I looked through Bowers’ Top 50 list and agree with much of it, but I thought he put too much emphasis as a whole on the "candidate quality" of the Republican incumbent, and too little on the makeup of the district. Connie Morella was a helluva politician surviving numerous tough challenges in a Dem-leaning district, but all it took was a Chris Van Hollen (our new DCCC chair) to take her down. If you look at the incumbents defeated in recent times, most lost because they were fundamentally out of step with their districts and ran up against a challenger who was able to competently remind voters of it and present a viable alternative. At this stage in the cycle, we have to figure and hope and work to get the best possible challenger in every race. With that in mind, it’s hard to make the case that, say, Marilyn Musgrave is in more danger of losing than, say, Chris Shays if each has an equally strong challenger.
Keeping this in mind, and because I am a math geek at heart, I came up with a numeric formula which attempts to objectively rank the vulnerability of each of the 202 Republican House members (yes, I included Buchanan even though I hope they don’t seat him).
The formula is as follows: I first found my district partisan makeup score, which is arrived at by the following: 1. find the Dem share of the 2000 and 2004 2-party Presidential results for each district; 2. add 1 point to all districts’ 2004 Dem percentage (because Kerry lost by 3 points); 3. add 3 points to all Texas districts in both years, add 1 point to Wyoming for both years, subtract 3 points from Tennessee districts’ 2000 results, subtract 3 points from Massachusetts districts’ 2004 results, subtract 1 point from Connecticut districts’ 2000 results, and subtract 1 point from North Carolina districts’ 2004 results to account for home-state candidate effects; 4.average the 2000 and 2004 numbers; 5. finally, average that result with the Cook Report’s Partisan Voting Index for the district.
I then added the average of a member’s 2004 and 2006 challenger’s share of the two-party vote to the district partisan score, added 5 points if the 2006 share was over 45% or 2 points if it was over 40%, added 3 and 1 for the 2004 result, and 2 and 1 for the 2002 result. Next, I added 1 point for every 5 points the challenger’s vote share improved between 2004 and 2006 (and subtracted if it decreased). Then, I added 5 points for all freshmen and 2 for second-year Reps. I also added points (1-3) at my discretion in based on 2006 challenger strength (i.e. unexpected closeness in non-targeted races got extra points).
Here is the list that resulted. Remember, they are ranked by most potentially vulnerable to least. Also, remember, there are no open seats yet. Ultimately, I suspect there will be quite a few, as GOP members find out just how unpleasant and/or boring it is to be in the minority and choose to retire. This is what happened to the Dems in 1996 and ultimately, in my view, allowed the Republicans to keep control that year. I list the top 50 in order, but I only provide analysis for the top 20 because I’m lazy. I’d be happy to opine on the rest if asked.
2008 Top 50 Potentially Vulnerable House Republicans
1. New York 25 (Jim Walsh) (vulnerability score: 111.8). Walsh had quietly represented a district that includes urban Syracuse and went for both Gore and Kerry (Gore by 6 points). In his first semi-serious challenge, he won 51-49 over a congressional staffer who was a first-time candidate.
2. Pennsylvania 06 (Jim Gerlach) (110.8). Gerlach has won 51-49 three straight times, and has never faced a candidate with prior elective experience. Kerry improved on Gore’s narrow winning percentage in the district, winning it by 4.
3. Connecticut 04 (Chris Shays) (110.5). The last GOPer standing in New England is back in Congress for two reasons: joining himself a the hip to Joe Lieberman and his victorious campaign and a long career of serving the district’s interests (read pork). Lieberman will not be on the ballot drumming up GOP turnout in ’08, and people will realize that pork cometh from majority Reps.
4. Washington 08 (Dave Reichert) (110). Another district the Dems won in ’00 and ’04, with Kerry outperforming Gore. Darcy Burner came out of nowhere to hold Reichert to a 51-49 win. She may well be back in ’08.
