At long last, the 2022 midterms are almost here! With the battle for the House front and center, we've brought back Daily Kos Elections Editor Jeff Singer to give us a window into the key races on a final preelection episode of The Downballot. Singer discusses a wide range of contests that will offer insight into how the night is going, including top GOP pickup opportunities, second-tier Republican targets, and the seats where Democrats are on offense. And with many vote tallies likely to stretch on for some time, Singer also identifies several bellwether races in states that count quickly.
We'll be covering all of these races and many, many more on Tuesday night in our liveblog at Daily Kos Elections and on Twitter. The first polls close at 6 PM ET, so come join us! And of course, we'll recap the action on next week's edition of The Downballot.
David Beard:
Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.
David Nir:
And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. The Downballot is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency, from Senate to city council. Well, after a long two-year wait, we are about to finally get our answers. Join us next week at Daily Kos Elections and on Twitter for our complete coverage of all of the results in every key race for Senate, for House, for governor, state supreme court, state legislature, and so much more.
On today's show, we are going to be focusing on the House battleground. We are bringing on Daily Kos Elections Editor Jeff Singer, whose knowledge of these races is simply without peer. He's going to be walking us through a number of key contests that we think offer insight into the broader House playing field. We have so many to discuss, so please stay with us. We're about to get started.
It is finally here. The 2022 midterms are taking place this Tuesday, as we hardly need tell you, and that's why we have invited back on Daily Kos Elections Editor Jeff Singer to do a deep dive of what I think are some of the most important races that we are going to be following on election night, and that is the battle for the House. Jeff, thank you so much for coming back on the show.
Jeff Singer:
It's great to be back, Nir.
David Nir:
So, we have to be really clear-eyed about the situation that Democrats are facing here. The party only has a five-seat majority in the House. But going into election night, there are a whole host of seats in the House that Democrats currently control, but that, more or less, the national party has essentially given up on, that the polling looks bad, they think there is very little chance of holding these seats, or these seats were so aggressively gerrymandered in the first place by Republicans that Democrats just really haven't bothered.
And I'm speaking solely at the national level. Obviously, these races all have candidates who are all trying very hard, and in some cases there is even still outside support from other groups. But when we're looking at the DCCC and the House Majority PAC, the biggest democratic super PAC, they have said we have to focus on different targets. And there are about 10 of these seats. So, that means that Democrats really start off almost in a minus-five hole because they have the five-seat edge right now, but if there are 10 seats that they are preparing to lose on Tuesday, then that means Democrats would have to win at least about five seats, flipping them from Republicans in order to hold the House.
But not all of these quote unquote "gimmies" are actually gimmies for Republicans. And Jeff, we want to talk about a couple of them with you. In particular, a seat in Florida, the 13th District. This is, again, one that Republicans gerrymandered, but there actually is reason to think that maybe this one isn't over.
Jeff Singer:
Yeah. So, this is around the St. Petersburg area. It was represented by Democrat Charlie Crist, but he resigned over the summer to concentrate on his uphill battle for governor. The guy, Crist, is trying to unseat Ron DeSantis. He really bullied the Republican legislature to adopt the most aggressive gerrymander possible and we saw that here in the 13th. Under the lines that were used over the last few years, Biden won the seat 51 to 47%, but under the ones that'll be used on Tuesday, Trump took it 53 to 46. So not very good territory. And for a long time, it's looked like a pretty easy win for the 2020 nominee Anna Paulina Luna, who is a very far right Trump acolyte.
But the Democrat, former Defense Department official Eric Lynn, he's been running an aggressive campaign of his own, and he's got some help. While major Democratic groups have stayed away, there's a super PAC that happens to be funded by Lynn's cousin that has poured millions in here. Polling's very limited, but there was a recent independent poll that showed Paulina Luna up by all of 1 point. So you can never ever base your read on a race on just one poll. It's a very tough district, but could be worth watching. And Florida's a state that not only closes early, but it counts fast. So, if things are closed in the 13th District around say 8 PM Eastern, about an hour after polls close, things could be a bit more interesting nationally than we think.
David Nir:
That's a really good point about never making up your mind based on a single poll, though at the same time there, it's not as though Republicans released any contradictory poll suggesting that it was going to be a blowout.
