U.S. Senate
Massachusetts – Class II Senate seat – TBD, probably sometime in early June
This is the big one. Out of all the special elections that are in the cards for 2013, this is the one that truly is completely up in the air. John Kerry will almost certainly be leaving his Massachusetts Senate seat, which he has held for 28 years, to become America's next Secretary of State. This is what Republicans were hoping for when they attacked the nomination of Susan Rice. You'll recall that the last time there was a special election for a Massachusetts Senate seat, Republican Scott Brown won. You'll also recall that Brown just lost that very same seat, not three years later.
Winnability: On the one hand, it's absolutely winnable. It's beyond winnable. It shouldn't even be a discussion. But Martha Coakley botched the 2010 special election campaign so badly that she accomplished the unthinkable: she managed to lose to a Republican in a statewide race in Massachusetts. Once a guy has the aroma of incumbency on him, even after he loses that incumbency, he automatically becomes a serious contender in the future, and that means Brown has to be reckoned with in 2013. Just as frustrating for Democrats is the possibility—nay, probability—of a very nasty primary fight for the Democratic nomination. Brown will waltz easily to the finish line of the Republican primary, but the Democrats don't have any easy answers on their side.
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| "You smell that? It's the aroma of incumbency." |
Who's on the bench: Everybody. Paul Kirk, who was appointed to Ted Kennedy's seat as an interim caretaker Senator. Coakley, who ruined everything with her inept and patrician approach to campaigning in 2009 and 2010. Ed Markey, a progressive about whom I hear wonderful things from my New England friends. Stephen Lynch, who has strong backing from organized labor but is pro-life. Michael Capuano, who lost to Coakley in the primary for the 2010 special election. Ben Affleck, who you know from movies. Former Representative Marty Meehan. Ted Kennedy, Jr., the son of the original Ted Kennedy (but not a resident of the state.) Joe Kennedy III, another member of the illustrious Kennedys of Massachusetts. A few others.
In my view, sitting Governor Deval Patrick is the best choice. I've said that before (not on this blog, but in conversation), and my position is bolstered by the Emerson College poll that came out a few days ago. Patrick is the only person in the crowded Democratic primary field with a lead over Brown in the early polling (48-43, for those keeping score.) If Patrick ran for and received the Democratic nomination, I think I'd call him the odds-on favorite to win the special election. The trouble is that he doesn't seem interested in doing so.
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| Nope, not that Stephen Lynch. |
The next best performer in the ECPS poll is Vicki Kennedy, widow of Ted. Ted, of course, held Massachusetts' other Senate seat for a bajillion years before becoming the first Kennedy to die in office of non-bullet-related illnesses. Then Scott Brown held it for a couple years, and Elizabeth Warren will be taking over in January. Now I know I said I'm a Deval guy, but perhaps it's been too long since Massachusetts was represented by a Kennedy in the Senate. (It will, by the way, be represented by a Kennedy in the House in the coming term.) Vicki's only a Kennedy by marriage, but Joe Kennedy III just started his first term in the House and Joe Kennedy II seems pretty steadfast in his refusal to return to politics. Vicki only trails Brown in the ECPS poll by a 46-40 margin, which can be overcome in a blue state like Massachusetts.
Importance: Extremely important. We can't lose a Senate seat. Republicans want this so badly. It makes their goal of flipping the Senate in 2014 much more attainable if they cut into our lead.
Price Tag: $30 million. Hey, a grand don't come for free.
So here's the thing about these first two state specials: their outcomes are basically established. And even if they weren't foregone conclusions, it's already January. Not in a week do we shift the electorate. I wrote these things like almost a month ago. But let's go through with them anyway, because I think they make some fair strategic points.
State
Legislatures
So here's the thing about these first two state specials: their outcomes are basically established. And even if they weren't foregone conclusions, it's already January. Not in a week do we shift the electorate. I wrote these things like almost a month ago. But let's go through with them anyway, because I think they make some fair strategic points.
