The Special Elections of 2013

Thought premeditated, well calculated/The air's been tested, the people can't wait/So, ahh, we agreed to send one, to swim from lost and found/See truth be the life preserve, we can't drown/Drunk with the victory, the Wu cavalry.

Whoof. Enough about New Jersey for the moment, huh? Let's take us a breather and cool down with some scattered special elections scheduled for 2013. We'll take a look at the Jersey gubernatorial race in a few days.

Once again, Blue the Nation is a project for letting all my friends and family--and all their friends and family--know how they can help push this country to the left. It's not just about Presidential elections. It's not just about midterms. It's about the state legislatures. It's about statewide executives. It's about special elections. It's about every elected office. Every Democratic candidate, and even some moderate Republicans in states like Kansas and Georgia, needs your money, your time, your support, your energy. Here's a look at a few of those candidates, a few of those races.

We're all just gonna take a break and chill out with Rape-Face Paul Ryan.

U.S. House of Representatives

Until the DeMint/Scott situation, the only two special elections for the U.S. House were extremely safe seats for the incumbent party. That doesn't mean I don't think we should take a shot at MO-8, however. Remember, aim high, everything can be winnable, blah blah blah.

Missouri - 8^th House District – date TBD, likely Spring 2013 or early Summer 2013

Republican GOP representative Jo Ann Emerson is retiring. I kind of understand politically-motivated timing of retirements—i.e., winning your seat before immediately retiring to keep it in your party's control as long as possible—but it's not like the Eighth was really up for grabs whether or not Emerson ran. She didn't need to run to keep the seat red, is my point. I half-expect some crazy scandal involving rent boys to crop up out of Emerson's past. Until then, however, let's busy ourselves with figuring out what to do about the MO-8 Congressional seat.

The election date has not been announced, but Emerson's retirement is effective February 2013. By Missouri law, the election has to be announced 10 weeks in advance, so we're already probably looking at sometime in March at the earliest. Still, this one's probably going to be the first of the national special elections (of which, so far, there are three planned for 2013, with a fourth one almost 100% certain.)

Not to worry. Governor Jay Nixon has already dispatched a team of vampire
hunters to drive a stake through the beast's heart before it rises again.

Winnability: Emerson—easily one of the most awful human beings to ever darken the door of the United States Congress—won her district by 47 points in 2012. Although that's her largest-ever victory, it's pretty close to what all her other victory margins were. She hasn't had a competitive campaign since her first go-round, in 1996, when she ran as an independent. Arcane ballot rules prohibited her from getting on the ballot after her incumbent husband died, but she was still able to climb up just past 50%, with the official GOP candidate taking another 10%. Taken together as a conservative Republican bloc, they still beat their Democratic opponent 61-37. So that's the best the Dems have done in MO-8 in the era of Jo Ann Emerson. In this special election, I'm going to put the over/under on Democratic performance at 40%. We're not gonna win this thing. But if Democrats ignore it, they'll be making a grave mistake.

Who's on the bench: We have a unique opportunity to use this election as a laboratory. There's nothing to lose, right? So let's try something novel. One of the most fascinating Senate stories of 2012 was Heidi Heitkamp's upset of Rick Berg up in North Dakota. At the outset of that race, nobody gave Heitkamp a shot. But she went at the campaign in an old-fashioned way, a way you just don't see that often anymore. So much of American politics has become focused on urban centers—and rightly so, because that's where the people are—that the game has become totally urbanized. It's begun to feel like even the politicians with a more rural constituency end up campaigning like city politicos. A lot of advertising, lit-dropping, poll-checking...cookie-cutter campaign stuff, the things any political hack can tell you to do.

"...add two parts progressive populism to one part down-home folksy appeal..."

Heitkamp switched gears and engaged in what today's pundits call “retail politics.” It used to just be called “campaigning.” She went all over the state, connecting and, in many cases, re-connecting with her electorate. As a lifelong public servant at various levels of the state, she'd come into contact with many of her voters over the years, and she remembered a lot of them, sometimes decades later. I remember one observer writing that it was actually possible that Heidi Heitkamp had personally met every single North Dakota voter over the course of her life. That's huge, and it's a key lesson in how Democrats can reclaim populism from the right.

"Yeah, haven't you heard? 'Retail politics' is the new jam. So call
me a political consultant then, I guess. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart."

The modern political dualism of “Democrats=liberal and elitist, Republicans=conservative and populist” is not really correct, but to the extent that it's perceived to be true, it's directly owed to two things: Nixon's Southern strategy and the emergence of elements like the Democratic Leadership Council. On the one hand, Republicans began appealing to base, obvious racism, nativism, and the generalized bigotry of the proudly undereducated rural masses. They found their populist issues, which eventually grew to include “family values” (really just striving to create a white Christian theocracy.)

Family values.

At the same time—and especially after the McGovern fiasco—the Democratic Party came to be, if not dominated, then certainly strongly informed, by fiscal conservatives like the guys on the DLC. These centrists didn't care for “class warfare,” which was the Democrats' populist issue and had been for decades. The Republicans had a way to be populists; Democrats hamstrung theirs. And so we lost the South. We lost the farmers. We lost the Midwest. We lost the working class. We lost the very people we were most in a position to help.

The idea that the Republican Party, an organization that exists solely for the enrichment of the already-wealthy, would be the party of populism is fucking disgraceful. And it's only possible because Democrats abandoned their populist issue. But that issue's been dead for so long that we can't just bring it back up. We have to do what Heidi Heitkamp did. We have to remind the voters that populism, speaking to voters' concerns, isn't just about piggybacking on whatever issue has been declared to be What People Care About In The Heartland by the pundit class, nor is it just about parroting the Democratic party line. It's about actually going out there and talking to voters. And not just at the occasional baby-kiss rally. Heitkamp went everywhere. She trudged up and down, north, south, east, west, front and back, all over North Dakota. And she won herself an election. And I'll be damned if she loses that seat anytime soon. Folk know who she is.

Pictured: A better encapsulation of What People Care About In The Heartland
than anything Newt Gingrich wants to talk to you about.

