There are a lot of signs pointing toward a Democratic wave. FiveThirtyEight presently gives the Democrats an 84.8 percent chance of taking the House, with a likely gain of around 39 seats. Roll Call’s Nathan Gonzales suggests a whopping 79 Republican-held seats are in play—and projects a gain of at least 25 seats, right at the number we need to retake the chamber.
But the strongest sign I’ve seen to date that the blue team has the wind at its back came on last night’s edition of “All In with Chris Hayes.” The man hoping to dump one of the most loathsome members of the House paid Hayes a visit. That’s not unusual. What’s unusual is who that candidate is—J. D. Scholten, who is challenging Steve King in IA-04. Watch here.
Scholten claimed that King’s incessant tweeting about hard right and outright racist memes doesn’t fit the values of this district, which stretches across the northwest quadrant of the state from Sioux City to Mason City.
Hayes reminded Scholten that he’s running in an R+11 district. He asked Scholten what he’d say to someone who may not like King’s wingnuttery, but is still conservative. Scholten said that it was about “showing up.” He’s spent a lot of time traveling through this sprawling district, and claimed King has spent a lot of time going to Austria over the last six years when he hasn’t visited some parts of his district in that time.
Frankly, the most staggering thing about this interview is that it happened at all. As I mentioned earlier, IA-04 is an R+11 district, easily the most rural and most Republican district in the state. It’s been in Republican hands without interruption since Fred “Gopher” Grandy won it in 1986 (it was numbered as IA-06 at the time, it was IA-05 from 1993 to 2013 and has been IA-04 since 2013) after six-term Democratic incumbent Berkeley Bedell retired. A little research reveals that since Grandy’s initial run, the only time in the last three decades that a Republican hasn’t ended matters in this district by now was in 2013, when King faced Christie Vilsack. And even then, King won by nine. Trump won this district by a punishing 61-36 margin in 2016.
And yet, every major handicapper only rates this contest as “likely Republican” or its equivalent. The fact it’s even on the board this close to Election Day is very telling. Presently, FiveThirtyEight only has King winning 52-44. Apart from his run against Vilsack in 2013, he’s never won by less than 22 points. So if Scholten is still in the game at this point, you have to think the red team is nervous.
Let’s give them even more heartburn. Donate to Scholten here.