Behold—the latest edition of DKE's 2012 House Open Seat Watch is finally here! This has been a long time coming (in fact, our last full installment of The Watch was published last May), in large part due to the fact that redistricting has added an element of chaos to what was, in past cycles, a mostly routine bookkeeping endeavor. Take California, for instance, where the state's independent redistricting commission tore the existing lines to shreds and left us with a thousand moving parts to somehow make sense of. (And kudos to our own David Jarman for doing such a comprehensive job of picking up all the pieces.)
With some big help from DKE Blogfather David Nir and race-watching guru Benawu, we've assembled five separate charts to document every open seat that has been created (or might be created) due to retirement, resignation, a primary challenge, a bid for higher office, or as a consequence of redistricting and reapportionment.
The first chart details confirmed retirements and vacancies. The second chart, a new addition for this round, collects something that we call "incumbent-less districts"—these are seats that have either been newly-created due to reapportionment (e.g., South Carolina's new 7th District) or ones that have been left behind by incumbents who've decided to run in other districts. (For instance, because Democratic Reps. Howard Berman and Brad Sherman are both running in CA-30, neighboring CA-29 has been "left open.")
The third chart is a compendium of confirmed or possible races where two incumbents are competing (or may compete) for the right to represent the same district. These are obviously not open seats—in fact, they are very much the opposite. But we felt it important to include this information so that readers can understand why certain seats are open (such as the aforementioned CA-29). The fourth chart tracks potential retirements (including "retirements" forced by primary losses)—our quintessential "watch list."
Finally, the fifth chart keeps tabs on incumbents whose names have been taken off our "watch list" by confirming that they are seeking another term in the House. I've taken some liberties with this last chart; for instance, guys like Charlie Dent and Pat Meehan may have never formally declined to run for Senate, but it's becoming overwhelmingly likely that they intend to seek reelection. (If one of them foolishly decides to challenge Bob Casey, I'll gladly wear some egg on my face.)
Each district is listed with the name of its incumbent, as well as its percentage of the vote given to Barack Obama in the past presidential election (noted as "Ob. %" in the column header). For our "watch list" and our "off the list" charts, we also include the incumbent's age on election day, since age often plays a big role in retirements. For our list of actual retirements and resignations, there's a column showing the date each departure was announced. Finally, we've tried to include links to our source information wherever possible in the "Notes" column. Be aware that some candidates have more than one "note" applicable to them, so those seats will take up two or more rows.
One thing to note about the presidential vote: We're only showing Obama's performance under the newly-drawn districts for each state. Where we haven't yet crunched the numbers for each state's redistricting plans, or where the redistricting process has not yet produced new lines, we're leaving that column blank for the time being. There are two exceptions where we're including Obama's performance under the old lines: One is Arizona's 8th CD, left open by the resignation of Democrat Rep. Gabby Giffords. A special election for her seat will be held under the old lines later this year, before the new lines come into effect for the regularly scheduled August primary (when the seat will be renumbered as Arizona's 2nd CD). We're including Obama's performance in the old 8th for this reason. The same is the case for Oregon's 1st District.
Without further ado, let's dive into the Open Seat Watch!
Definite Retirements/Vacancies:
Just as a housekeeping note on our methodology: Though retiring Democratic Rep. Dennis Cardoza lives in the 16th CD (and the plurality of his old district—37 percent—wound up there), we're "assigning him" to CA-21 in order to make the math work out right. (Cardoza's buddy, Democratic Rep. Jim Costa, is taking charge of the new 16th; this is our way of making sure that the 21st is noted as a Democratic open seat.) We're doing the same thing for Brad Miller in NC-13, even though he previously said he was planning on making a run in the 4th CD against fellow Democratic Rep. David Price.
Globally, though, we're otherwise plugging in incumbents in the districts they most likely would have sought reelection in. (Jeff Flake, for example, represents the old AZ-06 but clearly would have run in the new AZ-05.) Some states still haven't finished redistricting, however, so some of these numbers could change in future updates, like Maurice Hinchey's NY-22.
All told, we have 32 straight-up open seats on the table this year, including the special election to fill Oregon's 1st CD, which will be decided this week. (There are actually 34 retirees on this list, but two seats aren't actually open, MA-01 and OH-10, due to both Ohio and Massachusetts losing seats in redistricting.) That's up from 13 districts in May. That number, 34, represents a bit of a bump from this point last cycle, where we had 26 confirmed departures by late January, 2010. Redistricting has certainly had a hand in knocking out a few incumbents (Miller, Cardoza, Elton Gallegly and Steve Austria are notable examples), and we may yet see a few more redistricting-induced retirements in the future. In all, of the seats on our big board, 21 districts are currently represented by a Democrat, and 13 are held by Republicans.
However, there are, in fact, even more open seats on the table ...
Incumbent-less Districts:
Two seats are getting left open due to redistricting-induced incumbent-on-incumbent violence in other districts: CA-29, which we mentioned above, and CA-47 as well. OH-03 is an odd duck: a deliberate Democratic vote sink that will almost certainly turn blue in November but actually has to be regarded as a "Republican-held" seat given how the math works out. We discuss the weird situation of CA-41 elsewhere; suffice it to say that David Dreier is an extremely square peg for this decidedly round hole. And AZ-01 is in something of a state of quantum superposition: GOPer Ben Quayle could conceivably decide to seek reelection in the 9th (though he's most likely to run in the 6th), which would formally make the 1st CD Arizona's "new" district.
The rest of the list is simpler: Twelve districts have been added in various states due to reapportionment. Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson in Utah and GOP Rep. Tom Graves in Georgia have laid claim to two of 'em, so we're identifying the "new seats" a bit differently. You'll see that all the other "new" districts have the highest numbers in their respective states, but because Matheson is running in UT-04 and Graves is going for GA-14, lower-numbered seats get tagged as "new" in Utah and Georgia.
Incumbent vs Incumbent Match-ups:
Incumbent vs incumbent attrition: It can truly be the best of times and the worst of times ... and sadly, Team Blue is getting a larger dose of the latter this cycle. Most of the above match-ups are confirmed, but some are still just hypothetical—and most of the violence will be settled in primaries rather than general elections, with the exception of IA-03 and OH-16. Also, please note that we're listing incumbents alphabetically—we are
not judging who has the better "claim" to a seat by listing a particular incumbent as "#1."
Potential Retirements/Vacancies:
Here, a special note on doomed GOP Rep. David Dreier is in order. We're marking him down as a potential retirement in CA-31, but we're assigning CA-41 as being potentially left open due to his possible retirement. Even though Dreier would never run in the blue 41st CD (a seat he has no connection to), we're making him "responsible" for this district as a bookkeeping resolution, for the same reasons that we "assigned" CA-21 to Dennis Cardoza.
I've tried to be as aggressive as possible in whittling down the above list, but I did keep on a few borderline absurdities for completeness' sake (e.g., WV-02's Shelley Moore Capito, who's enjoying pretty strong odds of winning her primary). Please note the fun new addition of frosh Republican Rep. Michael Grimm, who is beginning to attract some serious scandal taint. If there are other names you think belong on this list, please let us know in comments.
Finally, we have our list of incumbents who have confirmed that they'll be seeking another term this year:
Off the Watch List:
P.S.
Click here for a list of seats which became vacant during the 112th Congress but have since been filled.