Another race that's in this category where the big Democratic groups have moved away from is Oregon's 5th District. Jeff, why don't you tell us what's going on there?
Jeff Singer:
Yeah. So, on paper, this is a pretty Democratic district. Biden won 53% of the vote here to Trump's 44%. It's in the southern Portland suburbs and central Oregon. But there're a few catches: Oregon has been a really tough state for Democrats this year with the governor's race in particular, but it does seem to trickle down. Democrats do seem to be struggling in a lot of these seats that are good on paper. And the democratic nominee, Jamie McLeod-Skinner, she ran a really good race in the primary. She beat conservative Democratic Congressman Kurt Schrader. But Schrader is not a team player by any means. He's refused to endorse her. He's made a big stink of things. So Mcleod-Skinner does face a pretty tough fight against the Republican nominee, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who's the former mayor of a community called Happy Valley.
Republican outside groups, they're continuing to spend here. They've been very aggressive. They've been running ads highlighting how McLeod-Skinner is a former city council person from Santa Clara, California, which is about an hour south of San Francisco, but Republicans are very happy to say she's a San Francisco liberal, which is often code for gay. McLeod-Skinner would be the first gay person to represent Oregon in Congress.
And it's been a tough one. Democrats have recently redirected resources to defend other seats in Oregon, but Republicans aren't acting like this is over. They're still spending. There hasn't been really much polling here, so McLeod-Skinner's the underdog, but maybe not over.
David Nir:
Oregon, it's worth pointing out, is almost the exact opposite of Florida. At least, it could be quite a while before we know results. Oregon conducts all of its elections entirely by mail, and ballots that are postmarked on Election Day still have times who arrive in the hands of election officials after Election Day. So often it takes a while to know exactly what's going on in that state.
David Beard:
So we started off with the batch of about 10 races where Democrats had either never really invested at the national level, or had stopped investing and seemingly sort of conceded those to the Republicans. So let's go to the other end of the spectrum, into a batch of races that started getting money invested pretty late and that have come on the scene either by Democrats or Republicans late, and seem like they might end up being competitive when maybe three months ago we were not thinking of these as races that would be competitive on election night. And these are mostly pretty Biden-leaning Democratic districts where Democrats are now worried about a late Republican swing. We've also, though, got a couple of Republican districts in this batch where issues have caused Democrats some optimism, and one of those is Arizona's 1st District. So tell us about that one.
Jeff Singer:
Republican David Schweikert is running here. This is a seat in the Phoenix area and Scottsdale. It got a bit bluer under the new map. Under Schweikert's old seat, Trump won 51% of the vote. Under the new one, 50% for Biden. Not a massive change, but could make all the difference in a close race. For a while it didn't really look like this would be a close race because Democrats have a lot of bluer seats to worry about, but Schweikert's an interesting guy.
In 2020, Schweikert admitted to 11 different violations of congressional rules and campaign finance laws, paid a $50,000 fine, and accepted a formal reprimand after the end of a long-running campaign finance scandal where he was accused of using campaign money for noncampaign activities. It wasn't enough to beat him in 2020, but Democrats are hoping this time will be different.
Schweikert went through a really rough primary in August. He only won 44% of the vote. That was enough because there was a third candidate in there, but a majority of Republican primary voters wanted him gone.
The Democratic nominee is Jevin Hodge, who would be the state's first Black congressman. He's raised a competitive amount of money. And for a while, this still looked like a very tough race, still is, but major outside groups from both sides are taking an interest. Democrats have started pouring money in here. Republicans have responded. They're both acting like there is something to see here.
David Nir:
And one detail to note is that this district changed numbers. In 2020 it was still known as the 6th District. That's where Schweikert won reelection by just 4 points. Now it's the 1st District. This is something to be aware of across the country that many, many districts have been renumbered, and we will try to flag those for you as we run through this list of top races that we're looking at on this week's show.
David Beard:
Now, unfortunately, most of these light-breaking races are not similar to Arizona's 1st District where there's a scandal-tarred Republican that we're going after. It's mostly Democratic-held districts in these blue states that generally either happen to be Democratic-leaning, or in cases in a state like Illinois were gerrymandered to be Democratic-leaning, where clearly internal polling is worrying Democrats. And so they've been spending money, or Republicans have started spending money because they smell a little blood in the water here. And a good example of that type of district is Illinois' 6th District, which most people thought was pretty safe right up until the past week or two.
