Posted on 12/10/2010 5:21:12 AM PST by Clintonfatigued
Every year, I look back and nominate a number of politicians, campaigns and politically related entities as the “best,” “worst” or even “weirdest” of the cycle. I’m doing it again this year, because — let’s be honest — it’s a way of combining political analysis with personal animosity.
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Yes, that would be the easiest call, since they’re both freshmen, but it would make it much more difficult to come up with a 12-4 GOP map.
CA: I’m not sure if they’ll lose a seat (other prognosticators seem unsure as well). It’s clear the Dems are overrepresented (one source said they got 45% of the vote this time, but only 35% or so of the seats. Indeed, we didn’t win a single Dem seat, though I suspect fraud may have cost us at least 2 or 3, the Vidak & Harmer races at minimum). But what will this redistricting board truly do ? My worry is we end up new, weak RINOs (think Abel Maldonado) while the Dems are free to continue to move as hard-Stalinist as can be in their urban nutter districts. Less than useless.
CO: No, the state will not gain a seat. I suspect the lines may end up status quo, especially in the absence of a GOP Governor. At best, we still should’ve gotten a 5R-2D deal out of it in the past decade.
FL: One source I saw said it will only gain 1 seat, and that may have to go for a Hispanic seat in the Orlando area (whether we can make it GOP is another question — as of now, no Hispanic Democrat has yet to be elected to federal office in FL, a record I hope remains intact for years to come).
IL: Yeah, this is one where we could get screwed quite badly. However, since we know in IL that state politics aren’t Dem vs. GOP but Combiner vs. anti-Combiner, you could see some backroom deals made. I can’t imagine Phil Hare making a comeback, since he was simply a very damaged candidate and unsound individual. Chopping up the current seat may be more likely. One source said Bob Dold’s 10th may also be an obvious top target for elimination or drastic reconfiguration (of course, if Dold ends up a Kirk clone, I won’t shed a tear), and Roskam may also find his seat made more Dem.
IN: If Donnelly sees his seat made GOP enough to not bother to run, he could conceivably take a shot at running for the Senate (and I expect Lugar to lose in an ugly primary, which would be Donnelly’s only shot). One source said that it is possible to merge the districts of Andre X and Pete Visclosky’s into one for a real contorted Gary-to-Indy seat, which would be majority Black (and favor Andre). If we can get an 8R-1D delegation, why not give it a shot ?
LA: Landry, yes. He seems the most endangered. But a big question begs what the “new” district will look like in having to augment NOLA’s 2nd up towards Baton Rouge. If more Whites are placed into it, Cedric Richmond could have a potential contest. If not, it will make the current 6th with Bill Cassidy a safe GOP seat by removing enough offending Democrats. Might be a better idea, anyway.
TN: Well, now that we scored such incredible gains in my state in one shot, the redrawing almost seems like an afterthought (it also showed how tenuous the hold was for the Democrats up to this point, using a combination of gerrymandering and power of incumbency, added with a dash of weak GOP nobodies that we often threw up against the former incumbents). I’d love to see us squeeze out an 8R-1D delegation (giving me a Republican member for the first time in my lifetime, and indeed since the 1872 elections), but that could be problematic.
Districts 1-4 merely should be straightened out a bit and more contiguous as they were prior to the 1970s when fearful Dems saw what was going to happen before long. 6, 7 & 8 need to also be made a bit more contiguous. The 7th has rather superceded the 4th in its grotesqueness. The western end (East Memphis) needs to be chopped off and placed into the 8th where the folks there will be much happier having a West Tennessean rather than Nashvillian as their member. With that done (and the 9th can’t be touched, although I’d make it more Black and give as many of the remaining GOP areas to the 8th), we could decide on whether to take the risk on attempting to slice Nashville in sections to place in the 6th and 7th while creating a new 5th.