Missouri can be a perfect laboratory for testing this idea. In a way, it's the perfect place to rally populists against the establishment. In this special election, there will be no primaries. Parties will select their nominees. The GOP will pretty much just be handing this to whoever's been the most loyal and wants the seat. We're going to be looking at a lazy, unproven campaigner, picked for being a lifelong party hack, not expecting a vigorous challenge until the scheduled election in 2014. Meanwhile, we get to pick the best candidate with which to run the experiment. I think the ideal person is somebody very local, with a long shadow all over the district. Not a politico. Someone like a local business owner, or a longtime sheriff. And it really shouldn't be anybody that a queer commie tree-huggin' San Francisco Muslim Jewish gay Democrat Nazi socialist like me, with my marijuana and my long hair, should have heard of.

So basically we need Joe Don Baker to be a Democrat, and to move to the Eighth
Missouri Congressional District. Think you can take him? Well go ahead on.

Importance: If we win it's extremely important. If we lose it's meh. If we lose—even if we lose big—we'll have lost nothing we had before the campaign. You try to run a Big Blue Machine, straight-ahead Democrat with political connections and history, Russ Carnahan type out there, you're gonna get spanked in the Eighth. You try to run a conservative Democrat like Claire McCaskill, who only won re-election statewide because Todd Akin is insane in the membrane, you're gonna get spanked in the Eighth. Run a moderate Republican pretending to be a Democrat for the sake of a major-party endorsement like Rich Carmona over in New Mexico, and you're gonna get spanked in the Eighth.

That's a lot of spanking.

Hell, Governor Jay Nixon himself could run for the seat and he'd lose. There's no conventional way to try to get this seat that's going to win you this election as a Democrat, so let's try something weird and see what happens. If we win, we gain an incredible new (old) way to campaign for blue collar white votes. If we lose, we're in the same place we are right now.

Price Tag: Find the candidate, build a ground army, get independent expenditures to go negative hard and early and then back off as the election approaches, while stressing that the candidate's campaign won't go negative at all. I see $4M being a worthwhile investment here. That's roughly seven times more than what Emerson raised through October 2012 for her re-election, and about double what she raised in 2010, but you gotta go big on this experiment.

Illinois - 2^nd House District – April 9, 2013

Oh Jesse Jackson, Jr. We hardly knew ye. I mean, really, we hardly knew ye. All ye did was constantly try to build another airport in Chicago. I think ye were even successful, although I don't think I give a shit. At any rate, the era of the ol' Triple-J is now over, and it's time for the Democratic machine to churn out an establishment candidate who will win a special election very easily.

Pictured: The raw material used by the two major parties to create a
machine candidate. Michael Breyer was sculpted from this batch.

Winnability: Winning this race will not be like shooting fish in a barrel. It will be like shooting a barrel. From right next to it. Let me explain something: Jesse Jackson, Jr. won re-election in 2012 while not campaigning at all and convalescing in a mental hospital somewhere, while under investigation for mismanagement of campaign funds and other various acts of corruption. And he won extremely easily. Now sure, part of that is that he's Jesse Jackson's son. Part of it is also that this race is literally impossible for a Republican to win.

Who's on the bench: Dude, you could run Tommy Carcetti for this seat and he'd win. And he's from Baltimore! And he's fictional!

Hey there. Hey buddy. I'm comin' for your state.

Importance: In the sense that it's a seat in the House of Representatives? Yeah, it's super important. In the sense that no one outside of Chicago political insiders should give a damn who wins? Pretty much not gonna pay attention to this one.

Price Tag: Remember way back when this all started and I mentioned that the Democrats and their allied interests shouldn't spend one dime on non-competitive races? This is the kind of race I was talking about. Whoever gets the nomination should feel free to raise whatever funds he or she wants, and I suppose the candidate will probably need a few thousand bucks for, I don't know, staples and stuff like that, but if you're trying to figure out what to do with your money, don't spend it on the special election in IL-2. The amount of money that the candidate, the party, and the allied interest groups will need to spend on this race is pretty much an accounting error compared to what we'll be spending on other races.

South Carolina - 1^st House District – TBD, probably sometime in May

Jim DeMint resigns from the Senate. Tim Scott is selected by the Governor as his replacement. Tim Scott's seat in the House becomes vacant. Special election time. People say this seat is a Republican hold for sure. I have my doubts.

Every fiber of my being wants to make a mint-related pun right now. So instead, this is happening.

Winnability: History, and conventional wisdom, say the Republicans are heavy favorites here. I understand that viewpoint. Tim Scott has been very successful, winning both of his elections to the seat by nearly 30 points. Before him, Henry E. Brown won with huge margins in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006. 2008, however, should give us pause.

That year, Brown was challenged by Linda Ketner. Linda Ketner is openly gay. She is a progressive. She is (obviously) a woman. She is a Democrat, and she was running in a district that had elected its current incumbent Republican Congressman four times by an average margin of 56 points and 103,383 votes. This was a district, by the way, that would elect Tim Scott by 36.7 points and 85,747 votes two years later.

No way this lady can win, right? Wrong. Well, I mean, she didn't win, but she came really close. She lost by four points and about 14,000 votes. Now it's true that 2008 was a wave year for the Democrats, but South Carolina's Congressional delegation didn't change one bit, in terms of partisan makeup. All six incumbents—four Republicans and two Democrats—kept their seats. And it's also true that the First District has been redrawn since that election, but it was arguably redder in 2008 and 2010 than the new version is today, and certainly not any less red.

Pictured: Linda Ketner at a campaign rally in late October 2008.

Back then, it contained most of light-blue Charleston County, part of light-red Georgetown County, and most of solid-red Horry County. Today it consists of most of light-blue Charleston County, pieces of solid-red Dorchester and Berkeley Counties, a little bit of light-blue Colleton County, and most of solid-red Beaufort County. So you have to give a lot of credit to Ketner, and also to what must be called a slowly shifting electorate on the South Carolina coast. 2008 isn't a complete aberration.

So why the disparity in results? Leaving aside the presence of Barack Obama at the top of the ticket and 2008's wave election, what can Democrats recapture from Ketner's candidacy? Keep in mind that 2012 was a minor Democratic wave election, but it didn't help whoever was running against Tim Scott. Neither did Obama's coattails.

Tim Scott is a charismatic candidate, much more so than Brown, who never really had to run in a competitive race until 2008. He had the power of a Republican wave on his side in 2010 and the incumbency in 2012. It's unclear who will get the nomination from either party in 2013, and it's just as unclear what the political temperature of this district will be come May. But with no incumbent and no clear election wave—at least nothing overwhelming—materializing nationally, this race is much more up for grabs than pundits think it is.