Jeff Singer:
Yeah. So, this is a district in the southwestern Chicago suburbs. It includes part of Eastern DuPage County. On paper, very blue at 55% for Biden, but it wasn't so blue just a few years ago. This is a historically red area. DuPage County for a very long time was one of those Republican suburban bastions that everyone talked about. It revolted during the Trump era but it's possible it'll start to move back. Sean Casten, the Democratic incumbent, flipped the last version of the seat in 2018. He was in the news a lot early this year because he won an incumbent-versus-incumbent primary against fellow Democratic member Marie Newman. It looked for a while like that was all he had to worry about, but not so much the last few days. The main super PAC on the Republican side, the Congressional Leadership Fund, they just threw down $1.8 million.
Casten's allies at House Majority PAC have spent a smaller but still substantial $650,000 here, so real money in the race. Casten himself, he has been taking this seriously. He's been running ads against his Republican opponent, Keith Pekau. He's the mayor of a small community called Orland Park. He's been going after him on abortion, so Casten knew this could get close but both parties are acting like this is very competitively in the game.
David Nir:
And I would add that there's probably about half a dozen other districts like this, mostly suburban Democratic-held districts that are potentially coming online late. There's really only one other seat in this category on the Republican side. That would be Washington's 3rd District. The thing to remember though, as Jeff was pointing out, is that all of these seats do still lean Democratic on paper. The Republican super PACs have an enormous amount of money. They have to spend it somewhere. They are obviously looking for the largest victory possible, but just because Democrats are sweating these seats late doesn't mean that Republicans are going to win all of them. A lot of their best pickup opportunities, as always, are coming in open seats, and we want to talk about a few districts that are really representative of the broader playing field as a whole, so let's start alphabetically with California's 13th District. This is a seat that also changed numbers though; it's always tricky in California since the lines changed a lot.
Jeff Singer:
Yeah. So this is in the mid-Central Valley. It's another district that on paper is very blue. Biden won it 54% to Trump's 43%, but Democrats have had a very hard time in the Central Valley anytime the presidency isn't on the ballot. Turnout is just very, very tough there. They've struggled in past years in seats that should be blue, quote unquote, but aren't, and this is one of them. The Democratic nominee is Assemblyman Adam Gray. He's a moderate. He has even part of the moderate caucus in the California legislature, but Republicans have been working very, very hard to tie him to national Democrats, the groups that he's really distanced himself from in office.
One of their favorite targets is the 2017 state gas and vehicle registration tax, which was passed to fund infrastructure and road repairs. That's not something Gray supported but Republicans are very, very happy to link him to it. The Republican nominee is John Duarte. He's an agribusinessman. He runs a very prominent tree nursery. Democrats have been going after him over the many lawsuits that were filed against his company by his workers and other businesses. So there isn't much polling here. This is an area where polling can be pretty tough but both sides are taking it very seriously.
David Nir:
Like I said, this is one of those seats that changed numbers. You can kind of sort of trace it to the old 9th District, but again, the maps really shifted a lot in California so this is very much a virgin territory. Now we're going to head back across the country to a district in Ohio that Republicans are gunning for. Let's talk about the 13th District in the eastern part of the state.
Jeff Singer:
So this is in the Akron and Canton areas. Biden won it by about 3 points. It's another one where it's pretty hard to trace a direct successor back to. The Democratic nominee here is the former leader of the state House Emelia Sykes. The Republicans are fielding a former Women for Trump Co-chair Madison Gesiotto, and this is another one where both sides are pouring millions into it. And the Republicans in particular have been going after Sykes, who's Black, over criminal justice reform. They've been running just the sort of stereotypical commercials where there're all these scary pictures of criminals and they say Sykes won't keep you safe, and they've been doing that because she supported a bipartisan criminal justice reform package that didn't even pass the legislature, but that's enough for the Republicans to say Sykes is weak on crime. And this is not something at all that's been confined to this seat but this is a really bad example of it.
