Retiring Republican Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick
Leading Off:
• PA-08: Woohoo! We already have our first retirement in a competitive House district for the 2016 elections—and it's good news for the blue team. GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick had long promised to limit himself to four terms in Congress, and shortly after winning re-election last week, he reaffirmed his pledge. That opens up the swingy 8th District, which Barack Obama carried 53-46 in 2008 but lost by just one tenth of one percent in 2012, 49.4 to 49.3.
Republicans tried to shore up this suburban Philadelphia seat during the last round of redistricting, but they didn't make dramatic changes; under the old lines, Obama won in 2008 by a slightly wider 54-45 spread. That means this district will be hotly contested in two years' time, especially when Democrats can expect to receive a boost from presidential-year turnout.
So who can we expect to show up here? For Democrats, one intriguing option would be ex-Rep. Patrick Murphy (aka Patrick Murphy 1.0), who unseated Fitzpatrick in 2006 but lost to him in 2010. However, Murphy also lost a primary in the state attorney general's race in 2012, so with two straight losses, he may prefer to stick with his current gig as an attorney/MSNBC commentator for a while, especially since he's only 41.
Other possibilities include state Rep. Steve Santarsiero and 2014 candidate Shaughnessy Naughton. Naughton narrowly lost in the primary to Iraq vet Kevin Strouse, but Pennsylvania Democrats seem more excited about her future than his, especially after the 62-38 drubbing Strouse took at Fitzpatrick's hands on election night. As for Republicans, their most prominent potential candidate is outgoing Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley, who just got turned out of office along with Gov. Tom Corbett. Other potential GOP candidates include: Bucks County Commissioner Rob Loughery, state Rep. Scott Petri, and Sen. Chuck McIlhinney, who wouldn't have to give up his seat in order to run.
This is definitely going to be a top-tier race, so stay tuned to Daily Kos Elections as we cover this and every other competitive contest around the nation throughout the 2016 election cycle.
Uncalled Races:
Several races remain uncalled as of Monday evening. We recently ran through them here and we have updates below for any contests where we have new details. You can check who has won each key race at our race tracker here, and you can also keep an eye on our continuously updated list of uncalled races. (We're relying on CNN's election results page for calls.)
• AZ-02: Republican Martha McSally currently holds a 179 vote edge over Democratic Rep. Ron Barber. While this is her smallest lead so far, Barber's running out of time. There are about
4,000 provisional ballots left in Pima County: We estimate that 2,800 of them are in the 2nd District. For Barber to win, he'll need to carry this batch by a little more than 6 points. This is possible, but Barber has absolutely no room for error. Pima County is hoping to finish counting on Tuesday.
• CA-07: On Monday, Republican Doug Ose's lead over Democratic Rep. Ami Bera fell from 2,183 votes to 530. There are about 30,000 ballots left in Sacramento County, and we estimate that about 18,300 of them are in the district. Bera needs to win them by about 3 points, which looks quite possible; he won the ballots counted on Monday by 6.
• CA-16: As of Monday evening, Republican Johnny Tacherra continues to hold a 741-vote lead over Democratic Rep. Jim Costa in a race that was supposed to be safely Democratic. While nothing has been counted since the weekend, we've learned a bit about the remaining ballots.
There are 722 ballots left in Madera and 1,505 votes left in Merced, two counties that backed Tacherra. However, Fresno is far less certain. There are 20,400 ballots left in the entire county but an unknown number are for CA-16. About 23 percent of Fresno's votes were cast in the 16th District this year so that would give us 4,692 ballots remaining Fresno ballots for CA-16.
Costa would need to win the 6,919 estimated remaining ballots by about 11 points to pull ahead. This looks very possible: If the remaining ballots break the same way the rest of each county voted, Costa should net 838 votes, just enough to win. A Fresno update is expected on Wednesday, so hopefully we'll know soon where things stand.
• AK-Sen, AK-Gov, VT-Gov, CA-26, NY-25: There are no new details since our last update. We expect more ballots to be counted in Alaska on Tuesday.
Senate:
• LA-Sen: Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu has a very tough Dec. 6 runoff in front of her, and even her own party doesn't seem to think she can win. Landrieu's only real shot at this point is probably to portray Republican Bill Cassidy as an absolutely unacceptable alternative, and that's what she's going for in her first runoff ad.