2012 was the first election held in the new First District, so that's all the data we can go on in terms of turnout. Just a hair over 290,000 people cast ballots in the House race. About 160,000 people voted in Charleston County, most of whom were voting in the First District. Based on coastal South Carolina's usual turnout trends, I would expect about 190,000 D1 voters overall, 90,000 from Charleston County, in a normal midterm Congressional election such as 2010 or 2014. But this is an off-year special election, which should drive turnout down even further. Expect about 130,000 voters in the election, with about half of them coming from Charleston County.

Pictured: One of the busier precincts in the last South Carolina special election.

Obviously a huge part of making this race interesting will be a concerted effort to get the Democratic base to the polls for an off-year special election. But assuming the county's usual 54-46 Democratic tilt, a Dem candidate here can expect to win the county about 35,000-30,000. To win the seat, the candidate would then need to find 30,000 more votes somewhere else in the district. Put another way, the candidate would need to lose the rest of the district by no more than about 5,000 votes.

Who's on the bench: Well, there's Ketner, and I think she would make by far the most sense, but she doesn't seem interested in running for elected office right now. She politely declined numerous requests that she run against Scott in 2010, and she again declined to run in 2012. More recently, and more to the point, sources close to her are saying she's ruled out running in 2013 as well. I don't really understand why, but whatever.

The Democratic bench in the district isn't phenomenal, but it isn't horrible either. We've got Stephen Colbert's sister Elizabeth, who works in the administration at Clemson. We've got the state Representative for the 119^th district, Leonidas Stavrinakis (awesome name.) And we've got Ashley Cooper, who didn't lose that badly in 2010 when he ran for Lt. Governor. Other possibilities include D121 state Representative Kenneth Hodges, D116 state Rep Robert Brown, D111 state Rep Wendell Gilliard, D103 state Rep Carl Anderson, and D43 state Senator Robert Ford. Personally, my pick would be Ford, but any of these candidates would be a formidable opponent for the GOP, particularly given that the Republican nominee is probably going to be treating the election as a formality.

THIS! IS! SPARTA!
...actually, this is Leonidas Stavrinakis.

Importance: The most important race we've looked at since the beginning of the blog. Hands down. It's a winnable seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, but widely seen as a likely Republican hold. If we win here, we make a statement that the 2012 Democratic coalition is going to keep showing up at the polls. We pick up a seat in the House, cutting the GOP lead to 233-202. We strike fear into every Southern Republican politician. And we probably position ourselves well to make serious runs at both South Carolina Senate seats in 2014.

Price Tag: As much as we have to spend on it. I'd like to see two or three million Democratic dollars spent on the race, at minimum. Up next: The Big Blue One...

The New Jersey State Legislature, Part Three: The Assembly, Continued

Welp, before we continue Blue the Nation, let's lead off with the big New Jersey news: Cory Booker isn't running for Governor. Even with all the reports and rumors flying around that he was leaning more toward taking a run at Frank Lautenberg's Senate seat in 2014 (Lautenberg, a Democrat, is probably set to retire), I still believed Booker would ultimately take a shot at Christie. This decision may not guarantee that Booker doesn't run for the Democratic Presidential nomination, but it basically guarantees that he won't get it if he does. It seems Cory Booker is banking on the Democrats not winning the White House in 2016 and then making a run in 2020.

Ultimately, Booker may have made the right decision. Two good friends running
against one another in a governor race would have been a little too made-for-a-comedy-film.
I think we just avoided a terrible political comedy involving a Wayans brother and Jim Belushi.

This changes a lot for the legislative elections. Booker's rising tide would have lifted all the Democratic boats in the state, much as Obama's coattails created a full-blown national wave in 2008. With Booker out of the picture, the only declared candidate for the Democratic nomination is state Senator Barbara Buono, of the Eighteenth District. Buono was the Majority Leader in the Senate (not the same thing as the Senate President, mind you) for a couple of years recently, is a strong progressive, and has a long history of electoral success. She appears to have a good level of early support across various local Democratic parties and allied interests. She's a good candidate, but running against a national political rising star, she won't have significant coattails.

Of less concern is her state Senate seat, which is safe and will be held by the Democrats, regardless of whether Buono wins the gubernatorial nomination. Of greater concern is what could shape up into a real intraparty bloodbath. As noted in a prior entry, the New Jersey Democrats have a longstanding feud simmering. It hasn't presented huge electoral problems recently, but if there's a bruising primary fight, the nominee won't look good going into the general.

We'll talk more about the gubernatorial race in another entry, but for now, a last thought on the subject. We can expect to see much more well-organized and disciplined Republican opposition in 2013 than we saw in 2011. A lot of the local party heads are talking up the presence of Christie on the ballot as a strong motivating factor for getting the party's business in order. Look for them to field many more competitive legislature tickets than they did last time around. Look for Christie to campaign aggressively for his fellow Republicans. And note that the Democrats will have no such captain to lead them. Buono is, as I said before, a fine candidate, and she might even be able to beat Christie if she gets the nomination, but she doesn't have the ability to create a Democratic wave.

"I am running for Governor. Governor of healthy snack food, bitchez."

With that, let's dive into the third portion of our look at the New Jersey state legislative elections coming up in 2013...

Competitive Assembly Seats, cont.:

District 11.

The Incumbent: Caroline Casagrande and Mary Pat Angelini.

Why they're weak: District 11 should have been the inverse of District 7 in 2011: in a purple district, the Democrats should have come very close to unseating one or both of the Republican incumbents. They did come pretty close, but not as close as they should have. Fourth-place vote-getter Kathleen Horgan finished 5.2 points behind first-place vote-getter Caroline Casagrande, and third-place vote-getter Vin Gopal finished 4.4 points behind third-place vote-getter Mary Pat Angelini.

Pro tip to Kathleen Horgan, Vin Gopal, and Raymond Santiago: This picture looks like dogshit.
The Democratic ticket should not look like Granny McChurchtime, Bill the Space Cadet, and
everybody's stupid uncle with the big dumb invention ideas he talks about at the barbecue.

Why they're strong: Gopal was a strong-enough candidate. The Eleventh was reshaped as a minority opportunity district, which gave Gopal an edge. Horgan, on the other hand, was a last-minute ballot replacement for Marilyn Schlossbach, who withdrew after the primary due to business-related complications from Hurricane Irene. Gopal is a business leader, a political and entrepreneurial rising star in the area, and a minority in a district engineered to favor minority groups. Horgan was pretty much just a name with a D next to it. She hindered the ticket.