David Nir:
One thing we've talked about all year long is how terrible so many Republican candidates at so many levels of the ballot have been, and how in certain races at least, that seems to have foreclosed opportunities on them. Except in Rhode Island's 2nd District, they actually have a candidate who seems to suck less than usual. What's going on up in the Ocean State?
Jeff Singer:
So this is an open Democratic seat in western Rhode Island. The Republican nominee here is Allan Fung, the former mayor of Cranston. You might remember him from both 2014 and 2018 when he ran very strong but failed campaigns for governor, so he's very well established. The Democratic nominee is the state treasurer, Seth Magaziner. Fung's a very well-known guy. His wife actually beat the conservative speaker of the state House two years ago in a general election, so very prominent family. On paper it's another district that should be safe at 56% for Biden, but Rhode Island has quite a few voters who are open to voting Republican if they have the right Republican, so those numbers are deceptively high.
David Nir:
One thing worth noting that we have talked about in regard to polling in so many races: If you're polling in a red state or a red district, undecideds are likely to lean Republican. That's just the nature of the beast. Conversely, of course, if you're in a blue state or a blue district, undecided voters are generally speaking more apt to lean Democratic. As a result, the polling shows the race generally close, maybe even with small leads for Fung in Rhode Island's 2nd, but he probably has a fairly difficult time getting over 50% because he has to win over Democratic voters. This is the exact same problem in reverse that Tim Ryan, the Democrat, faces in the Ohio Senate race, so he might actually have a bigger hill to climb. The margin between the two candidates may not be as revealing as the undecideds.
David Beard:
And one of the things that we've seen in a lot of these midterms is that open seats like RI-02, like the races we just talked about, tend to fall at a greater rate to the party that's having a good night than seats with incumbents who are often battle-tested, who often have a ton of money to spend to defend themselves. The next group that we want to talk about is these front-line Democratic incumbents who the GOP was always going to go after and have been very battle-tested. They have been prepared for this and are actually in many cases holding up reasonably well considering that many of them are in very tough districts. And the first one we want to talk about is Arizona's 2nd District, which formerly was Arizona's 1st District before the redistricting. Representative Tom O'Halleran maybe we thought would've been on the GOP gimmes list that we started with, but surprisingly is not.
Jeff Singer:
Yeah. So this is a district that really changed during redistricting and not for the better. The district that O'Halleran currently represents, the 1st, Biden narrowly won it. This district, the 2nd in northeastern Arizona, Trump took it 53 to 45%. But O'Halleran's a tough guy. About a decade ago, he was a Republican member of the state legislature. He was a moderate, one of the Republicans you don't really see anymore, and now he's a Democrat. His opponent is a Navy SEAL veteran named Eli Crane, who's been a huge supporter of the Big Lie. Trump endorsed him in the primary.
This is one where around Labor Day, we might have guessed both parties would just ignore it because O'Halleran just had such a tough task ahead of him, but that hasn't really happened. The Republicans spent heavily in September, then they kind of stepped away but in the last few weeks, things have gotten interesting again. Democrats have started spending against Crane. They've focused on his support for the Big Lie. Republicans have rushed back in to help Crane. It's still a very tough task for O'Halleran but he might be able to get enough crossover votes to hold on. We'll see.
David Beard:
Another example of these tough Democratic incumbents who are holding on reasonably well is Jared Golden in Maine, who also has a tough Trump district, so tell us about the state of that race.
Jeff Singer:
So this is Maine's 2nd District. Trump won it 52% to 45%, looks about the same as it's looked for the last 10 years. Jared Golden though, he's a formidable candidate. In 2018, he narrowly unseated Republican Bruce Poliquin. Poliquin's back for a rematch. There's also an independent on the ballot, Tiffany Bond, who can be important here. This one is interesting for a few reasons: Golden has run ahead of the ticket before. Poliquin in 2018 initially led going into election night but Maine does instant runoff voting now. Poliquin's lead turned into a loss after the rank choice process took place, so Poliquin did not accept that result. He filed lawsuits, he lost them. He just threw a fit and never accepted his defeat. Same thing could happen this time. Bond is a factor, but it could come down to where her supporters go in the ranked choice process.
This one is a race we probably won't know the result of unless one of the two major candidates does very well. There aren't going to be the instant runoff tabulations until about a week after Election Day, but that system helped Golden a lot in 2018. We'll see what happens this time.
