Jim Himes escaped from the suffocating Republican cocoon of Greenwich, Connecticut to the national stage by winning faux-moderate Chris "Both Ways" Shays' seat. It was the last Republican seat in New England and marked the first time since the formation of the Republican Party before the Civil War that no Republican represented New England in Congress. Who cares? The Republican Party is hardly the bastion of decency and concern for civil rights that it was back then.
Himes will immediately garner national attention, given his Harvard, Oxford (Rhodes Scholar), and Goldman Sachs pedigree. And voters in Greenwich will be explaining for the next two years why they voted against him!
This is how Jim did it.
There are seventeen cities and municipalities in Connecticut's 4th congressional district. Himes won only four of the seventeen. But three of those four were major cities and towns, and he built up enough of a pad to offset the usual right-wing pile of votes from some of America's most Republican towns: New Canaan and Darien, which gave Shays 70% of their votes even in this historic election year.
Despite serving as Shays' home of record, Bridgeport, CT's biggest city went for Himes to the tune of 79%. That 20k margin was crucial. But he also gained a 3:1 win in Stamford, where Democratic registrations had soared this year. Jim also took Norwalk convincingly and Shelton in the Naugatuck Valley. He lost Westport, which former first selectwoman Diane Farrell had carried (just) in 2006.
Although Himes lost Greenwich (Shays took 57%), the state's most Republican town, to the town's credit, it did go for Barack Obama, marking the first time since 1964 that it went for a Democrat for president.
Jim Himes' big test will come in two years when he will certainly be tested by a local Republican, perhaps John McKinney, the state senate's minority leader and son of the late Stewar McKinney, who was congressman from the same district before Shays.
Jim will have to enlarge his appeal in the suburbs to offset what will almost certainly be a large drop-off in turnout in Bridgeport and Stamford. Since he lives in Greenwich, frequent trips to the town to press the flesh could blunt the Republican advantage here, albeit a shrinking advantage.
We will also have to keep the pressure on the right-wing press in the district, which is represented almost exclusively by a monopoly controled by Hearst Newspapers