5. New Mexico 01 (Heather Wilson) (109.8). This district completes a top 5 full of Kerry/Gore districts in GOP hands. Wilson, along with Gerlach and Shays, was expected to fall in the 2006 tsunami. She was able to make the race about her opponent, however. The first time she is unable to do that (i.e. a candidate sans skeletons and without foot-in-mouth disease) and does not receive help from the Greens, she loses. It’s as simple as that.
6. Florida 13 (Vern Buchanan) (108.5). Yes, I know that Buchanan may well not even be in Congress. Or, he may win a new election convincingly which would reduce potential vulnerability. As things stand now, he’s a freshman who won the second-narrowest victory in the nation in a tainted fashion. The long knives will be out.
7. Ohio 15 (Deborah Pryce) (107.8). I had given Pryce up for dead in ’06. Columbus is trending hard toward the Dems—Kerry and Bush were 50-50 in this district in ’04 after Gore lost here by 8—and Pryce’s squeaker 50-50 win over her first serious opponent in years, Mary Jo Kilroy, won’t deter Kilroy or someone else of not from making a strong run at Pryce in 2008 if she seeks reelection.
8. Michigan 07 (Tim Walberg) (107.3). As Bowers said, one of the most shocking things hidden in the 2006 results was how weakly Walberg won his race against a candidate who was little more than a name on a ballot. Walberg is a wingnut and he did leave bad blood from the primary. This is something of a swingy district, as Gore took 47% of the 2000 2-party vote, and Kerry got 45%.
9. Illinois 06 (Peter Roskam) (105.8). The Dems are on the rise in the Chicago suburbs, long a GOP-bastion. This phenomenon (along with population shifts) is why Illinois has gone from a bellwether state to part of the Democratic base; the Chicago Dem vote dwarfs the downstate GOP vote when the suburbs split down the middle. Roskam won Henry Hyde’s open seat 51-49, and will be an attractive target in ’08.
10. North Carolina 08 (Robin Hayes) (105.3). Hayes’s 2008 victory was the third narrowest in the country, despite the fact that his opponent was underfunded and raised little money. Hayes’ constituents don’t like him much and his ’06 opponent, Larry Kissell, will be back with more institutional support in ’08.
11. Nevada 03 (Jon Porter) (104.8). This is a net Dem district in the Las Vegas suburbs. Dem Congressional staffer Tessa Hafen gave Rep. Porter a very close scare; he won 51-49. If GOP support among Latinos is indeed cratering thanks to the efforts of Tom Tancredo & Co., Porter could feel the sting.
12. Michigan 09 (Joe Knollenberg) (104.5). As the modern-day GOP defines itself more and more by a bellicose foreign policy and theocratic social policies, districts like the moderate, wealthy, suburban Oakland County MI-09 move toward the Democrats. Facing a second (if not third) tier challenge in 2006, the veteran Knollenberg won only 53-47 (after having to fend off a primary challenge from his left). I would not be surprised to see Knollenberg as the first announced retiree. If not, a strong candidate can send him home.
13. Pennsylvania 15 (Charlie Dent) (103). Dent is one of the luckier GOP holders of a Kerry/Gore district. He is a two-term incumbent who has never faced a serious opponent. Still, his underfunded 2006 opponent held him to a 55-45 win. If the Dems put up a strong challenger, Dent could be in trouble.
14. New Jersey 07 (Mike Ferguson) (102.8). This district went narrowly for Gore, but Bush won it by 6 in 2004. Nonetheless, it is one that the Dems have been looking at for a while, and Linda Stender’s campaign in 2006, which held Ferguson to a 51-49 win, intensified interest.
15. Illinois 10 (Mark Kirk) (102). Other than Delaware’s at large House seat, there is not a Republican-held district in the country where Kerry did better. He won the 2-party vote here by 6 points after Gore won it by 4 in 2000. This is eastern Lake and northeastern Cook counties, the most Democratic part of the Dem-trending Chicago suburbs discussed above. First-timer Dan Seals ran a good campaign in ’06 and held Kirk to 53-47. He may well be back in ’08—and Kirk may not. The latest scuttlebutt is that he is strongly considering being the GOP’s sacrificial lamb against Sen. Dick Durbin in 2008—I can only guess that his thinking is that that statewide effort would position him for the GOP gubernatorial nod in 2010.