David Beard:
And then I guess we have to talk about everybody's least favorite House Democrat who's still running for reelection, Henry Cuellar, who we talked about a lot earlier in the year … Henry Cuellar, who we talked about a lot earlier in the year for his primary and is now facing a tough general.
Jeff Singer:
Yeah, so this is a scene in the Laredo area. This has long been a Democratic bastion, but Trump did really, really well in the Rio Grande Valley. He either carried or came very close in a lot of longtime Democratic strongholds like this one, and Republicans are hoping that trend continues. The Republican nominee is a former Ted Cruz aide named Cassy Garcia. Both parties are taking her seriously. There's been a lot of spending here, and Cuellar himself, he's been one of the most conservative Democrats in the House for a long time. He did it when this district was so blue that he didn't need to be. He's doing it now. We'll see if that helps insulate him from what could be a tough night in this area for Democrats.
David Nir:
One of the topics we talked about endlessly with Cuellar was this bizarre and still-unexplained FBI raid early this year on both his home and his campaign headquarters. Has that come up in the race? Have those chickens come home to roost?
Jeff Singer:
Yeah, Republicans are running ads about them. Apparently, sometimes they do care about FBI searches.
David Nir:
Well, we still don't know exactly why Cuellar's home and office were raided and we may never know, but that is a subject for another day. For now, we want to peer a little bit deeper and look at what you might call the GOP's second-tier targets. These are the seats that Republicans are hoping to pick up, and if they do pick up, they would represent a very strong night for Republicans. But they face obstacles of all different sorts and so we're going to look at a representative subset of this group. And we have to talk one more time about the absolutely unbelievable race for Alaska's House seat. What is the latest word there, Jeff?
Jeff Singer:
This has been a big surprise. Mary Peltola's victory in the August special election against Sarah Palin, that was a surprise on its own. And many people, including myself, expected, okay, Peltola won because Sarah Palin was so terrible and no one really laid a glove on her during that race. The Republicans are going to rush in with a lot of money. There's going to be the negative ads she didn't get last time. That hasn't happened. Still a week to go. Maybe that'll change, but Republican outside groups really have just left this one alone, even though Alaska is a red state. Sarah Palin and the other Republican in this ranked choice battle, Nick Begich, they've said to their supporters, "Rank us as the other one." But they don't like each other. They've been going after each other and, unexpectedly somewhat, Peltola has been running as the candidate who's the heir to Don Young, the former Republican congressman who represented this state for about 50 years until he died earlier this year.
Peltola not only has Young's daughters on her side, but several Young aides, they're also for her. They don't particularly like Palin because she's just left so many enemies in Alaska. But Begich, he's really set them off. He was a Young supporter in 2020. He even interned for him early in 2021, but apparently he'd already filed paperwork to run against Young before he died. So Young aides are just pissed. They just see this as a complete betrayal. They just think he spied on them. There's just so much Republican bad blood going on here and Begich has started running ads against Peltola, but it really hasn't been the onrush we really expected.
Alaska's a tough state. Peltola probably never will be safe, but I'll just say this: When people bring up Tip O'Neal's old quote, "All politics is local these days," they usually just do it to say, "Well, no, it's not. It's all national." But if there's any place where that's still true, where all politics is local, it's Alaska and that could work out very well for Peltola.
David Nir:
So let's talk about a place where politics almost definitely is national, and that's California's 47th District. It is where a very prominent progressive Democrat, Katie Porter, is seeking reelection. Her old district was numbered the 45th. Again, it got changed a fair bit but, this is fair to say, the successor seat to her old district. And this is another one of those that seems to have come online for the most part fairly late in the game. But Porter always knew she could be a target.
Jeff Singer:
Yeah. So this is a seat around coastal Orange County and the city of Irvine. Biden won 54% of the vote here, but this is an area that was very Republican just a few years ago before Trump messed everything up for the party. And Republicans have still done well downballot in Orange County. There probably are voters here who had voted for Democrats because they just hated Trump, who now are turning back. Porter is an incredibly good fundraiser. She's one of the most prominent progressive Democrats out there. But her Republican opponent, Scott Baugh, he's a former Orange County Republican Party chairman. He's not the most prominent guy, but he's been around a long time and he's getting a lot of help from Republican outside groups.