California
- 4th Senate district – January 8, 2013
Republican incumbent Doug LaMalfa resigned shortly
before the 2012 election so that the top-two primary to replace him
could be consolidated with the general. California—so nice to
finally be writing about the state in which I live—does its state
and local primaries in the top-two style. That means it's an open
primary, and the top two advance to a one-on-one election. The only
exception to that rule is if a single candidate garners an outright
majority of primary votes. In that case, the candidate automatically
wins the full election.
Winnability: In the top-two primary to replace
LaMalfa, Republican frontrunner Jim Nielsen very nearly did just
that, pulling in 49.8% of the voters. In fact, pretty much the only
reason he didn't succeed was that another candidate had an R next to
his name: Dan Logue. Guess which R candidate appeared first on the
ballot? Dan Logue. Down-the-line Republican voters just went for the
first R candidate they saw and gave Logue 11.5% of the votes in an
election Logue had dropped out of two months earlier. This is
one of the problems that can arise when you have a primary coinciding
with a general. Those voters probably thought it was just another
page of the general election ballot and voted for (one of) the
Republican candidate(s) in the race.
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| I don't have time for this. Everybody with an R next to 'em, that's who I'm voting for. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that. |
They successfully kept the seat vacant for the time
being, but it looks very likely to stay red. It's been
Republican-held since 1993. Since 1966, Democrats have only held it
for two terms, which were not consecutive. Since 1922, Democrats have
only held it for four terms (two of which were consecutive.) It's a
Republican seat. The GOP has a 41-34 advantage in voter registration.
20% of the electorate in the district has (officially, anyway) No
Party Preference. If one assumes they break down roughly the same as
the general populace in the district, and then accounts for other
minor parties and how their voters are likely to vote (if they vote)
in the full election, we get a rough idea of an electorate favoring
Republicans by a margin of 54-46. It's not an insurmountable sort of
advantage, but it's the kind that requires a lot of things to go
right to be overcome, especially in a district whose electorate was
66% white. The next largest ethnicity is Hispanics, who only make up
20% of the voter rolls.
In the top-two primary, Nielsen scored 49.8%. Mickey
Harrington, the Democrat, only pulled in 27.7%. The third-place
vote-getter was Logue. Altogether, voters gave conservative
candidatess 63.8% to liberal candidates' 36.2%. Liberals didn't get
their message out too well, because they severely underperformed what
their expectations should have been, unless ALL of that NPP 20% of
the electorate are secret conservatives. So-called “independents”
are more likely to be secret conservatives than they are to be secret
progressives (or even than they are to be actually centrists), but
ALL of them? I doubt it. So in a district in which liberal candidates
should have at least earned a total vote share somewhere in the low
40s, they ended up in the mid 30s.
How it might be won: On the other hand, the full
election will probably have fewer ballots cast than the
primary did. That's because the primary coincided with a general
election. The special will just be a random Tuesday in January. If
California Democrats were to mount an aggressive get-out-the-vote
campaign, the results might be interesting. Thing is, you're trying
to mobilize the left while not reminding the right that there's still
an election here. How do we do that?
GOTV efforts should be all ground-based. Knock doors,
call phones. I think lit drops and mailers are a bad idea, because
they're visible to everybody in the neighborhood. They're not smart
missiles, they're carpet-bombings. If the idea is to raise election
awareness only among voters on the left, you don't want to go with
something that visible and likely to remind everybody in the district
that this isn't over.
So do you run commercials? Print ads? Billboards? This
is dicey, because like mailers and drop-lit, they remind everybody
that there's an election, not just your target audience, no matter
how well you microtarget them in specific publications, stations, and
areas. But they're also really good for just keeping a name
out there in people's minds. I'm mostly of a mind that Harrington
should just have a bunch of billboards that say Mickey Harrington and
show a good picture of him. No mention of the state Senate, of
elections, of Democrats, of anything. Just make people think about
him.
What's extra tricky for both sides about this one is
that nobody's going to be paying much attention to the election
because it's about to be Christmas and New Year's. Now on the one
hand, I think that means Mickey Harrington needs to buy a lot of poor
children a lot of Christmas presents with a lot of publicity. On the
other hand, it also means that it's going to be hard to reach voters.
And it's going to be even harder to get campaign volunteers, at least
local ones.