"Look, I got tricked into running. I thought I was signing up for the Columbia Record Club."

Who can beat them: The Dems should bring Gopal back again. He was seen as a strong candidate at the time, and he'll still be one. In a lower-fundraising district, he raised $100,000 for his campaign. To contextualize that, the top fundraiser in the district was victorious Republican state Senate incumbent Jennifer Beck, who raised about $375,000. Gopal also basically campaigned alone, distancing himself to some degree from Horgan and his other ticketmate, state Senate candidate Raymond Santiago. In a district with a weaker Republican state Senate incumbent, I'd argue for him to head the 2013 ticket, but Beck is not to be trifled with. The first time she won an election to the Legislature, her opponent outspent her by a factor of seven and still didn't make it that close. Better to use Gopal in a race he can win.

So who should be his ticketmate for the Assembly? I think an argument could be made for Santiago, actually. He didn't fare too well against Beck in the 2011 state Senate contest, but again, not too many candidates are likely to. It's not like he got completely pantsed. He had a respectable showing in a purple district against a very tough incumbent who might be unbeatable by all but the shiniest celebrity candidates. He got some name recognition in the district out of the whole situation, and he developed some degree of working relationship with Gopal. As a team, they could make a strong minority appeal while also appealing to the business community.

Price Tag: District 11 is a purple district and Gopal and Santiago have a better chance than anybody at flipping the Assembly seats blue. Gopal's a strong fundraiser, and I think he and his allies should be prepared to spend heavily in this low-fundraising district. $500,000, at minimum.

District 16.

The Incumbents: Donna Simon and Jack Ciaterelli.

Why they're weak: Ciaterelli is in his first term, and will actually be facing the real consequences of redistricting for the first time in 2013. The district used to be solid red, but the new map made it almost perfectly purple. In 2011, Peter Biondi (whose seat is now occupied by Simon) was aided greatly by his long incumbency, and both Republicans benefited from what essentially amounted to a completely unprepared local Democratic opposition. Although the new Sixteenth District has a decent Democratic bench, local party leaders were woefully unprepared for challenging GOP supremacy in a redrawn district. They ended up trotting out two unknowns in Marie Corfield and Joe Camarota.

The late Assemblyman's long-lived popularity was owed, in part, to his
campaign in favor of spaying and neutering pets, a subject which he
frequently made mention of on his famous game show, The Price is Right.

Despite the local party's ineffective challenge, the changing face of the Sixteenth was made readily apparent. The Democratic ticket had its constituent vote on almost total lock, with Camarota only picking up 16 more ballots than Corfield did. This shows that the party has strong control of its voting bloc in the district. Just as important, Biondi got almost 600 more votes than Ciaterelli. This demonstrates what his incumbency did for him, and also what it probably did for his ticketmate. As it was, Biondi defeated both of the Democratic challengers by 3.4%, and Ciaterelli defeated them by just 2.6%. The Republicans claimed narrow victories over weak challenges.

But Biondi died just two days after the 2011 election. Simon was selected as his replacement, and a special election was held, coinciding with the 2012 general election. Corfield, who essentially tied with her ticketmate Camarota for third place in the 2011 election, was the Democratic challenger. Simon defeated Corfield by 980 votes in a race that wasn't officially decided until November 30, 24 days after the election. I'm not 100% sure of this, but I believe it was the last general election race in the country to be called. And after conceding, Corfield made it clear that she wasn't done with politics. After all, she lost by .01% of the total vote. And guess what? Simon's going to have to turn right back around and run for re-election in 2013!

Why they're strong: They're not. They're straight-up not.

Who can beat them: If the Democrats don't gun hard for the Sixteenth District next year, they're out of their minds. They came within 2000 votes of stealing a seat in the district basically on accident in 2011. They lost by a statistically negligible figure in 2012. And the candidate who lost those two races, by an average total of 1500 votes and average percentage point differential of 1.3? She's probably going to run again! She wants it. She's hungry. She gained a hell of a lot of ground, and has proven she has the ability to perform well without much outside support (2011), in a high-profile, high-turnout election (2012, in which turnout for the special election, due to the coinciding national election, was about 150% higher than turnout for the 2011 election), as well as in New Jersey's more typical off-year settings (2011 again.) And she's proven she has the ability to improve her performance.

Even in 2011, when the Democrat ticket in the district was generally not well-known, Corfield stood out from the pack. She'd gained some national attention for asking a critical question of Chris Christie in a Youtube video that went viral. The success of that video was probably what propelled her into the 2011 race, as prior to the campaign she'd been a teacher, and a graphic designer before that. She had sudden notoriety for standing up to one of the gruffest, macho-est dudes in American politics, and holding her ground. The video was generally interpreted as Christie dismantling Corfield's arguments, but he had the advantage of a bully pulpit and a microphone, and voters in her district recognized that.

Chris Christie rudely explains the public education system. Marie Corfield remains unimpressed.

And who's the ticketmate: So it's pretty obvious that I'm all the way in the tank for Marie Corfield. I think she's awesome and I think she can do a great job in the 2013 election. So who else am I in the tank for in this district? Joe Camarota, Corfield's ticketmate in 2011? Hell no. Guy is as bland as mozzarella cheese. I want a candidate with some real oomph. And that candidate is Tom Byrne.

Tom's dad, Brendan, was a well-liked two-term governor of the state. It seems fairly clear that Tom has always wanted to follow in his father's footsteps, but he's been impatient. He hasn't tried to build a political career from the ground up. When he's run for office or considered running for office, it's always been for Governor or Senate. The New Jersey electorate has not delivered these offices to him, nor are they likely to as long as he appears to see his primary qualification as being the son of Brendan Byrne. He needs to start lower on the totem pole and build his way to the higher levels of office. The question becomes, how low should he start?

A case could be made for Byrne to run for the D16 Senate seat. Kip Bateman, the current occupant of the seat, can't exactly be described as vulnerable, having won re-election in 2011 with a margin of 11.2% of the vote, but it's worth noting that this margin is way down from his margin the first time around in 2007, when he won by 23.2%. That's a huge dropoff, largely attributable to the redrawn map of the district. And just as his ticketmates did, Bateman clearly benefited from running against a relative unknown without much outside support in attorney Maureen Vella. Tom Byrne could conceivably close the 3600-vote gap by which Bateman won in 2011, especially given that he's still sitting on a $1,000,000 war chest from his failed 2000 gubernatorial run.

