http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/ en Copyright 2008 Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:39:09 -0400 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.36 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss The battle for House control is already well underway with a key special election later this month in Mississippi's 1st District and another in early May in Louisiana's 6th District. To that end, both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee have recently established their independent expenditure operations and staffed them up. The vast majority of spending by these committees now comes in the form of independent expenditures (IEs), which can be made in unlimited amounts on behalf of campaigns with the lone caveat being that the IE staff cannot have any contact with candidates or their campaigns. Independent expenditures typically take the form of television ads but can also encompass polling, direct mail, phone banks and other persuasion tools. Over the last few election cycles, IE operations have become all the rage at the party committees, with tens of millions of dollars spent through them. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/04/committees_choose_independent.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/04/committees_choose_independent.html House Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:39:09 -0400 House Republicans, desperate for good news in an election cycle that appears to be going from bad to worse, won a rare victory earlier this week when Pete Olson, former chief of staff to Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), crushed former Rep. Shelley Sekula Gibbs in a runoff election for the GOP nod in the 22nd District. Sekula Gibbs was widely regarded as unelectable by Republicans due to her brief but tempestuous time in office following the resignation of former congressman Tom DeLay (R). Almost the entire Texas congressional delegation, as well as House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio), endorsed Olson in the runoff for fear that nominating Sekula Gibbs would mean handing Rep. Nick Lampson (D) another term. With Olson on the fall ballot, this race becomes Republicans' best chance for defeating a Democratic incumbent. Not only did DeLay hold this Houston-area district for more than two decades, but President http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/04/friday_house_line_the_eyes_of.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/04/friday_house_line_the_eyes_of.html The Line Fri, 11 Apr 2008 05:00:35 -0400 Special elections are the least predictable of all political contests due to the vagaries of off-schedule turnout, the circumstances that caused the open seat, and the impact of the national political environment. Republicans learned that lesson the hard way last month when Democrats won the special election to replace Rep. Dennis Hastert (Ill.), despite the fact that his exurban Chicago district clearly leans toward the GOP. Democrats quickly cast the race as a "political shockwave" -- in the words of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (Md.) -- that offered a preview of what was to come for Republicans at the ballot box in November. Republicans retorted that their candidate, dairy magnate and two-time gubernatorial primary loser Jim Oberweis, was fatally flawed -- so the race could not be used as a barometer for other contests. Both theories will be put to the test over the next three http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/04/more_special_election_trouble.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/04/more_special_election_trouble.html House Thu, 10 Apr 2008 06:00:08 -0400 Republicans' defeat in last Saturday's special election to replace former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) was stunning on its face but the implications of the contest are potentially far-reaching and critical in understanding the coming November elections. As much as Republican strategists sought to downplay the national importance of the race -- mostly accomplished through bad-mouthing of their candidate -- it's clear that the race was fought on national, not local, issues. The winner, Democrat Bill Foster, focused heavily on the troubled state of the economy and hit his Republican opponent -- dairy magnate Jim Oberweis -- as a willing advocate for the President Bush and the administration's policies on Iraq. Oberweis and national Republicans, on the other had, cast Foster as a tax-and-spend Democrat willing to throw money at any problem to make it better. The fact that voters in an exurban district that went for Bush by double http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/03/the_hastert_seat_in_context.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/03/the_hastert_seat_in_context.html House Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:55:00 -0400 Physicist Bill Foster (D) defeated dairy magnate Jim Oberweis (R) in the Illinois special election to replace former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R), a win that reinforces the perils facing House Republicans at the ballot box this fall. With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Foster had 52.5 percent of the vote to Oberweis's 47.5 percent. That result was amazing given the 14th District's clear Republican lean. President Bush won the district, which spans into the far western suburbs of Chicago, with 55 percent in 2004 and 54 percent in 2000. Hastert won reelection easily for more than two decades. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, was quick to cast the race as a national barometer. Foster's victory is "a stunning rejection of the Bush administration, its Republican allies, and presidential nominee John McCain," he said. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) called the http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/03/house_democrats_score_special.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/03/house_democrats_score_special.html House Sat, 08 Mar 2008 22:53:04 -0400 Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright's recent decision to run as a Democrat for the open 2nd District House seat in Alabama may not have drawn much attention nationally, but his campaign could well serve as a litmus test for just how long Barack Obama's coattails will be if the Illinois Senator winds up as the party's nominee this fall. Bright, who is currently in his third term as the mayor of Alabama's capital city, had long been mentioned as a potential congressional candidate and, when Rep. Terry Everett (R) announced his plans to retire earlier this year, both parties pursued Bright. (The Montgomery mayor's office is a non-partisan post.) In an interview with The Fix on Tuesday, Bright said that he ultimately chose the Democratic Party because he was assured that the sort of independence on which he had built his reputation in the state would be respected. In his announcement http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/02/bobby_bright_and_obama_coattai.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/02/bobby_bright_and_obama_coattai.html House Thu, 28 Feb 2008 07:00:00 -0400 Amidst the massive coverage of today's Potomac Primary on the presidential level, it's easy to forget that two House incumbents in Maryland face the very real possibility of losing their seats. Reps. Wayne Gilchrest (R) and Al Wynn (D) find themselves in tough fights against well-funded challengers with a variety of outside interest groups spending heavily in hopes of influencing the outcome. Let's break the races down one by one. Maryland's 1st district, which Gilchrest has represented since 1990, is solidly Republican territory. It spans from the Eastern Shore all the way north to Harford and Cecil counties on the state's border with Delaware, and while there are some gradations within that geography (Eastern Shore voters tend to be more moderate than their neighbors to the north), this is a district that regularly gives Republican presidential candidates a wide winning margin. Any district that is as reliably Republican as this http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/02/the_other_potomac_primaries.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/02/the_other_potomac_primaries.html House Tue, 12 Feb 2008 13:40:00 -0400 New polling out of Alaska shows that the state's two iconic Republican incumbents are in real jeopardy at the ballot box next year. The survey, conducted by Research 2000 for the liberal website DailyKos and in the field from Dec. 3-6, puts both Rep. Don Young and Sen. Ted Stevens behind their potential Democratic challengers. In the Senate race, Stevens trails Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, 47 percent to 41 percent, while Young is behind state Rep. Ethan Berkowitz 49 percent to 42 percent. The numbers beyond the head-to-head matchups are no less discouraging for the Republicans. Just 29 percent of the sample viewed Stevens favorably as compared to 58 percent who saw him in an unfavorable light. Young didn't fare much better with a 40 fav/54 unfav score. Berkowitz is already in the race and running against Young while Begich -- the son of late Alaska Rep. Nick Begich -- http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/12/alaska_a_targetrich_environmen.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/12/alaska_a_targetrich_environmen.html House Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:07:00 -0400 Republican Bob Latta's surprisingly strong victory in an Ohio special election last night has set off a spin war over what it means for the 2008 election. The National Republican Congressional Committee released a memo in the immediate aftermath of the vote, insisting that Latta's win in the 5th District, coupled with another special election victory in Virginia's 1st, are evidence that the demise of the Republican party in 2008 are greatly exaggerated. "The results of the special elections in Ohio and Virginia are further confirmation of a shifting political environment, an electorate desperate for change in Washington, and a wide-open congressional playing field," the memo reads. "And as we've previously stated, the results of the special elections of 2007 are proof that that Democrats won't get two 2006s in a row." Democrats immediately pushed back, noting that the NRCC had been forced to spend more than 10 percent of http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/12/ohios_5th_what_it_all_means.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/12/ohios_5th_what_it_all_means.html House Thu, 13 Dec 2007 12:13:07 -0400 The retirement of Rep. Jim McCrery (R-La.) , which broke late Friday night, brings to 17 the number of Republicans leaving Congress at the end of 2008. McCrery's departure -- while not totally unexpected -- is a powerful symbolic blow for a party that is desperately trying to rally its Members heading into an election year. McCrery is among the most powerful of House Republicans as the ranking member on the influential Ways and Means Committee and a co-chair of the CHOMP (Challengers Helping Obtain the Majority Program), which, aside from being a terrible acronym, raises money for Republican candidates taking on Democratic incumbents. The seat he leaves behind has the potential to be competitive although it is certainly not in the same class of districts as places like New Mexico's 1st district, Ohio's 15th and 16th districts, Minnesota's 3rd and New Jersey's 3rd. Here's our sketch of the district. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/12/louisianas_4th_district_open_o.