That's why the answer here is to bus them in. Pretty much
just go to San Francisco and find every able-bodied person with a
political bent who hasn't left town for the holidays. Because if you
haven't left SF for the holidays, you don't give a shit about the
holidays. And if you don't give a shit about the holidays, you're
probably a Democrat. And you're exactly who we need to work this
special election. We'll bus you up there, we'll cover your room and
board, we'll even give you a cool T-shirt!
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| These folks are already packed up. That's an entire campaign office packed into one truck. Staff, printers, fax machines, the works. |
Importance: Not
very important. We already have a 29-10 advantage in the chamber
without picking this one up. That's already two more seats than we
even need for a supermajority. Obviously shit happens, and if the
Dems completely play themselves with various appointments,
retirements, resignations, etc., without proper preparation, then
yeah, we could lose that supermajority. I'm not expecting that to
happen. If this were an Assembly seat, then I'd be a lot more focused
on it.
Price Tag: $15K?
Do we have $15K for Mickey Harrington?
Georgia
- 11th state Senate district – January 8, 2013
Republican John Bulloch resigned on December 6, 2012. He
didn't give a reason, but he had been battling illness. He is
well-remembered for legalizing Sunday alcohol sales in Georgia.
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| "And that, my fellow Americans, is change we can believe in." |
Winnability:
Tough.
Bulloch is a conservative, more conservative than his state. His
district is slightly less conservative than his state, but not much:
Mitt Romney won Georgia 69-31, but he only won the 11th
state Senate district 61-39. By the way, Bulloch was unopposed in
2012. Who will run in the open primary to replace him? So far, from
the GOP side, we're hearing names like Mike Keown, a former member of
the state House and a failed Congressional candidate; Dean Burke, a
physician and gubernatorial appointee to some board of something
medical; and Brad Hughes, a hardcore conservative activist who
resigned from the office of the Georgia Secretary of State to run for
the seat after “prayerful” consideration. (Yes, I am making fun
of him for using that word, because it's dumb.)
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| "Clearly you didn't pray that hard about it, guy, because if you had, you'd have noticed my fucking response. Here, let me reiterate it for you one more time." |
Keown is the party machine's choice, because he's
recently held elected office, he's got name recognition, and he's got
a campaign infrastructure that's only lain fallow for a couple years.
He's a good choice for them, and if he's one of the top two
vote-getters in the primary, then I don't see the Dems knocking him
off. Burke is just some dude and he's got no shot. Hughes could be a
Todd Akin, delivering the seat to the Dems, but he could as easily be
a Jim DeMint, and I mean that in the sense of “Tea Party favorite
wins big,” not “resigns early.”
Southwest
Georgia, as a region, is seen as penetrable for Democrats. If you're
looking for blue counties in Georgia that aren't just based around
Atlanta, Athens, and Savannah, there's a nearly-unbroken belt of them
stretching from Richmond at the Eastern border to Early down in the
Southwest, bordering Alabama. But by far the largest blue area is
Southwest Georgia. When Keown ran against Sanford Bishop in the 2nd
Congressional district—aka the Southwestern part of Georgia—he
lost by almost 30 points. It should be noted, however, that in the
areas that make up the 11th
state Senate district, he won by 20 points.
All of this is complicated by the state of the Georgia
Republican Party, which frankly is one big hot mess. It makes
Democrats look organized and well-disciplined. The last two years, in
the Georgia Senate, have been insane. There were periods—not of
insignificant length—during which the Governor and the Speaker of
the Georgia House literally didn't know who was in charge of the
chamber, and hence who to negotiate with on legislation. It all
started when Tea Party darling Chip Rogers organized a massive coup
against Lt. Governor Casey Cagle. They stripped him of his control of
the Senate—which is mandated by the Georgia Constitution—and gave
it to a six-member committee.
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| Pictured: Lt. Governor Casey Cagle responds to the actions of Chip Rogers. |
So
it came to be that the Georgia Republicans finally became the Kansas
Republicans—bitterly divided between moderates and conservatives.
But whereas Kansas Republicans have tended to have a bit of gentility
to the hostility, Georgia Republicans were raucous, angry, and wild.