On the other hand, 11.2% is a pretty comfortable margin, and the Dems might not want to waste Byrne on a race he'll have to work a lot harder to win. My instinct would be to run him for the second Assembly seat in the district. Either way, whether he's at the top of the ticket or the bottom, his very presence—and spending power—put the district's Senate seat in play to some degree. So if the ticket is comprised of Byrne, Corfield, and a third candidate, who should that third candidate be? Although I'd love to see celebrity economist Paul Krugman run for office in the Sixteenth, believability demands something more real, to borrow the words of Watto, the great Star Wars bit character and offensive anti-Semitic stereotype.

My best idea for this third ticketmate is outgoing Princeton Township Mayor Chad Goerner. He's well-liked, he's supported positions popular among his constituency, and he would command a strong voter base in the Princeton area. Goerner was also one of the 200-plus signatories of a letter calling for New Jersey legislators to pass a marriage-equality bill during former Governor Jon Corzine's lame-duck session, before Chris Christie—and his threatened veto of marriage equality—took office. The signatories were widely recognized as some of the key Democratic movers and shakers in the state. Goerner's presence on that list speaks well to his ability to advance in the New Jersey Democratic heirarchy. Assembly, or even state Senate, seems like a good move.

A possible dark horse would be former longtime New Jersey Supreme Court justice Alan Handler, but he's 81. Barbara McConnell would be a better idea, if another candidate were needed. McConnell actually served a couple terms in the Assembly ages ago, winning in a district that was predominantly Republican. However, she's also getting up there in years. The ideal ticket is some combination of Corfield, Byrne, and Goerner. With that ticket, Democrats can definitely expect to grab two of the three seats, and they'll have a good shot at all three.

Chris Christie and Marie Corfield exchange come-at-me-bros.
Get ready, District 16, for your third consecutive helping of
Marie Corfield for Assembly. Just vote for her already!

Price Tag: At least the million bucks Byrne's got sitting around from his last campaign. And please, folks, let's give Corfield some Goddamn support this time around, yeah?

District 27.

The Incumbent: Mila Jasey

Why she's weak: Of the two incumbent Democratic Assembly members in the Twenty-Seventh District, John McKeon is probably safe. He defeated his Republican challengers by 5.5% and 5.6%. While those numbers are definitely on the fringe of vulnerability, McKeon will have served 12 years in the chamber by the time of next year's election. That incumbency, combined with strong-enough showings, would be more than enough to make safe his seat even if he weren't the Assistant Majority Leader. He's been a leadership figure in the Democratic Assembly Caucus since 2004, and he has a strong base in his hometown of West Orange, where he served as mayor from 1998 to 2010, a period during which he simultaneously spent nine years on the Assembly.

Mila Jasey, on the other hand, defeated her opponents by 4.6% and 4.7%. She's in her third term, which gives her an advantage, but she's not a prominent member of the caucus and doesn't have plum committee assignments. When Ellen Steinberg challenged in the 2011 Democratic primary in the district, she was gunning for Mila Jasey's slot on the ticket. She didn't even get close to triumph, but if a local Democrat thinks Jasey is unseatable, so do the local Republicans. They didn't run a particularly strong ticket in 2011, but they should have. Democratic primary voters outnumbered Republican primary voters in the Twenty-Seventh by only a couple thousand. There's a red streak to this district, even as blue as it's tended to be.

Why she's strong: She's just not really that vulnerable. She's vulnerable enough to warrant being pretty cautious, conscious, and careful in 2013, but I'm not too worried.

Price Tag: Democrats should be prepared to approximately double their campaign spending on this race to $1.5 million. The seats aren't precarious by any means, but they need to be defended.

District 38.

The Incumbents: Connie Wagner and Tim Eustace.

Why they're weak: Connie Wagner and Tim Eustace are some vulnerable-ass Democrats in 2013. For starters, Republican primary voters actually outnumbered Democratic primary voters in the Thirty-Eighth last time around. By about a thousand voters. That doesn't necessarily say that there are more Republicans in the district, but it does tell us that there are more interested Republicans. Wagner, the only incumbent in that race, beat the third-place vote-getter by 3.9% and the fourth-place vote-getter by 4.2%. Eustace, a first-time Assembly candidate, won by even hairier margins of 2.4% and 2.7%. Wagner and Eustace better be sweating.

Also of note is that the Republican ticket was another of those botched opportunity things, where a party could have and should have run a strong slate against weak opponents, but failed. The Democrats and Republicans both missed opportunities that way in 2011, but the Republicans did it more. They won't do it a second time. Their guys in D38 last time were nobodies. They were nobodier than Marie Corfield was. And they still gave Wagner and Eustace a fight.

Why they're strong: They aren't that strong. They need BIG outside support.

Don't take it personal, guys. Nobody thought Red Squadron had a chance either.

Price Tag: Democrats in New Jersey need to be prepared to do a lot of campaign surrogacy for these two vulnerable incumbents, and spend about $2M on the race.

Why The New Jersey Assembly Matters:

As with the Senate, this is not an election that matters as much as a lot of the other ones we'll be looking at in 2013 and 2014 do. It is unlikely that the Dems lose control of either chamber, especially if the party doesn't take 2013 for granted. But the worst case scenario for the Assembly is more dire than the worst case scenario for the Senate. The Republicans could, conceivably, take control of the chamber. And regardless of who's in the Governor's chair, a Republican Assembly would be nearly impossible to work around.

Republicans in blue states like New Jersey and California are actually the architects of the intentional gridlock strategy that Mitch McConnell has employed over the last four years against President Obama. For decades, the GOP has been marginalized in blue states (New Jersey's ten-year 1990s nightmare notwithstanding.) Their response has been to pioneer strategies that deliberately sabotage the meaningful functioning of government, whether they're in the majority or the minority. Give them a majority in the Assembly and it won't matter if the Democrats hold every seat in the Senate plus the Governor's chair with a direct line to Jesus Christ.