16. Virginia 02 (Thelma Drake) (100.8). Drake is a second term Rep. who turned back a strong challenge 51-49 in this military-heavy Virginia Beach district. She won 55-45 in ’04 against a much weaker candidate.
17. Minnesota 06 (Michelle Bachmann) (100.8). Bachmann is a freshman who won an open seat contest in this GOP-leaning suburban St. Paul district against Dem star recruit Patty Wetterling, and she did it fairly impressively, 54-46. Still, there were many who said that Wetterling, for all her personal appeal, was the wrong candidate simply because she was too liberal for the district. She said the same thing herself following her first run in 2004. With a strong centrist Dem, there is a shot here.
18. Colorado 04 (Marilyn Musgrave) (99.3). Musgrave’s bacon has been saved (barely) in two straight elections only because the district is overwhelmingly Republican. She is the first of a trio of GOP women who represent solid GOP territory but will be perennial targets because of their own deep unpopularity (along with Jean Schmidt and Barbara Cubin). She won 52% of the two-party vote in ’04 and 51% in ’06. I imagine one of two things will happen, and happen soon: either Musgrave will lose a primary or she will be defeated by a Dem, who will hold the seat for one term.
19. Ohio 01 (Steve Chabot) (99.3). Chabot has a district that has just enough heavily Republican suburban precincts to counterbalance Cincinnati proper. He got his first tough challenge since 1998 in 2006, beating Cincy Councilman John Cranley 53-47. Chabot is pretty well entrenched, but the district (Kerry took 49% compared to Gore’s 47%) and the state are trending Dem.
20. Florida 08 (Ric Keller) (99). Keller won unimpressively, 54-46, against a novice candidate in a swing district that includes Orlando. He won a tough race in his first election (2000), but has not had top competition since then. Like most Florida districts, this one is rigged to be slightly GOP-leaning.
21. New York 03 (Peter King) (99).
22. Michigan 11 (Thaddeus McCotter) (98.5).
23. Ohio 02 (Jean Schmidt) (98.5).
24. Delaware at Large (Michael Castle) (98.5).
25. Nevada 02 (Dean Heller) (98.5).
26. New York 26 (Tom Reynolds) (98.3).
27. Arizona 01 (Rick Renzi) (97.8).
28. New York 29 (Randy Kuhl) (97.8).
29. Florida 09 (Gus Bilirakis) (96.5).
30. New York 13 (Vito Fossella) (96.5).
31. Virginia 11 (Tom Davis) (96).
32. Pennsylvania 03 (Phil English) (95.8).
33. California 50 (Brian Bilbray) (95.8).
34. Illinois 11 (Jerry Weller) (94.5).
35. New Jersey 03 (Jim Saxton) (94.5).
36. Iowa 04 (Tom Latham) (93.5).
37. Minnesota 02 (John Kline) (92.5).
38. Florida 15 (Dave Weldon) (92).
39. Michigan 08 (Mike Rogers) (91.8).
40. Florida 24 (Tom Feeney) (91.8).
41. Wyoming at Large (Barbara Cubin) (91.5).
42. Pennsylvania 18 (Tim Murphy) (91).
43. West Virginia 02 (Shelley Moore Capito) (91).
44. Ohio 12 (Pat Tiberi) (91).
45. New Jersey 05 (Scott Garrett) (91).
46. Nebraska 02 (Lee Terry) (90.8)
47. California 26 (David Dreier) (90.5).
48. Washington 05 (Cathy McMorris) (89.8).
49. Florida 25 (Mario Diaz-Balart) (89.5).
50. Illinois 13 (Judy Biggert) (89.3).