These divisions won't soon be forgotten or forgiven. If the Georgia
Democrats were a bit more relevant these days, they might be able to
exploit the tension. Winning one or more of the several special
elections in 2013 might help with that. Don't hold your breath
though; the Georgia GOP, assuming it holds onto the special election
seats in January, is poised to claim a supermajority in the chamber.
That doesn't speak well to the Democrats' abilities in the state.
They were campaigning against a political organization in complete
and utter disarray, and they lost
seats.
In
both chambers.
Weep for humanity.
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| The abject failure of the Georgia Democratic Party makes Jesus so depressed he has to draw a hot bath and drown his sorrows in a pint of Ben & Jerry's. |
And they've lost their chance, at least for now. Rogers
resigned his leadership of the caucus and his Senate seat. The
moderates have ascended to control of the Senate and are rebuilding
relations with the Lt. Governor and the Governor, as well as with the
House. The party looks united again, and while there are cracks
behind the gilding, the Dems missed a huge chance to take back
control of a state they owned for 130 years.
Who's
on the bench: ...and
therein lies the problem. There are no people on the bench in this
district. Popular Democratic state House member Winfred Dukes is ever
so achingly close to being in this Senate district, but he's just a
smidge outside. In fact, part of his House district (Miller and
Seminole Counties) is
in
this Senate district. But he lives in Dougherty County, which is in
Senate District 12. Inside the Eleventh Senate District, however,
there is not a single House seat occupied by a Democrat. On short
notice, with a roster spot in a sudden special election to fill, your
bench consists pretty much solely of the people you have on the next
rung down in the political heirarchy.
But here, there's nobody. The redistricters drew an evil
map. If you take a look at how they constructed it, it's quite
impressive. You know that big cluster of blue counties in
Southwestern Georgia I mentioned? All but two of them are shoved into
one big district, the Twelfth. The remaining two are Sumter, of which
half is actually also stuffed into that same district, and Early,
which just so happens to be the third most populous of the cluster,
and is shunted off into District 11. Dougherty, by far the most
populous and by far the bluest of the cluster—and also the place
where Dukes lives—is kept in District 12, where The Dukes of Winfred can't
challenge the redness of the Eleventh.
Importance:
In
the sense that the once-mighty Georgia Democrats have basically been
reduced to irrelevance and a good way to reverse the hemorrhage of
power they've experienced over the last decade and a half would be to
steal a Republican seat? It's very important. In the sense that there
is fucking nobody on the bench in this district, like not even a
popular mayor or two? Yeah, don't waste your money. Look, no one
wants every race to be winnable more than me, but this seat just
can't be had.
Price
Tag: If
you want to win this race, with a no-name candidate, you're gonna
need to spend about $10M, and you're gonna need to find a way to
spend it by the first full week of January. Good luck.
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| Pictured: Not enough money for a Democrat to win the Eleventh State Senate seat in Georgia. |
Pennsylvania
- 42nd state House district – date TBD but likely early
2013
Matt Smith, the outgoing occupant of the 42nd
state House of Representatives seat in Pennsylvania, ran two
campaigns in 2012. On the one hand, he ran successfully to hold onto
his seat in the House. On the other hand, he ran successfully to
steal a state Senate seat from the Republicans in the 37th
District. 2013 will mark the first time a Democrat has occupied the
seat since 1980, and he'll be only the second Democrat to occupy it
in its history. The Republican incumbent, John Pippy, resigned amid a
haze of rumors and innuendo about political corruption. One of his
former Republican colleagues, Jane Orie, had just been sentenced to
prison for several criminal convictions, and some folks thought Pippy
might have something similar in his future when he abruptly resigned
a few months before his term expired.
This means, by the way, that Smith won the same way the
Democrats won in 2006. Whereas the 2008 wave election was about
Barack Obama, hope, and change, the 2006 wave election was about
George W. Bush sucks and Republicans are all either committing crimes
or having sex with rent boys. Nancy Pelosi campaigned, throughout the
election cycle, on “draining the swamp” in the House of
Representatives.
There's a lesson to be learned from 2006 and 2008:
don't confuse a wave election with a sea change. We kicked ass in
2006 because of our opponents' mistakes. We kicked ass in 2008
because we had the strongest candidate since George Goddamn
Washington at the top of our ticket. We won in 2012 for a mixture of
both those reasons. But Matt Smith didn't singlehandedly change the
constituency of his new Senate seat, and he'd do well to remember
that.
