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President-by-LD: Today we venture back to the Garden State to take a look at the 2013 special election for U.S. Senate and the gubernatorial contest three weeks later. You can check out our
master list of data, including our previously-released data for the 2012 presidential and Senate races, here.
We have the 2013 results calculated by congressional and state legislative district (each legislative seat elects one senator and two assemblymembers). Democrat Cory Booker defeated Republican Steve Lonegan 55-44 statewide in the Senate race, netting six of the 12 congressional districts and 25 of the 40 legislative seats. Three weeks later, Republican Gov. Chris Christie won re-election 60-38. Christie took 10 congressional districts and 31 legislative seats, though his landslide win didn't help his party net any legislative seats. (Jeff Singer)
2:05 PM PT: MN-08: Just as a Democrat who comes close to victory in a presidential year probably wants to think long and hard about seeking a rematch in the midterm election that follows, a Republican who falls just short in an off-year race likewise ought to consider very carefully whether he wants to run again at the same time the White House is up for grabs. Stewart Mills, who lost to freshmen Democratic Rep. Rick Nolan by just 1.5 percent earlier this month, seems to be doing just that. Mills says he "can’t make a decision" on another bid quite yet but adds that "I intend to keep my options open."
However, if anyone deserves credit for running an impressive race, it's Nolan, not Mills. The fact that Nolan, a rusty campaigner who has previously served in the House all the way back in the 1970s, survived midterm turnout dropoff in the face of millions in attack ads is quite the accomplishment. Of course, Mills faced plenty of bombardment, too, but if we want to talk about "shoulds," he should have won and Nolan should have lost in a year like 2014. But there are no shoulds in politics—there's only reality. And the reality is that Mills would have a very hard time improving on this year's performance come 2016.
2:44 PM PT: VA State Senate: Though Republicans only have a 21-to-19 margin in Virginia's state Senate, their grip on the chamber is far stronger than it might appear. As Johnny Longtorso recently explained, even though Democrats only need to pick up one seat in next year's elections to allow Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam to break ties, they're mostly playing defense and there aren't many good pickup opportunities. However, Team Blue just got a huge break on Tuesday as GOP state Sen. John Watkins, who represents the most vulnerable district Republicans will have to protect, announced that he'll retire.
Just how vulnerable? Well, fortunately, thanks to our efforts to calculate statewide election results by legislative district for all 50 states, we can tell you exactly what Watkins' 10th District looks like. In 2012, Barack Obama narrowly carried this district, which lies in the Richmond suburbs, by a 50-48 margin, though Tim Kaine won it in the Senate race by a wider 54-46 spread. The following year, Terry McAuliffe prevailed 47-42 in his successful gubernatorial bid, while Mark Herring edged out Mark Obenshain 51-49 the tight-as-a-tick attorney general's contest. (Northam crushed here, 60-40.)
So every Democrat who ran statewide in those two years has carried the seat, but not by much, apart from Northam. (We don't yet have numbers for this year's closer-than-expected Senate battle.) In 2015, when Democrats will once again suffer from off-year turnout that will be even further exacerbated by the lack of any races at the top of the ticket, it'll require a hell of an effort to turn this seat blue. Making matters worse, Democrats don't have much of a bench in the area, either. But they're going to have to do the best they can with what they've got, because control of the state Senate will hinge on this seat.
2:49 PM PT (David Jarman): WA-09: In the wake of Michele Flournoy's decision not to seek the Secretary of Defense position, one name that has bubbled up as a potential successor is Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democratic member of the Armed Services Committee. It doesn't seem likely that Smith would want to give up his foothold in the House that would position him for prime chairmanships in some future Democratic majority (he has 20 years of seniority despite being only 49 years old), in exchange for just two years at the Pentagon.
But, in case he does, here's some tentative Great Mentioning of prospective replacements in this dark-blue district that covers south Seattle and its diverse southern suburbs: Seattle city councilor Bruce Harrell, state Sens. Bob Hasegawa and Pramila Jayapal, and King County Councilor Dave Upthegrove. In addition, though she doesn't quite live in the district, this district could see the re-re-return of Darcy Burner. (You can read further details on these names here.)
3:05 PM PT: LA-Sen: I remember the 2002 Louisiana Senate runoff very well. Karl Rove busted out the hubris and called it "Operation Icing on the Cake"—he would cement his party's November gains with one final kick in the teeth to Democrats. But Mary Landrieu somehow successfully pivoted from portraying herself as a Bush lackey to a fierce critic of the president's (over sugar imports from Mexico, of all things), increasing black turnout and defeating Republican Suzanne Haik Terrell 52-48. After Landrieu managed just 46 percent in the first round (and another minor Democrat took 2), that was an impressive comeback indeed.