The spot features clips of Cassidy attempting to give a speech, but stammering repeatedly. The narrator jumps in to describe Cassidy's speech as "nearly incoherent," but says his record of voting to cut Social Security is clear. The ad seems to be trying to turn Cassidy into Rick Perry 2.0, caricaturing him as a bumbling fool who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a position of authority. Of course, there's a good chance that this kind of ad will make Cassidy look more human and sympathetic rather than stupid, but at this point Landrieu needs to take a lot of risks if she wants to have any chance.
Cassidy's first runoff ad is a lot less notable, with him pledging to oppose Obama on energy. National Democrats have pulled out of Louisiana but groups like the NRSC and Freedom Partners are still running plenty of commercials linking Obama and Landrieu.
Landrieu has a well-earned reputation as a formidable campaigner, but she's definitely in a bad place right now. On Election Night the Republican candidates outvoted Landrieu and a few minor Democrats 56-43, and it's going to be very hard to close that gap. With the DSCC abandoning the state, it's even tougher to imagine Landrieu winning. We'll see if she can draw any blood from Cassidy, but a Democratic win next month would be a massive upset. As a result, Daily Kos Elections is moving this contest from Tossup/ Tilt Republican to Likely Republican.
• WI-Sen: Democrat Mary Burke, who just came off a dispiriting 52-47 loss to GOP Gov. Scott Walker, flatly says that "no," she won't run for statewide office in Wisconsin ever again. We're filing this under "WI-Sen" because GOP Sen. Ron Johnson's 2016 re-election campaign is the next big statewide race on tap in the Badger State.
Gubernatorial:
• PA-Gov: Here's something that ought to have Republicans who lost close gubernatorial races (Tom Foley, Allan Fung, Bob Beauprez) gnashing their teeth: RGA chair Chris Christie lit $6 million on fire on behalf of the utterly unsalvageable Tom Corbett, who went down to a 10-point defeat in Pennsylvania on election night. The question is, what exactly was Christie's angle here? Was he hoping to place Corbett, a swing-state governor, in his debt in the event of a victory? It's a lot of money to blow on a longshot, but then again, the RGA pulled in $106 million this cycle, so maybe it was worth a try.
• VT-Gov: Here's someone who Chris Christie's $6 million absolutely could have helped: Vermont Republican Scott Milne, who came within a hair of upsetting Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin in a true election night shocker. Terri Hallenbeck of the Burlington Free Press offers a clear-eyed look at how Milne managed to come so close, and why he fell just short. A big reason was Libertarian candidate Dan Feliciano, who took almost 8,500 votes; Shumlin's margin over Milne was under 2,100 votes. The RGA, of course, spent nothing on this race, and presumably didn't bother polling. (Milne says he couldn't afford to poll.)
Even though Milne fell just short, his near-upset may yet have an effect on Vermont politics. The same GOP wave that buoyed Milne also turfed out several Democratic legislators, including state Rep. Mike Fisher, who has spearheaded the state's push toward a single-payer health care system. Shumlin has also been a major driving force behind the effort, but in his victory speech last week, he was less gung-ho and "dodged direct questions" on the topic. Other Democrats want to forge ahead with single-payer, though, so this progressive holy grail may still be within reach.
House:
• CA-09, CA-16, MD-06, NY-25: Democrats were expecting a rough election night last Tuesday, but four incumbents came remarkably close to losing—or may have even lost have—seemingly safe contests that were on almost no one's radar. Did Reps. Jerry McNerney, Jim Costa, John Delaney, and Louise Slaughter fail to take their races seriously?
Maryland's Delaney appears to have recognized he had a real challenge. Republican Daniel Bongino was raising a credible amount of money, and at just 54-43 Obama, the 6th District was definitely vulnerable in a wave year. In the third quarter of 2014 (July 1 to Sept. 30) the congressman spent $371,000, followed by another $409,000 during the first two weeks of October. These aren't massive amounts, especially since Delaney was capable of self-funding far more. Still, it probably was just enough to save him: Delaney won 50-48.
The other three incumbents spent even less on their campaigns. In the Stockton-area CA-09, McNerney spent just $355,000 in the last three-and-a-half months. His GOP foe Tony Amador spent essentially nothing but only lost 52-48 when all was said and done. Obama won 58-40 here but poor Democratic turnout gave McNerney a scare.