Anyway, apparently a guy can't hold two legislative
seats at once, so Smith will be moving on to the state Senate and
leaving his seat vacant in the state House. Special election time!
Winnability:
OK. Smith's House district is a
smaller chunk of his new Senate district (and also of somebody else's
Senate district.) He won his House race unopposed, and he's held it
since 2007. Prior to that it was Republican for 10 years. Prior to
that it was Democratic for six years. Prior to that it was Republican
for 22 years. Prior to that it didn't exist. In the last three
elections, Smith has won the seat by margins of 30.8, 19.6, and 100
(unopposed in 2012.) Additionally, in the 2010 district primary,
there were significantly more Democratic voters than Republican ones.
Looks pretty well blue, yeah? Yeah. This baby is blue. Furthermore,
when the new legislative district maps go into effect in time for the
2014 election, it's going to be even bluer, which probably means good
Republican candidates will be deterred from going for it now.
Who's
on the bench: I'm going to say
Greg Fajt is the best guy the Democrats have here. (By the way, his
name is pronounced “fight.” This is wonderful news.) From 1991 to
1996, he actually held this seat. From 2003-2007, he was the state's
Secretary of Revenue. From 2007-2009, he was the chief of staff for
Governor Ed Rendell. He became the chairman of the Pennsylvania
Gaming Control Board in 2009 and is currently a commissioner in the
same body. In other words, dude knows his way around Pennsylvania
politics. In an already-blueish seat that he's held once before, he
makes good sense as a candidate, possibly one who could eventually be
drafted into a run for Congress.
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| Pictured: What a guy with a name like "Greg Fight" oughtta look like. |
Local politician and former Mt. Lebanon Commissioner Dan
Miller is apparently the early frontrunner, but with no said date for
the election, all that means is that he's the only guy publicly
seeking the Democratic nomination. Parties will be selecting their
candidates in this election, as is common for special elections, so
the Democrats don't really have to worry about constituents here.
Assuming they hold this seat in the special—which is a pretty
reasonable assumption—they'll be holding it for awhile, because
it's only getting bluer come 2014.
Importance:
Pretty important. Here's a
brief primer on the last seven elections for the Pennsylvania state
House of Representatives. In 2000, the GOP gained two seats to take a
104-99 advantage. With various special elections, they pushed that to
106-97 by the end of the session. In 2002, they gained even more,
widening the lead to 110-93. One of their seats changed hands
mid-session, but no sooner had the Democrats narrowed the gap to
109-94 than Republicans took another seat back in 2004, again
establishing a 110-93 advantage. Again, the Dems captured a seat
mid-session to close the gap to 109-94.
But it was the big Democratic wave of 2006 that finally
turned the tide. The Dems picked up eight seats in 2006, giving them
a slim 102-101 majority in the chamber. It was their first majority
in the House in quite some time, and they only added to it in 2008's
Democratic wave, opening up a 104-99 majority. In a sign of things to
come, however, they lost two seats right back mid-session. Going into
the 2010 Republican wave contest with their advantage pared back down
to 102-101, they lost 11 seats to fall behind 112-91. That brings us
up to 2012. Going in, the Dems were down 110-91, with two seats
vacant. The Dems improved by two seats, but they're still down
110-93. That's a 17-seat deficit.
That means this is an important race, in the sense that
the Dems cannot lose any more ground. They hold 46% of the seats in
the Senate and about the same proportion in the House. If they want
to get control of the General Assembly, they can't lose seats. On the
other hand, the importance of this is race is dimmed by the fact that
the Democrats already have a pretty good shot at holding it. As long
as they don't completely blow it in the candidate-selection process,
they'll keep it now and for the foreseeable future.
Price
Tag: I'll
say $500K.
All
of the remaining special elections, at this point in time, appear to
be either Democratic locks or GOP locks. I know I profiled some races
that were unwinnable or unloseable, but I did so to make broader
points about the states in which they're being held, or about special
elections in general. Updates as they become necessary and/or
available.
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