I suggested the incoming Speaker Beth Harwell as a possible candidate for a reconfigured 5th (indeed, by taking out certain Dem sections of Nashville and placing them into the 6th & 7th where they’d be outvoted by suburbanites, the moderate Harwell could be positioned to defeat Jim Cooper, and as a first-tier candidate, she’d get a higher % of the Dem & Indy vote along with at least a 40% bedrock GOP vote). A swing of 10% against Cooper could win her the race even under the current lines, and a nobody had the nomination against him this year. However, she’d probably prefer the Speakership to being a newbie backbencher in DC.
SC: Also not mentioned is that it may indeed get its 7th seat for the first time in 80 years, but while one source said the GOP might try to draw a 6th GOP seat, I think that given the demographics of the state, the VRA would require a 2nd majority Black seat (most likely coming out of a good chunk of the existing 5th and and 2nd districts centered on Columbia, which would have the positive effect of making those hyper-GOP, while the problematic parts of Charleston in the 1st would then go into Clyburn’s 6th). Other than that, I don’t know how we could draw a sixth GOP seat without potentially endangering at least 3 of our current incumbents with already uncomfortably high Black (Dem) percentages. A bad anti-GOP backlash year could turn our 5R-1D majority into a 4D-3R (or 2R) one. It almost ended up even split in 2008 when we nearly lost the 1st.
WA: Also not mentioned, they appear to gain a 10th seat, though I believe an independent commission draws the lines there (?) That may go to King County (hence Dem), but would shore up Dave Reichert’s iffy seat.
MO: It is apparently just on the line of dropping a seat, but one of the 3 remaining Dems is likely to get the axe. If they leave St. Louis alone, the 4th and 5th/6th would be combined out in KC, and now with Skelton gone, Emanuel Cleaver would be finished as he has better than a 40% bloc in that seat already opposed to him (frankly, even if they leave it alone, it will still have to be augmented, and that favors us before long, for which I’m sure the late Dick Bolling is spinning in his grave at the thought of). The biggest pop decline is in the Clay legacy seat, and that will have to be shored up at the expense of Rusty Carnahan’s 3rd (apparently at the rate the 1st is going, it won’t be majority minority much longer). Ultimately, the 1st and 3rd may have to be merged into one, which should be interesting to see if Carnahan decides to run against Clay in a primary. Carnahan can’t afford to have any Dem sections removed without ending his House career (as he only barely held on by a few thousand votes or so last month). In any event, it will be nice to see one (or more) of that obnoxious troika excised from Congress.
NV: Not mentioned, but it will gain a seat, and that will almost automatically be in Clark County. The “prediction” is the Dem leg will try to make it a 2nd Dem seat (which would make Heck’s district safe GOP, provided they don’t try to slice and dice it), however, it strikes me that LV sometimes has a low voter turnout (note the 1st district), and it might not necessarily equate to a Dem seat, especially if it is a high Hispanic % (due to all the service industry employers). The Dems similarly tried to do precisely that in creating the 3rd district in 2002, and it blew up in their faces (indeed, it would only go Dem once for 2008, and right back to us again in ‘10).
UT: Which also will gain its overdue 4th seat in 2012. The big question is whether the GOP will try to rid itself of the pesky Jim Matheson, but attempts have failed so far. It may be better to draw us 3 seats out of the heavy GOP areas outside of SLC proper and give Matheson a SLC-based seat that could be winnable for us once he vacates it. He already has a huge chunk of the state with his current seat representing an area that has no business sending any Democrat to DC.
In PA Barlettla could use some shoring up, that could complicate efforts to get rid of Holden, who already sits in a GOP-leaning seat.
I vote for the 7-2 plan for Indiana. Burton ain’t so popular anymore, he could get upset in a less Republican seat.
I’d rather lock down 7 and pack as many rats as possible in the other 2. The 8th and 9th can be made safe.
