CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Dec. 29, 2009 – 12:09 a.m.
Four More GOP House Seats Now Rated Safe
By Emily Cadei, CQ-Roll Call Staff
While the outlook for a Republican comeback in the November 2010 elections is still far from certain, one thing is clear: The electoral environment for the GOP, after a year of political and policy turmoil, is better as 2009 ends than could have been imagined when the year began.
This certainly appears true for four House Republicans — two in California, and one each in Nevada and New York — who appeared potentially vulnerable coming out of the 2008 elections, but have to be feeling a lot more comfortable about their prospects in 2010. CQ Politics has changed its ratings to Safe Republican, up from Likely Republican, on the races featuring re-election bids by Tom McClintock of California’s 4th District, Brian P. Bilbray in California’s 50th, Dean Heller in Nevada’s 2nd and Christopher Lee in New York’s 26th.
The dynamic in all these races is similar. All four districts have long histories of leaning Republican, but hosted competitive races in 2008. All were affected by the surge in Democratic energy and turnout prompted by Barack Obama ’s successful campaign for president; McClintock and Lee faced the additional challenge of competing for seats left open by Republican incumbents in a tough year for their party nationally.
But in each case, 2008 represented a window of opportunity that Democrats failed to capitalize on and will be hard-pressed to replicate any time soon.
Neither McClintock nor Lee has a registered Democrat challenger as 2009 comes to a close, and they are not on the list of top Democratic targets. That is despite the fact that McClintock won in 2008 by just six-tenths of a percentage point over Democrat Charlie Brown in the race to succeed retired Republican Rep. John T. Doolittle, and Lee had to work hard before pulling away to defeat Democrat Alice Kryzan by a more comfortable margin in the race to succeed retired GOP incumbent Thomas M. Reynolds. Republican presidential nominee John McCain ran ahead of Obama in both districts.
Recruiting problems also have plagued the Democrats in the other two races.
Democrats thought they had a strong challenger to take on Bilbray, who has represented districts in the San Diego area over five full terms in two separate tenures (1995-2001 and 2006-present). Bilbray seemed a credible target, coming off a modest 5-point victory margin over Democrat Nick Leibham in a district that favored Obama by 4 points.
But Dave Roberts, the city councilman and former mayor in Solana Beach who was the Democrats’ top recruit, dropped out of the race on Thanksgiving. That left Francine Busby — an educator who lost to Bilbray in a 2006 special election and that year’s general election — as the better-known candidate in a Democratic primary field that also includes Tracy Emblem, an appellate attorney.
Roberts “changed the political equation, but with him dropping out, it’s not on anyone’s first, second or third” list of top competitive races, one Democratic strategist said.
When the year began, Nevada’s Heller looked neither in particular danger (he won a 2008 rematch with Democrat Jill Derby by 10 points) nor completely safe (he did so with 52 percent of the total vote in a district where McCain and Obama ran neck and neck).
But Democrats lost a key candidate prospect for 2010 when Cindy Trigg — the school board president in Douglas County, which includes Reno, the 2nd District’s biggest city — decided over the summer to forgo the race. Jack Schofield, an 86-year-old who was a state senator in the 1970s, and Reno attorney Ken McKenna are vying for the Democratic nomination, but neither appears to have the profile to mount a threatening challenge to Heller, a former Nevada secretary of state who is viewed as a rising star in state and national Republican politics.
Dan Hart, a Democratic political consultant based in Las Vegas, agreed that Heller does not face a strong threat in 2010.
“It is such a hard district for Democrats,” Hart said of the largely rural 2nd, which apart from the Reno region is a vast and sparsely populated expanse that takes in all of the state north of metropolitan Las Vegas. Hart said it is hard for Democrats “to get traction up there, especially this year.”
To follow all of the 2010 House races, please check out the CQ Politics ratings map.
Comments 1
Good News, indeed, Brother Bardella.
It’s interesting that the news media which mostly ignored
Councilman Roberts, have now made him into the Flavor
of the Month…. but only AFTER he withdrew from the race !