This is an area where it's very, very expensive to run ads, but if you air enough ads you can do some damage, and Republicans really, really, really want to take down Porter. If she survives, she could be a statewide candidate fairly soon. So Republicans want the seat. They also want Katie Porter out of their lives. They're spending what they think they need to spend to make sure that happens.
David Nir:
One thing that's different about this race though is that outside Democratic groups have not gotten involved. But I think it's fair to say that's because Porter is such an unbelievably good fundraiser that she can handle all her needs on her own. Is that an assessment you'd agree with?
Jeff Singer:
I would agree with that. One thing we've discussed before, candidates can just buy more ads than outside groups for the same amount of money. They just get so much better rates. So Porter is probably happy to let Democrats run ads elsewhere while she just gets so much more bang for her buck than Baugh's allies are getting.
David Nir:
One last race we'll look at in this second-tier group for Republicans is one that we've also talked about before, and that's Ohio's 9th District, which is almost the poster child for disastrous Republican candidates costing the GOP chances at pickups. This is a seat that looked like Republicans were triaging, but Democrats don't seem to think that they have this one in the bag.
Jeff Singer:
So this is a seat that Republicans gerrymandered. Trump would've won it with 51% of the vote. The Democratic incumbent is Marcy Kaptur, who is seeking a historic 21st term, and the Republican is J.R. Majewski. He just won a complete surprise in the primary. Then we found out all this stuff about him that he's a QAnon acolyte, that he was at Trump's rally just before the Jan. 6 attack. Majewski says he didn't go into the Capitol, but there has been some conflicting information about that. Then the Associated Press reported in September that Majewski, despite saying he served in Afghanistan, didn't.
Republicans outside groups seem to say, "Okay, we're done. This one just isn't winnable." They don't really have a problem with Majewski as a person. They just don't want to throw good money after bad. But Democrats never really seem to think this is over. Kaptur's allies are still spending here. Maybe Democrats know something the Republicans don't. Maybe they just want to be very cautious, but this doesn't feel like it's over, over.
David Beard:
Now, we've talked about a lot of seats where Republicans are going after Democrats, but there are a few seats beyond the couple of late-breaking races we mentioned where Democrats are looking to pick up seats. Sometimes because of redistricting. Sometimes just because there's still a strong Biden lean to these seats. And one of those that we can start with is California's 22nd District. Now, this is the old 21st District that David Valadao represents. So tell us the state of that race.
Jeff Singer:
So this is another Central Valley District. Biden won 55% of the vote here but, again, Democrats struggle in the Central Valley when the presidency isn't on the ballot. And the Republican incumbent, David Valadao, he's run ahead of the Republican ticket many times, including in 2020 when he won a very similar district by defeating the Democratic incumbent, T.J. Cox, narrowly even as Biden was romping to victory here. Valadao then went on to vote to impeach Donald Trump, and that vote was the kiss of death for many Republicans. Not Valadao though. He narrowly but still did overcome inner party opposition in June.
The Democrats are fielding a very strong candidate, Assemblyman Rudy Salas. He's won some tough races of his own. He's one of those members of the moderate caucus. But like with Adam Gray, Republicans are just doing everything they can to tie him to things he's opposed, like the gas tax. So Salas is a much more established candidate than most of the people Valadao's ever gone up against. He has some good appeal, he's won some tough battles, but this is one where turnout could really be tough.
David Beard:
It is worth noting that if the race is really close, it would not surprise me to see a bit of an undervote for Valadao from some true believer Trumpists who will refuse to vote for somebody who voted to impeach Trump under any circumstances. So if it's a close race, that could be a percentage or two that he loses as a result and could cost him the race. Now let's go further south in California to the 41st District, which is actually the old 42nd District, represented by Ken Calvert. What's the state of play there?
