminal charge?
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