The seat Burton occupies is hyper-GOP, but Burton has declined in popularity partly because he’s seen as having been in DC too long and has gotten bored (I believe one FReeper said he’s more interested in his golf game than his job). He actually was nearly beaten in the primary this year, only lucking out because there is no runoff and 6 candidates ran against him. He just edged out Former State Rep. Luke Messer by a 30-28% margin. Had that gone to a runoff, Messer clearly would’ve won. (Back in ‘08, Burton only won renomination by a 52-45% margin over Marion County Coroner, Dr. John McGoff — McGoff insisted on running again this year and placed 3rd with 19%, so you can see that 70% of the voters were anti-Burton). Unless he “bounces back” to distinguish himself again in the next Congress, he probably ought to retire in 2012 after 30 years.
I live in PA-15, just south of Barletta’s district. PA-15 on the whole hasn’t been hit that hard by the recession. Housing prices have held their value pretty well and unemployment not too bad compared to the state or national average, but PA-11 has been hit pretty hard. That district was no doubt expecting a lot of the hopey-changey stuff that never quite happened for them (or for anyone, actually). Kanjorski took the brunt of the disappointment and anger.
If the housing market stabilizes and the economy starts to turn around a bit, Barletta could benefit. If things stay bad up in PA-11, Barletta will have a tough slog, IMO..
Holden’s district is just to the west of mine and has a large swath of Amish/Mennonite/conservative Christian towns and rural areas in it and if they threw some of those up to Barletta, the majority of PA-17 would be around the city of Harrisburg. Those Rat state employees would give Holden even more of a lock. Harrisburg’s been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and Rendell’s been propping it up.
But if Corbett goes in there swinging an axe, like it’s necessary to do, Holden might be able to play the good guy and benefit.
Barletta won a district drawn for a Democrat, and all of the neighboring and close-by districts need shoring up. I think that the PA-11 should be made *more* Democrat, with Scranton and Wilkes-Barre and its Dem surroundings being combined with Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton through Dem parts of Monroe County. Columbia County, most of Carbon County and Barletta’s home base around Hazleton would be excised from the PA-11 and combined with part of Holden’s CD (and maybe some GOP counties further west) for a district that should favor Barletta, if only because of its GOP advantage.
Barletta won a district drawn for a Democrat, and all of the neighboring and close-by districts need shoring up. I think that the PA-11 should be made *more* Democrat, with Scranton and Wilkes-Barre and its Dem surroundings being combined with Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton through Dem parts of Monroe County. Columbia County, most of Carbon County and Barletta’s home base around Hazleton would be excised from the PA-11 and combined with part of Holden’s CD (and maybe some GOP counties further west) for a district that should favor Barletta, if only because of its GOP advantage.
Absolutely, the IN-08 and IN-09 can be made safe if (i) Bloomington isn’t in either one and (ii) heavily GOP Indianapolis suburban counties are added to tbe districts. Neither one of those conditions would be present if Republicans tried to draw an 8-1 map. Plus, an 8-1 map would not allow the IN-06 to be shored up (which should be done, since Pence will probably not run for reelection in 2012 in order to seek higher office).
IN-06 was also the seat of Watergate baby Phil Sharp, who held the seat until he retired in 1994. He was so entrenched that not even the pro-GOP gerrymander in 1982 could get rid of him. In fact, Pence ran against Sharp at least twice and couldn’t dislodge him.
Where does Charlie Dent’s district (the 15th) fit in with your ideas for making PA-11 more Dem and PA-17 more GOP?
Dent has been able to win and easily hold PA-15 which is a slight Dem leaning district, although not as Dem as PA-11.
Had Mayor Callahan, Dent’s 2010 opponent, run in 2006 or 2008, Dent would be an ex-Congressman right now. A historically Dem district carried by Kerry such as the PA-15 will eventually fall, and the surrounding area isn’t Republican enough to shore it up without excising Allentown and Bethlehem (and Easton while you’re at it), especially if you want to keep the PA-08 and PA-06 Republican. So the GOP and marginal parts of Lehigh and Northampton Counties can be combined with part of Schuylkill and Montgomery Counties to become a much more Republican PA-15. And if the “pro-choice” Dent is defeated in the primary, I won’t shed any tears.
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