Jeff Singer:
This is a long shot, but possible Democratic target. This is a district that's been dramatically reshaped by redistricting. Calvert spent the last decade in a very safe Republican district. This one, Trump won 50% of the vote. Still won it, but it's close. Calvert himself hasn't faced a really tough battle since 2008 when he came very unexpectedly close to losing in a district that looks quite different from this one. This one is based in Riverside County, just east of L.A. It includes Palm Springs, which is famously a big gay resort town, has a big population of voters who aren't particularly fond of Calvert and his far right ideals. The Democratic nominee is Will Rollins. He's a former federal prosecutor. This is one where outside groups really haven't been spending much money, so it still feels like a long shot. But Calvert almost got caught napping in 2008. We'll see what can happen this time. He's a guy who's been around forever with all the baggage that entails. Rollins is running an energetic campaign. It's tough, but unexpected things can happen.
David Nir:
And it's a good example of a district that has changed so much, you mentioned Palm Springs, that did not use to previously be a part of the district. And when you are an incumbent for that long, and like you said, you have compiled an anti-LGBTQ voting record for that many years, and suddenly, you have one of the most prominent gay towns in America in your district. That can cause real problems, and like you said, if he gets caught napping again, I wouldn't be completely shocked.
David Beard:
And it may be a bridge too far if this ends up being a Republican-leaning year as we've talked about so much, but it's certainly a district that if it doesn't come to fruition this year, will be returned to in 2024 and in future cycles during this decade with the current districts. And one final potential sort of Democratic pickup opportunity that we want to talk about is TX-34, which is just a very strange situation because a Democratic congressman is running here, but is running against a Republican congresswoman who wasn't there two years ago because she won a special election from a Democratic congressman seat and now they are in the same seat because of redistricting. So it's a really weird situation. So break this down as best you can.
Jeff Singer:
This is a district in the Eastern Rio Grande Valley. Republican, Mayra Flores, she won the June special election. She's only been there a few months. She faces her Democratic colleague, Vicente Gonzalez. Flores represents much more of this district than Gonzalez. He represents what's currently the 15th District, which the Republicans gerrymandered. Gonzalez probably thought this would be a much safer race for him. But that was before Flores ran and won the special election. This is another one where Biden won 57% of the vote here, but the presidential vote can be deceptive because of both turnout and what Republicans are hoping will be more gains in the Rio Grande Valley. Both parties are spending a lot here. Democrats are focusing on how Flores is an election denier. They've been tying her to Jan. 6. Republicans are running their usual “the Democrat hates cops” kind of campaign, which we've seen all over the country.
There hasn't been any real reliable polling here. Both parties are taking it seriously. This could be a really big one. This is one of just two races in the whole country where a Democratic congressman faces another sitting Republican colleague. The other's in Florida where Republican, Neal Dunn, faces Democrat, Al Lawson, but that district's much redder. That would be a surprise if that's anything but an easy Dunn victory. But this one is a lot more unpredictable.
David Beard:
Now, that was a lot of races and we could talk about a lot more. There's probably 70 races we could make Jeff sit through and talk to us about, but we're not going to make him do that. But I do just take a little bit of a step back and look at the House more broadly. Obviously, election night is coming up and one of the things that people often wonder about is expectation-setting and the idea of what is a good night for Democrats at the House level, what is a bad night, and what is sort of an expected night?
Jeff Singer:
Ultimately, a good night is Democrats holding the House. And that might not be very likely. I think it's the least likely of the three options we're going to talk about, but that's the ultimate goal of running elections. You run to win. Two-hundred-and-eighteen seats is a win, anything else is a loss. Now, obviously, given the situation as we went through and talked about, there're a lot of Democratic seats at risk. There's a very good chance they do lose the House, and that doesn't necessarily make it a bad night. I think that's more of an average expected night. Let's say Democrats lose 10 seats, 20 seats, something in that range—I think obviously, you'd be disappointed. It's not good to lose control of the House of Representatives, but you can also say it's a midterm. Biden is not particularly popular. So if you lose 15 or 20 seats, you can take that and that's sort of the expected, "We did what we could." That's a pretty expected, reasonable result. If you start to lose 25, 30 seats or more, I think you have to admit that's a bad night and that's possible.
And again, that's because it's a midterm, because Biden is unpopular, but you still have to admit that's not great. So ultimately, based on those expectations, we want to look at a few races that are early bellwethers that we can look at and say, "Oh, we might get some results in the first few hours before midnight." We'll actually get sort of a final result of these competitive races because they close relatively early and can tell us what might we be looking at. We won't know the full result, of course, until days or weeks later, but if you're wanting to look for something to give you a little information after the first few hours the polls have closed, there might be a few races that are good for that.