That's not even the worst-case scenario. The worst-case scenario winnows the Democratic Senate majority to two seats and keeps Chris Christie as the governor. That might as well be a Republican takeover, especially because you just know there's some asshole in the Senate Democratic caucus itching to become important by switching sides. And with the GOP holding the tiebreaker in the Lt. Governor's position, that's all it would take.

But even if that doesn't happen, you still have this vexing issue of conservative Democrats in New Jersey. As noted earlier, if you already know you're going to be dealing with some occasional defectors, you want as much of a cushion as possible.

The current 48-32 advantage is strong. It's so strong that Democrats will be tempted to consider it unsinkable in 2013. They believe that at their peril. There are at least eight losable Democrat seats in the Assembly, and possibly nine or ten, depending on how much you like Burzichelli and McKeon. Holding those vulnerable seats, or at least most of them, while picking up those vulnerable GOP seats, is critical. The Democrats could achieve as strong a victory as a 54-26 lead in the Assembly. That's not just a supermajority; that's a veto-proof majority. Granted, a veto-proof majority means less if the Senate Dems can't reach the same threshold (27 seats, if you're counting, which is two more than my most optimistic projection), but that's a damned powerful caucus. That's a caucus that pretty much can't be stopped by a few occasional defectors.

Pictured: What's going to happen to the Democratic
majorities in New Jersey if they take this year for granted.

As before, godspeed to whoever wants to try for an upset in the more definitively red districts, but the party and the various progressive groups should not spend a dime in those races unless something dramatic happens. Meanwhile, there are of course still those 38 solid, dependable, bankable Democratic seats. You definitely want to hold onto these seats; it's not a given, but it is likely. $250,000 per seat should do it easily.

$16M for the competitive races. $9.5M to preserve what the Democrats have. Another $4.5M to keep in reserve in case some surprise comes up in one of the races. For the low low price of $31 million dollars, New Jersey Democrats and their allies can maintain their advantage in the state Assembly and maybe even increase it to unprecedented levels of control. By the way, that brings our grand total for campaign spending in the 2013 New Jersey legislative election to $63 million. That's a lot of cheese, but it'll be worth it. Also, keep in mind that there won't be a lot of elections in 2013, so Democratic fundraisers and spenders can feel a little more free to throw cash at the few races that are out there.

Pictured: Tim Eustace's next fundraising dinner.

Up next: A break from New Jersey...

The New Jersey State Legislature, Part Two: The Assembly

So having established a strategy for holding--and even expanding--our majority in the state Senate, let's continue these early stages of Blue The Nation by shifting our attention to the state Assembly.

Competitive Assembly Seats:

So these are kind of weird to hammer out, because of the way the New Jersey Assembly (and several other statewide chambers, as we'll be discussing in the future) apportion their seats. In New Jersey, they don't bother with trying to configure a bunch of Assembly districts separate from the 40 Senate ones. They go the easy route (no judgment), and just put two Assembly seats in each Senate district. Fair enough. It gets a little tough to read the tea leaves, though, because the general election is a top-two system. There aren't two separate seats, for which separate sets of candidates run. Everybody just runs against everybody, and the top two vote-getters win.

Pictured: The 2009 campaign for New Jersey's 38th District Assembly Seats.
The guy in the green didn't win, but he does deserve our respect for going his own way, color-wise.

I'll try my best. Starting with a 48-32 advantage, here are the seats the Democrats will need to work the hardest to defend and/or flip. Again, we're assuming no retirements, scandals, deaths, appointments, or other various monkey wrenches. I really don't think it's likely that the Republicans flip the chamber, but anything's possible. At the other extreme, since there are six Republican-held seats that could potentially be flipped, the Democrats have the opportunity to create a gargantuan 54-26 lead in this chamber. For those doing the math, that's more than a 2-to-1 advantage.

A final thought on the Assembly: these districts are deliberately drawn up to maximize partisan control of territory. In the 2011 election, not a single district split its Assembly representation between the two parties, although some came kind of close (and several have Assembly representatives of a different party than their Senator.) That trend is likely to continue in 2013. Given that reality, a lot of these seats are probably not as competitive as they might seem. At the same time, however, electorates can be tricky beasts. The voters of New Jersey have had time to re-evaluate who they are, and that might mean that Republicans can snatch a seat in a blue district, and it might mean that Democrats can snatch one in a red district.

District 1.

The Incumbents: The two D1 seats are currently held by Democrats. Nelson Albano has been in the Assembly since 2005, and Matthew Milam has been there since 2007.

Why they're weak: Given that they had, between the two of them, 10 years of service time, and given that they were running in a district that had been sending Democrats to the Assembly for awhile, you'd have thought they'd have a relatively easy time holding onto their seats. Not so much. Between the four candidates running, there were 88,967 votes (with two votes per ballot due to the way the elections are run.) Albano, the top vote-getter, was separated from the lowest vote-getter, Republican Suzanne Walters, by just 3,984 votes. Milam, who got the second most, only beat out the third place finisher, Republican Samuel Fiocchi, by 1,051 votes, or 1.2% of the total vote. The Democratic candidates, together, only beat the Republicans about 53-47. Hardly a commanding victory.

Albano looks the safer of the two. He beat his closest Republican challenger by about 4% of the total vote and he's got decent seniority, as he will have held his seat for eight years by the time of the 2013 election. Still, 4% isn't a lot of daylight, and the Democrats should be looking to protect him. A much bigger concern, however, is Milam. In a district in which about 45,000 ballots were cast, Milam eked out victory by just over 1,000 votes. At minimum, a little over 2,500 of Albano's voters didn't vote for Milam.

Why they're strong: Albano and Milam will both benefit from a strong District 1 ticket. On the Senate side, Jeff Van Drew (from the previous entry) is well-liked and has quite a long history in New Jersey politics. His seat is, as already mentioned, not completely safe, but it's not all that likely to be flipped, either. Look for Van Drew, Albano, and Milam to campaign together as much as possible. Van Drew isn't likely to be dragged down by the two more vulnerable Assembly members, but Albano and Milam stand to gain a lot by associating themselves with him.

Price Tag: Incredibly, Milam didn't raise a dime in 2011. That seems impossible in this day and age. But he didn't. That's not going to cut it in 2013. Republicans are only going to spend more in the coming years than they did in 2012, and you're going to see that money trickle down to the smaller races. Albano raised about $100,000. That's not going to be enough either. Although they'll benefit from strong spending on Van Drew's end, they'll also need to be making expenditures of their own. At least a million bucks needs to be shelled out by the candidates, the party, and the independent expenditures to make sure these seats stay blue.