Sad to say that won't happen this time. Post-Election Day polls have show dominant leads for Republican Bill Cassidy, and even Republicans are cancelling most of their ad buys. Almost amusingly, the one group that isn't drawing down is Rove's American Crossroads, which is spending another $1 million to attack Landrieu. I guess even if the cake's gone stale for 12 years now, Turdblossom is finally going to cram his mouth full of frosting.
3:10 PM PT: KY-Gov: Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Will Scott says he's considering a run for governor and will decide by "early January," in the words of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Two Republicans have already duking it out, state Agriculture Commissioner James Comer businessman Hal Heiner, so Scott would be getting a somewhat late start in the GOP's May 19 primary. Democrats, meanwhile, have united around state Attorney General Jack Conway. The general election will take place on Nov. 3 of next year.
3:54 PM PT: FL-26: What the hell is up with Florida's 26th District? Republican David Rivera represented it for just one term before a huge wave of corruption allegations crashed over him in 2012, while the guy who beat him that year, Democrat Joe Garcia, quickly had to contend with the fact that his chief of staff tried to mastermind an unsuccessful absentee ballot fraud scheme. The NRCC repeatedly slammed Garcia over that scandal, and those attacks very probably contributed to Garcia's narrow 3-point loss to Republican Carlos Curbelo.
But hey, look at this! The usually toothless FEC is already up Curbelo's grill over $93,000 in omitted or mislabeled campaign contributions. The total size of the donations is pretty remarkable, as are some of the sources, including a $5,000 check from KochPAC. Curbelo's campaign manager offered a less-than-confident response, saying "Once we get everything answered, we should be OK." Should be, eh? We'll see about that.
Given the district's history, you'd have to bet on the Democrats making an issue of this, and you can also count on them contesting the seat in 2016, particularly since Barack Obama carried it by a 53-46 margin in 2012. For starters, conservative columnist Nancy Smith claims that Annette Taddeo, who ran for Congress in South Florida once before, would like to make a go of it, but she's just coming off her third straight electoral defeat as Charlie Crist's running mate.
Putting on our Great Mentioner hat, other possibilities might include Garcia himself; businesswoman Gloria Romero Roses, who ran against Garcia in the primary in 2012; Miami-Dade Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava, who only first won election earlier this year; state Sen. Dwight Bullard, one of the most avowedly progressive options; and state Rep. José Javier Rodriguez, though he's not from the district. All are Hispanic except Levine Cava (Cava is Italian and is her husband's surname) and Bullard, who is black.
The district is 68 percent Hispanic, 20 percent white, and 9 percent black, so an ability to appeal to Latino voters in both the primary and the general will be key. Not being a corrupt screw-up would also probably help, but Florida's 26th seems to breed those like swamp flies.
4:10 PM PT: CA Assembly: Here's some news of the weird for sure. The political establishment in Los Angeles is absolutely stunned that Some Dude Patty Lopez has upset Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, a fellow Democrat, by a 50.5 to 49.5 margin, and no one can quite figure it out. In the June top-two primary, Bocanegra, who could very well have been the next speaker, swamped Lopez 63-24 and should have been guaranteed an easy win in November. There were no scandals whatsoever involving the incumbent, and Lopez barely spent a penny. So what the hell happened?
So far, the best theory comes down to ballot design. Candidate placement on the ballot is determined randomly, but it just so happened that for every race on the second page of the 39th District's ballot (which you can see here), the Democrat wound up on top and the Republican on bottom. The one exception was Bocanegra's own race, where both candidates were Democrats—and he was listed second.
The thinking goes, therefore, that many voters who believed they were voting a "straight ticket" for the Democrats simply filled in the first oval in each race, and when they finally got to the Assembly contest (which was at the very bottom of the page), they did the same there—and voted for Lopez over Bocanegra. It's possible other explanations are true, but none seem quite so satisfying. But whatever the actual reason, it's a good lesson that incumbents with low name recognition should never take anything for granted.
4:39 PM PT: Ferguson, MO: One of the saddest aspects of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri is that he was by no means the only unarmed black man shot or killed by white police officers or other fearful assailants in recent years. Yet Oakland, Staten Island, and even Sanford, Florida—where Trayvon Martin was notoriously murdered by George Zimmerman—did not explode in the kind of protests Ferguson did. With the grand jury's refusal to indict Brown's killer, Officer Darren Wilson, that same anger has burst forth yet again. So why has Ferguson's experience been unique?
My good friend Jeff Smith, a former state senator from Missouri who once represented a majority-black district in St. Louis, offers a compelling look at the roots of Ferguson's rage in a new Kindle Single called "Ferguson in Black and White." The answer lies much deeper than most pundits have been able to dig, but Smith offers a very insightful analysis of the region's geo-political history, including its sharp racial polarization and the painful disempowerment blacks have long experienced. If you want a true understanding of what's going on and what's been going on in Ferguson, check out this concise book.