David Beard:
So, Jeff, can you give us a few races where the polls will close relatively early and the races will be relatively close and we expect them to count at a reasonable rate, so we might have some decent information on a full result before 11 PM or midnight, and we can take that to project forwards?
Jeff Singer:
Yeah. So Virginia counts pretty briskly. It closes at 7 PM Eastern and there are two big races there, both involving Democratic women who won during the 2018 wave. There's Elaine Luria in the 2nd District in Hampton Roads, and then there's Abigail Spanberger in the 7th District. That's a district that's been really reshaped. It was the Richmond suburbs, now it stretches up to the D.C. area. Those are both competitive seats. Biden won them both, but not by comfortable margins. Luria's trying to fend off state Sen. Jen Kiggins. Luria's emphasized Jan. 6 much more than most Democrats in competitive races have. So a Luria win would be a good sign. Spanberger's seat is a bit more Democratic, but still far from safe. If she holds on, also a good sign; doesn't mean we're keeping the House, but it could be a sign the bottom isn't dropping.
If both of them go down, that's not something we'd like to watch. Another seat I draw attention to is Ohio's 1st District. It's around Cincinnati. The Republicans in Ohio did pass a gerrymander, but because of some state rules and the state supreme court, they were a bit constrained by what they could do. So this very gerrymandered seat in Cincinnati, the 1st District, became much more Democratic. It went from a seat that Trump won to a seat that Biden carried by about 8 points. The Republican, Steve Chabot, he's running against a Democratic member of the Cincinnati City Council, Greg Landsman. Chabot's been around a long time. He won in the 1994 Republican wave, lost in 2008, came back in 2010. He's been there ever since. He could run ahead, even if it's a decent night for Democrats. But if he's struggling, it's a sign that Democrats are in for a decent night, maybe not a good one, but it's an early sign.
One that's a bit of the opposite is up in Indiana, around Gary, in the northwest corner of the state, Indiana's 1st District. It's held by Democrat, Frank Mrvan. He won in 2020 in a race that Republicans didn't target. But this time, it's very different. He's up against Jennifer-Ruth Green; she's an Air Force veteran. She'd be the first Black Republican to represent Indiana in Congress. This is a seat that Biden won by about 8 points, but it's been moving to the right during the Trump era. Both parties are taking it very seriously. If Green wins, it's a sign Republicans are taking districts like this. One more I draw attention to is down in Florida where the counting is mostly quick: Florida's 27th District. It's a heavily Latino district around Miami. Republicans gerrymandered it. Went from a close Biden win to a very close Trump win. It's held by Republican Maria Elvira Salazar. She's running against Democratic state Sen. Annette Taddeo, who's been around for a while.
Democratic struggles in Florida are very well documented. Democratic struggles in heavily Latino areas like this in Florida are also very well documented. A Salazar loss would be a surprise, but it's possible. Republicans have started spending money there in the last month. If Salazar is having problems, it's a good sign for Democratic prospects in Florida and elsewhere. If Salazar is dropping the victory, not something we want to watch.
David Nir:
Well, we have been talking about key House races, bellwether House races, House races that we should get results from early on election night to help guide our understanding of the battle for the lower chamber of Congress with Daily Kos Elections Editor Jeff Singer. Jeff will be live-tweeting the results at a very granular and nerdy level on election night, so you're going to want to follow us [on Twitter] at DKElections. We will, of course, be live blogging on Daily Kos Elections, that's elections.dailykos.com. The first polls close at 6 PM Eastern so you can join us starting then. Jeff, thank you so much for sharing your unparalleled insight into all of these races.
Jeff Singer:
Thanks. Well, fingers crossed for a good night.
David Beard:
That's all from us this week. Thanks to Jeff Singer for joining us. The Downballot comes out every Thursday, everywhere you listen to podcasts. Be sure to join us Tuesday night as we cover all of the results as they come in, both on Daily Kos and on Twitter. Thanks to our producer, Cara Zelaya, and editor Trevor Jones. We'll be back next week covering the results.