Over in upstate New York's 25th District, Slaughter currently leads Republican Mark Assini by just 651 votes. It looks like she'll win in the end, but this is an incredibly tight finish for a 59-39 Obama seat. Slaughter is another incumbent who didn't seem to think she had a problem: In the last three-and-a-half months, she spent just $253,000, compared to Assini's $135,000.
The most feeble of the bunch, though, is California's Jim Costa, who represents the Central Valley's CA-16 and currently trails his Republican foe Johnny Tacherra by 741 votes. Costa's seat went for Obama 59-39 but he should have known better than anyone else how deceptive that number can be in a midterm year: In 2010, low turnout also nearly cost Costa his seat. Tacherra, a true Some Dude, barely raised any money and his only prior electoral foray a third-place finish in 2012's top-two primary, so Costa seemed to think he was safe.
The congressman spent only $116,000 in the third quarter, but perhaps he did get a touch nervous, because in early October, he shelled out another $324,000. However, Costa still left much of his warchest untouched, so he couldn't have been that troubled. And because so many votes are cast early in California, it's hard to argue that he was strategically saving his money for the final days of the election. The late ballots may very well send Costa back to Congress, but there's no doubt he's come perilously close to losing—and indeed, he may yet lose. He only has himself to blame.
A good counter-example to these four incumbents is Democratic Rep. Raul Ruiz in Southern California's 36th District. Ruiz took an ancestrally Republican seat in 2012 that Obama won only 51-48, but he was lucky enough to draw a weak Republican challenge from Assemblyman Brian Nestande. Conservative outside groups had largely given up on Nestande long ago, and it may have been tempting for Ruiz to declare victory and stockpile his cash for 2016.
However, Ruiz recognized that poor Democratic turnout and a looming Republican wave could still pose a threat, and he worked hard to win. In the last three-and-a-half months, Ruiz spent $1,570,000, far more than any of his four sleep-walking colleagues spent. The congressman flooded the district with a series of positive ads which more than did the trick. Ruiz won 54-46, making him one of the few Democrats to outperform Obama.
Ruiz not only earned himself an easy victory, he'll probably ensure that credible Republicans think twice before running against him in the future. By contrast, it's a good bet that national Republicans won't make the same mistake in the future that led them to ignore McNerney, Costa, Delaney, and Slaughter this year. It's also possible that ambitious Democrats will smell weakness and try to push them out in the primary.
To be fair, no outside groups spent any real money in any of these four contests, and the DCCC and NRCC were probably just as surprised as everyone else on election night. Most prognosticators, including Daily Kos Elections, did not think this quartet was in much danger either (though we had an inkling about Delaney).
Still, those four incumbents should know their districts better than anyone else. They have the most to lose, and if they run again in 2016 they'll be the ones who need to work harder than before to win. They're all a good reminder for politicians everywhere that you can't take your re-election for granted. As Eric Cantor taught us earlier this year, unpredictable factors can always spring up. It's better to prepare for them early than to spend Wednesday morning wondering what on earth happened.
• MN-01: Republicans have repeatedly failed to make a serious attempt at Minnesota's 1st District, even though it's just a 50-48 Obama seat, and one that they held for ages until 2006. They didn't even do particularly well this year, as Rep. Tim Walz turned back Jim Hagedorn by a reasonably hale 54-46 margin.
But that's not stopping GOP state Rep. Tony Cornish from "seriously considering" a bid in 2016. Cornish represents a 51-47 Romney seat himself, so he does have some experience in winning over middle-of-the-road voters, but he has a lot to prove before this race makes it to the top of anyone's list (even if he is a snazzy dresser).
• NY-13: Narrowly beating out GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (see our PA-08 item), the very first retirement of the cycle actually came from Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel in New York's solidly blue 13th District. Rangel had promised this would be his last election, and he immediately reiterated that on election night. While the general election will be a foregone conclusion—Obama won 95 percent of the vote in this Upper Manhattan-based seat—the Democratic primary ought to be very interesting, especially since it'll be the first open-seat race the area's seen in 70 years!
Rangel faced stiff challenges from state Sen. Adriano Espaillat for the last two cycles, and considering how close Espaillat came both times, he's very likely to run again. He'd also probably start out as the front-runner if multiple black candidates get into the race, since he's the most prominent Hispanic name in the mix. (The 13th had long been dominated by black pols, but Latinos now make up 55 percent of the district while African Americans are just a quarter.)
