When six-term Democratic incumbent Brian Baird (from Southern Washington's 3rd district) announced on Wednesday that he was retiring from Congress, he became the third Democrat in as many weeks to announce that they were stepping away from Congress at the close of this term. He followed Kansas' Dennis Moore and Tennessee's John Tanner into retirement.
The traditional media, which has been on the "Democrats are Doomed" bandwagon for several months, saw this as a perfect time to pile on and inject a tremendous amount of meaning to this event.
Part of the attention is, to be fair, justified. Open seats take away the myriad of electoral trappings that come with incumbency, and the turnover rate in open seats is markedly higher than that of races where an incumbent is defending his/her seat. If Democrats were to bear the disproportionate share of open seats in the 2010 election cycle, that would almost certainly impact the size of their majority, particularly if those open seats are in politically mixed or hostile territory (as is the case with the three recent Dem retirements).
We ought to know reasonably soon the partisan dynamic of the open seats for 2010. As Greg Giroux over at Congressional Quarterly points out, the beginning of the new year is a pretty active period for members of Congress to ultimately make the decision as to whether or not to stick it out for another term:
Precisely two years ago, in mid-December 2007, a similar number of House members had disclosed plans to forego re-election in 2008, though the partisan ratio was much more lopsided (17 Republicans and four Democrats). During a three-month stretch in the summer and fall of 2007, all 12 House members who announced plans to retire were Republicans.
The current 2010 cycle will have more retirees, and I suspect that most of the upcoming departures will be announced between now and the end of January. In January 2008, seven House members (all Republicans), announced plans to forgo re-election that November.
Wave cycles do have a tendency to impact the number and partisan dynamic of open seats. In the 2008 election cycle, there were a total of 32 open seats: 26 of them were held by Republicans. A similar ratio held true in 2006, when the Democrats seized the Congressional majority from the GOP.
Therefore, if the three retirements over the past month get joined by an avalanche of Democratic Congressional retirements, it could be a sign that there is a deep concern among the Democratic members of Congress about the sustainability of their majority, and, on a micro level, their individual prospects for re-election.
It is worth noting, however, that all three of the recent retirees did not appear, at least on the surface, to be in grave electoral danger.
A quick look at the Competitive House Race charts authored by Charlie Cook and his team show that Brian Baird's seat was forecast as "Likely Democratic" before his retirement announcement. So, too, was the district held by Kansas incumbent Dennis Moore. Only longtime Democratic incumbent John Tanner of Tennessee was not rated as a "Likely Democratic" hold for 2010, placed in the slightly more vulnerable category of "Leans Democratic". This means, of course, that Cook and his team rated all three incumbents as better than even money to be re-elected.
That said, we should be cognizant of the fact that wave elections have the tendency to sweep "lean" and "likely" winners into the abyss. Just ask incumbents like Jeb Bradley and Jim Leach in 2006, and Virgil Goode in 2008. All three Republicans, at the start of the cycle, appeared secure in their re-election prospects. All three of them were pulled under by the partisan undertow in their respective elections.
This current boomlet of stories, however, does have issues of selective perception to deal with. Take this example from an excellent writer (Reid Wilson) at an excellent publication (National Journal's respected Hotline). In the immediate wake of the Baird retirement this week, Wilson wrote about jitters among House Democrats, and offered a dire warning from former Democratic Congressman Martin Frost:
"It's time for Democrats to be concerned," said ex-Rep. Martin Frost (D-TX), a former DCCC chair. "You've only had 3 of these retirements now, but this tends to be like the flu, it tends to be contagious. Once your contemporaries start announcing their retirements, you start rethinking your decision."
But for all of the dire forecasts about the 2010 election cycle, especially in the House, much of this discussion of open seats has omitted (with the notable exception of Giroux's article) one key stat:
As of right now, Republicans are actually defending more open seats than are Democrats. This is, of course, subject to change, but as of this moment Republicans have 12 open seats to defend, as opposed to just nine for the Democrats. In 2006 and 2008, the open seat roster was absurdly lopsided, with the vast majority of retirees coming from the GOP. That simply has not happened yet.
And it is not just that the GOP has an open seat disadvantage in raw numbers, they sport a trio of districts that are every bit as vulnerable as the Democratic triumvirate from the past month, if not more so.
Consider the Cook PVI for the Democratic trio of districts, from most vulnerable to least vulnerable:
Tennessee-08: R+6
Kansas-03: R+3
Washington-03: D+0
Now take a look at the Cook PVI for the Republican trio of open seats:
Delaware-AL: D+7
Illinois-10: D+6
Pennsylvania-06: D+4
Therefore, if the open-seat races fall on district dynamics (as they do, as often as not), the Democrats are in better shape than are the Republicans in their most vulnerable open seats. And that is not even counting the likely Democratic pick-up in Louisiana-02, where Joseph Cao is swimming upstream as a freshman Congressman in a D+25 district.
Of course, this seat will be offset by a tremendously difficult hold for the Democrats in the LA-03 seat being vacated by Senate aspirant Charlie Melancon (LA-03 is a district with a PVI of R+12). The point is not that the Democrats will gain a ton from the available open seats, it is that the current dynamics of the districts in play indicate that it could well be a wash.
When the Republicans had their tsunami election in 1994, and when the Democrats rode waves of their own in 2006 and 2008, it was largely driven by huge margins run up in open seats.
If a flurry of Democratic retirements in less-than-amenable territory are announced in the next two months, then the "Dems are Doomed" crowd in the media will see justification for their messages of concern. Right now, however, it seems likely that any prospective open seat gains for the GOP are going to be partially, if not entirely, offset by endangered seats of their own. And that means that the GOP will have to whittle away at the Democratic majority by taking down incumbents.
While they could, in theory, do so with a strong enough wind at their backs, it is a considerably more difficult prospect.