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/12/louisianas_4th_district_open_o.html House Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:32:00 -0400 UPDATE, 6:30 pm: In a major blow to Republican recruiting, state Sen. Tom Kean Jr. (R) removed himself from consideration late this afternoon. "I would like to thank the various party leaders, activists and supporters who have reached out to me and urged me to run for Congress," Kean said. "However, I will not be a candidate for Congressman Ferguson's seat. ORIGINAL POST: New Jersey Republican Rep. Mike Ferguson announced he will not run for re-election in 2008, leaving House Republicans with yet another swing seat to defend next November. "Being a representative in Congress is more meaningful than I had imagined, and I know that now is the right time to step away from public life to focus more on family life while our children are still young," said Ferguson in a statement released by his office. Ferguson had held the seat since 2000 but has been a perennial http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/11/house_ferguson_retirement_crea.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/11/house_ferguson_retirement_crea.html House Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:28:00 -0400 The news out of New Jersey last week wasn't good for Republicans. Rep. Jim Saxton (R) was retiring, leaving behind a swing district in an area of the country that has grown increasingly inhospitable to Republicans. While national Republicans did their best to put a brave face on their chances, New Jersey's 3rd joins Arizona's 1st, Illinols' 11th, Minnesota's 3rd, New Mexico's 1st, Ohio's 15th and Ohio's 16th as major pickup targets for Democrats next November. Here's our sketch of the district: Geography: The Fix has driven all over New Jersey (the perils of being married to a field hockey coach) and Saxton's 3rd district includes some of the most beautiful territory in the Garden State. Located in south-central New Jersey, the district includes the city of Cherry Hill and large swaths of suburban dwellers who work in Philadelphia. Electoral Results: Saxton has held the seat since 1984 with Democrats http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/11/new_jerseys_3rd_a_closer_look.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/11/new_jerseys_3rd_a_closer_look.html House Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:29:00 -0400 Rep. Jim Saxton, the twelve-term Republican from New Jersey's 3rd District, plans to retire after his current term, an announcement that could come as early as today, according to sources familiar with his decision. Saxton's retirement opens up a seat he has held since 1984 and creates another vulnerable open seat for House Republicans. President Bush narrowly carried the district with 51 percent in 2004, and Democrats had been making noise about a potential challenge to Saxton in 2008. Saxton is the 15th House Republican to decide against seeking reelection; just three Democrats have announced this will be their last term. The swing nature of Saxton's seat places in it a highly vulnerable category along with open GOP seats in Illinois's 11th District, Arizona's 1st, Minnesota's 3rd, New Mexico's 1st and Ohio's 15th and 16th. More on this race next week. UPDATE, 2:35 p.m. ET: Saxton made his decision official, http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/11/saxton_to_retire.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/11/saxton_to_retire.html House Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:11:25 -0400 The retirements just keep coming for House Republicans. In the past month, five more Republican incumbents decided against seeking another term in 2008. Two hail from districts -- New Mexico's 1st and Ohio's 16th -- where Democrats will be even money bets (or better) to win next year. Democrats are also making noise about two other newly open GOP seats -- New Mexico's 2nd District and Alabama's 2nd, though both are much longer shots given their clear Republican tilt. With the new batch of retirements, 13 Republicans will be leaving the House in 2008, compared with just two Democrats. The Cook Political Report lists only three other Democratic House members as potential retirees, while 14 Republicans make the potential retirement list. Since open seats have historically proven the most likely to change party control, it got us to thinking about the two parties' retirements in a historical context. In 2006, http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/10/the_friday_house_line_4.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/10/the_friday_house_line_4.html The Line Fri, 26 Oct 2007 05:00:10 -0400 Just minutes after Democrat Niki Tsongas beat Republican Jim Ogonowski and claimed victory in the Massachusetts' 5th district special election, the spin wars began. The National Republican Congressional Committee sent out a memo entitled "The Democratic Wave Breaks" that argued that he MA-05 special election "provides important insights into the 2008 congressional elections." What are those insights? First, that with Democrats now in control of a decidedly unpopular Congress, they will be held to account by voters. The party is "no longer seen as the solution to the problem in Washington -- Democrats have become part of the problem in Washington," according to the NRCC memo. Second, that the 2006 election was a rejection of a wayward Republican party, not an acceptance of the Democratic agenda. "No longer perceived as agents of change, Democrats are left without policy positions voters embrace," read the memo. The memo also rolled out a http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/10/massachusetts_special_election.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/10/massachusetts_special_election.html House Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:10:45 -0400