Some other possible entrants, all of whom are black, include Assemblyman Keith Wright, who is the chair of the Manhattan Democratic Party and is invariably described as a "Rangel ally"; former Gov. David Paterson, who once represented part of the district in the state Senate; New York City Councilwoman Inez Dickens, whom Rangel has called his "political wife"; former Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV, who has run unsuccessfully here before and whose father Rangel unseated in the 1970 primary; state Sen. Bill Perkins, who isn't quite so close to the Rangel machine; and Reverend Michael Walrond, who took 8 percent in this year's primary.
In a one-on-one race with Espaillat, we could be in for a serious showdown. But it's very unlikely that only one other major candidate would enter, and if the black vote gets split, that has to favor Espaillat. However, one possibly question mark is City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who will face term limits in 2017. Mark-Viverito supported Espaillat in 2014, so she may not want to cross him now. But Mark-Viverito is Puerto Rican while Espaillat is Dominican, so if she did run, that could cleave the Hispanic vote into two separate factions. No matter what, though, the changing of the guard here will be historic.
• PA-06: Katie McGinty, who finished a distant fourth with less than 8 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary for governor this year, has signed on as incoming Gov. Tom Wolf's chief of staff. That probably takes her out of the running for a bid in the 6th District, a swingy seat that Republican Ryan Costello easily held for his party this year.
• DCCC: Another new name has emerged as a possible candidate to lead the DCCC: Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro, who was just elected to a second term last week. Castro's star is on the rise, along with his brother's (HUD Secretary and former San Antonio Mayor Joaquin Castro), but he's pretty green for such a prominent post. Then again, Rahm Emanuel was also a sophomore when he helmed the D-Trip during its wildly successful 2006 cycle.
• House: Dave Wasserman (aka @Redistrict on Twitter) is doing the Lord's work in compiling results from House races around the nation in a continually updated Google doc. The data are still preliminary, as only lonely Delaware has certified its returns, but it's a great resource as we wait on other states to finalize their numbers. Wasserman also has the most up-to-date national House vote totals as well, with 39 million votes cast for GOP candidates and just 33.9 million for Democrats, yielding a wide 52-45 split—about the same as in 2010.
Other Races:
• Montgomery Mayor: Alabama's second largest city will hold its mayoral election Aug. 25, and one very familiar name is all but in. Former Rep. Artur Davis has moved back home from Virginia and sounds ready to run as long as incumbent Republican Todd Strange retires. Davis served in the House as a Democrat for eight years before losing the gubernatorial primary in 2010. Following his defeat he joined the Republicans, moved to Northern Virginia, and flirted with running in VA-10 last year. Davis first began talking about running for mayor as a Republican a few months later, and he seems ready to do it.
Davis was born and raised in Montgomery, but he doesn't have too much experience running there. Davis ran for the 7th District in 2000 when it still included parts of Montgomery County, but the seat he held from 2002 to 2010 didn't include any of the city. Davis did narrowly carry the county in the 2010 Democratic primary, though it's not clear how well he did in the city itself.
Another potential candidate also is thinking of running as long as Strange doesn't. Outgoing Democratic state Rep. Joe Hubbard was just on the ballot on Tuesday, losing the race for attorney general 59-41 but winning Montgomery County with more than 60 percent of the vote. Democrats don't have much of a bench left in the state but they have high hopes for Hubbard, and a win next year could potentially set him up for bigger things.
• NJ Assembly: The lower house of the Garden State's legislature is up next year, and Daily Kos Elections community member Trosk gives us an overview of what races to watch. Democrats are likely to keep control of the chamber, but both parties are looking to make gains. Trosk also takes a look at county races, where each side also has several targets in their sights.
Grab Bag:
• Deaths: Former GOP Rep. Phil Crane died on Saturday at the age of 84. Crane represented Illinois' 8th Congressional District for an incredibly long time—he was first elected in a special election in 1969—until he sleep-walked to a stunning defeat in 2004 at the hands of Democrat Melissa Bean. Bean herself was caught napping in 2010 when bellicose tea partier Joe Walsh beat her, but the seat returned to Democratic hands (with a boost from redistricting) when Tammy Duckworth knocked off Walsh two years later.
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, with additional contributions from Jeff Singer, David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Taniel, and Dreaminonempty