Even white boys got to shout.

District 2.

The Incumbent: Chris Brown. Yep, that's really his name.

Why he's weak: Both of these seats are currently Republican-held. John Amodeo, who's been a D2 Assembly member since 2007, is probably safe. He beat his closest Democratic challenger by 6.2% in 2011, and he'll have racked up six years of service by the time the 2013 election rolls around. Chris Brown—not to be confused with the singer who likes to hit women, and also not to be confused with the other Chris Brown in the New Jersey Assembly, also a Republican—is more vulnerable. He hasn't particularly distinguished himself during his time in the statehouse. About 1,900 of Amodeo's voters, at minimum, didn't vote for Brown the last time around.

If everybody named Chris Brown is an asshole, then there's a really
good chance that this guy's name is Chris Brown.

Why he's strong: That's not to say Brown's going to be easy to pick off. He beat his closest Democratic rival in D2 by 4.1% in 2011, and he didn't even have the benefit of incumbency that year. He'll have that benefit this time. That's about all I got to say for the guy. I'm not saying he's weak, not like some other folks in the Assembly are, but he sure isn't strong either.

"Welcome to the 2012 Convention of People Named Chris Brown!"

Who can beat him: Damon Tyner, the top Democratic vote-getter in 2011, wouldn't be a bad choice. He's a hot-shot rising star in the New Jersey legal community and performed pretty well in the 2011 election. Running out the guy who just lost two years ago might feel like a mistake, though, to some Jersey Dems. So who do they turn to? I don't have the faintest idea who they will turn to, but I know who they should draft: Patrick J. Kennedy.

Incredibly, there is currently an adult Kennedy, of sound mind and body, who's already served quite a few terms as a Rhode Island Congressman, who has somehow been allowed to not be currently active in politics. This is a tragedy that must be rectified. Kennedys are a precious natural resource for the Democrats that should not be squandered. Patrick J. Kennedy is the son of the illustrious lion of the Senate himself, the late Ted Kennedy.

Now it's true that Patrick has got a looooong history of substance abuse problems, although they appear to be behind him, and he suffers from bipolar disorder. He's also apparently not taking his medication, having replaced it with a physical fitness regimen, which is not, as far as I know, something that the medical community would endorse as a feasible treatment plan. They also might be a bit gun-shy around the residency requirement. While Kennedy could definitely prove that he's resided within the Second District for the required two years, he did vote in Rhode Island in 2012. It was just that sort of murkiness around the residency requirement that torpedoed Carl Lewis' run for state Senate in 2011.

What's this we heard about a Convention of People Named Chris Brown?

Reasons Kennedy might not accept being drafted by the Dems: He appears to have just decided not to be a politician anymore. This, of course, is the biggest obstacle to getting him in the race. Those close to him have said that he lost his heart for politics after the death of his father. But that was then and this is now, and it's an exciting—but difficult—time for the Democratic Party. I believe that if the New Jersey Democrats made a strong pitch, Kennedy would answer the call. And I think that if he ran for Assembly, he'd win.

He'd make a dent in the traditionally Republican areas of the district like Brigantine and the purple-but-leaning-blue Atlantic City. In so doing, he'd probably also boost his ticketmates—and Whelan will need every boost he can get. He'd also be able to bring his considerable personal finances to bear on his own race and on the races of his ticketmates. Patrick Kennedy makes all the sense in the world for the Democratic ticket in the Second District.

Who's my pick for the final slot on the Democratic ticket? If it isn't Tyner, the options look like Atlantic City Mayor Lorenzo Langford and Atlantic City 2nd Ward Councilman Martin Small. Langford is seen as relatively popular and responsive to his constituents, and he's got a good profile statewide. On the other hand, he's been savaged by Christie in the media for his response to Hurricane Sandy, and although it appears that Christie's charge that Langford told his citizens not to evacuate is unfounded, it remains to be seen whether Langford will be damaged by the claim. Perhaps more importantly, Langford and Whelan don't get along AT ALL. They've frequently clashed publicly and privately. They've run against one another. They've endorsed opposing primary candidates. They've fought bitterly, and everybody knows it. Even if you could get them to kiss and make up for a unified D2 ticket, would the voters buy it?

"Wait wait wait...are we ALL named Chris Brown?"

Small, on the other hand, is Whelan's guy. Whelan backed Small in the bitter primary contest for the mayor's office in 2009. If the local Democratic machine is split into the Langford faction and the Whelan faction, Small is firmly in the latter encampment. This is meaningful, because even if Langford is the better candidate for the Assembly race, you want to protect your incumbent above everything else. Langford could hurt Whelan by being on the ticket, and he might even drag down the entire Democratic ticket to defeat. Although Small had to deal with some ethics charges after the 2009 primary, he was cleared on all counts—and besides, it's Atlantic City. Atlantic City was built on Nucky Johnson's corrupt Republican machine politics. I think they can look past it.

So although I think that, in a vacuum, Langford is my preferred candidate, I'd rather see Small get the nod due to the way the legislative elections are contested, with three-member partisan tickets, in New Jersey. (If the Dems want to avoid taking sides in the Atlantic City rivalry at all, of course, they can just tap Tyner again.)

Price Tag: In 2011, state Democratic leaders made a significant effort to support their candidates in D2. They'll probably do that again. But campaign surrogacy won't be enough. Financial support will be key, and so will drafting good candidates. Remember, this district is already a Republican target due to Jim Whelan's vulnerability on the Senate side of the ticket. Brown will benefit from a lot of money and support being shoveled into the campaign of whoever challenges Whelan. Democrats and their allies need to answer in kind. These races are going to be expensive as hell. I hope the Democrats and their allies plan to spend about $4 million on the D2 Assembly races. If they do that, and if they run an Assembly ticket of Kennedy/Small or Kennedy/Tyner, I think they can steal an Assembly seat and maybe even sweep the district.

Actually, this guy's name isn't Chris Brown. It's Blake.

District 3.

The Incumbent: Celeste Riley.

Why she's weak: John Burzichelli, an Assembly member for the district since 2001, is probably safe. Although he defeated his closest Republican rival by just a hair over 5% of the total vote, he's weathered enough elections at this point to be considered a safe bet. His district likes him and they're going to vote him back into office. Celeste Riley, on the other hand, should get ready for a fight. Riley's tenure only goes back to 2009, and she only fended off her closest Republican challenger by 3.8% of the total vote. What's particularly concerning here is that while about 260 of top Republican vote-getter Bob Villare's ballots didn't go to ticketmate Domenick DiCicco, over 1200 of Burzichelli's ballots didn't go to Riley. The imbalance there suggests that while there might have been a few voters pulling the lever for a split ticket, there were a lot of voters who liked Burzichelli but were so unenthusiastic about Riley that they just didn't vote for a second candidate. That's not good.

Why she's strong: Regardless of all this, Riley probably is one of the less vulnerable incumbents in these competitive races. At the top of her district's ticket is current Senate President Stephen Sweeney, who has won a series of decisive victories in his campaigns. Even if Sweeney runs for Frank Lautenberg's Senate seat or for Governor, both ideas that have a lot of traction around New Jersey, the party machine will probably see to it that District 3 stays solidly blue.

Price Tag: A million bucks should do the trick.

District 7.

The Incumbents: Herb Conaway and Troy Singleton.

"I mean, he doesn't even make good music! Michael Jackson made Thriller,
Bobby Brown was in New Edition, John Lennon was in The Beatles...what
has Chris Brown even done that would warrant support from anyone, ever?"

Why they're weak: This pair of Democratic incumbents should be ready for war in 2013. Conaway was the top vote-getter the last time around, and he only beat the fourth-place vote-getter, Republican Chris Halgas, by 2.3%. Singleton, the second-place vote-getter, only beat the third-place vote-getter, Republican James Keenan, by 1.4%. Going into the election, redistricting had made it a split incumbency, with two Democratic incumbents and one Republican. The Republican and one of the Democrats didn't seek re-election.

The lack of a Republican incumbent may well have been the decisive factor in handing the purple district to the Democrats, but Conaway and Singleton can't expect to ride incumbency to the win in 2013. One big reason they can't is that the incumbent state Senator for the district, Diane Allen, is a Republican who can be expected to work hard for their Republican challengers. And her coattails are strong: while the 2011 Assembly races in the district were nailbiters, Allen coasted to re-election by 14 points.

Why they're strong: Because they're pretty good at politics and campaigning. Their vulnerability is not so much about who they are as it is about where they are. This is a tough district. They're knuckleball pitchers in a hitter-friendly ballpark. They just need to show up and do their jobs every single day of the campaign. They can win this thing just like they won it last time. And this isn't just me being rah-rah. See the previous entry, where I pretty much called the race for Democrat Jim Whelan's generic Republican opponent.

Price Tag: This district will be heavily targeted by the New Jersey GOP in the general election. The New Jersey Democrats had better be prepared to return heavy fire. Conaway and Singleton spent about $1.5 million on their races in 2011. They, and their allies, should be prepared to double that in 2013.

District 8.

The Weird Situation: Elections in the Eighth District were a mess in 2011. First, one of the Republican incumbents resigned after the primary due to accusations of racism against his wife. Then both of the Democrat primary winners dropped out of the race. All three candidates were replaced on the ballot by their respective parties. One of those replacements was the other Republican Chris Brown. The Republicans won the election handily.

The Most Interesting Chris Brown In The World.
"I don't always give a shit about other people, but when I do, I don't."

A couple things. This is definitely a redder district. There were almost twice as many Republican primary voters as Democratic primary voters. The Republicans each garnered about 20,000 votes and the Democrats each garnered about 12,000. Doesn't look like a close race, nor does it look like a close district. However, it should be noted that the Democratic Party had to completely switch gears midway through the campaign when it lost both its candidates. Sure, the Republicans lost one too, but they were the incumbent party here. The Democrats were challenging, which is already an uphill fight.

If I were the New Jersey Democrats, I'd eschew the usual method of trying to find two good candidates and focus on drafting one exceptional one. He or she would need to be a strong campaigner, and—although I don't usually like this strategy—he or she would need to be more of a centrist, given the redness of this district. Even in 2011, with the district's Democratic ticket in disarray, Democrats were able to muster about 12,000 down-the-ticket ballots. A strong candidate here could pick up another 4,000-5,000 votes to make the race interesting.

Who to Draft: The trouble is that there aren't a lot of high-profile players on the Democratic bench in the Eighth District. The aforementioned Carl Lewis might be the perfect candidate here, but that would of course necessitate him not running for the district's Senate seat. There are pros and cons either way on that, but let's assume that Lewis is the Dems' strongest candidate in the district, and that the strongest candidate should take on not only the biggest race, but the weakest Republican incumbent. So Lewis is out for the Assembly races.

Franco Harris, a beloved New Jersey-born sports icon, has roots in the district and has become politically active in the last decade, but he's based out of Pennsylvania now. While I think the New Jersey Democrats would be well-served to try and lure him back home—he's likely to have much more cachet as a politician in New Jersey than he would in Pennsylvania—they can't get him in time for the 2013 election. Philanthropist Earl W. Stafford also has roots in the district, and it's a sin that the Democrats haven't gotten him involved in politics yet, but his residency is murky-leaning-problematic. He basically is a Virginian now, but he does maintain a residence in the district. Hillary Clinton won the New York Senate seat with a residency status much less clear than that. Still, it's not much to bank on, and I doubt his name has come up in New Jersey Democratic discussions.

So, who are we left with? Who's got a high profile, a decent political campaigning background, and an ability to play to the center? ...sigh...Dina Matos. Formerly Dina McGreevey. Ex-wife of former Governor Jim McGreevey. Told you I'd be mentioning that guy again. McGreevey was the guy who resigned after it was discovered that he gave a high-level job to a gay lover. Dina Matos is his ex-wife. You can Google her yourself, but suffice it to say that I find her a bit distasteful.

Man, you can tell she's a total Chris Brown. It's in the eyes.

She has profile, yes, but not all publicity is good publicity. Not in politics. She has a background in campaigning on a statewide level, and probably has contacts. She's hinted, occasionally, at political ambition. I know she can play to the center because she's on record as against gay marriage. Can she win? ...with enough money, yeah, sure. The Eighth District is one big sack of chaos anyway. Dina Matos. Two million bucks. Give it a shot. Ugh, let's move on. Up next: the Eleventh District, and much much more.

Also in the next installment of Blue The Nation: 100% fewer Chris Brown jokes.