GOP success in '94 can be attributed to geography more than anything else. The party just cleaned up in the South. Well, for Democrats, if they simply started winning the congressional seats in the Northeast that their presidential candidates have carried in the last four elections, they'd be awfully close to getting the 15 seats needed for control.
No seat better exemplifies the Democrats' Northeast opportunities and difficulties than the one held by Rep. Rob Simmons (R). He's very good at voting in the interest of his district over his party. But is his party ID just too much of a problem for left-leaning, Pepperidge Farm, independent voters? Democrats' chances of holding a congressional majority in '08 are dependent on the party winning a lion's share of these Northeastern targets in '06. If Democrats don't pull many of these but still get the majority, it actually puts them in more peril in '08. (Todd)
Todd has a good point about geography and 1994. The Southern Democrats who lost in 1994 were all leftovers, remnants from the Civil War era. So, too, are many of the Northeast's Republicans.
The problem, of course, is that America runs the risk of becoming so geographically segregated that we become, in essence, two different one-party states bound together by a gridlocked federal government. That, we don't need.
Source
Todd, Chuck. "So You Want To Be A Pundit? Study These Eight Races." NationalJournal.com 26 October, 2006.
11 comments:
I have been working for coutnrey and have been doing some canvassing too.
The primary observation I am making about voters is that those democrats who would have voted republican in the past are staying democratic this time around. They are connecting the dots between Simmons-Bush and republican slime.
I am predicting Courtney will win and if the Dem turnout is big he will win by ten percent. It's all about turnout.
Bottom line is that Dems are going to re-take the House. As such Nutmeggers should vote for Courtney, Farrell, and Simmons if they want the Bacon brought home.
The new Dem majority will feed the reward the Rookies' districts to keep them safe in 2008. Any CT Rep. holdovers will be left out in the cold.
The candidates all filed FEC reports on Thursday for the period 10/1 to 10/18.
Shays and Simmons are the only candidates to have retained enough money to do additional ad buys. Why have they kept onto their money? Shays had strongest fundraising, Johnson of all people had weakest. Intersting...
---4th CD---
As of 10/19, Shays had $812,695.76 on hand after raising $324,215.25 and spending $1,121,155.02 since September 30.
Farrell had $485,338.56 on hand after raising $254,967.74 and spending $580,496.48.
---5th CD---
Johnson had $406,268.99 on hand, after raising $146,011.25 and spending $820,854.05.
Murphy had $351,013.17 on hand, after raising $278,212.96 and spending $301,899.34.
---2nd CD---
Simmons had $913,549.30 on hand after raising $167,649.11 and spending $316,150.13
Courtney had $114,353.06 on hand, after raising $223,237.07 and spending $325,800.32.
there's little media left to be had at this point, so COH isn;t as relevant as it was at the last report.
Shays needs all thehelp he can get. I think Simmons has done very well and is clearly above expectations.
RE: if the House flips. It won't be a pre 1994 Dem House. The margin will be thin and plenty of Red State Dems will bail on leadership on many votes. Pelosi will need some R votes to pass most bills, Being a moderate R and having the WH behind you might give one extremely strong leverage iwth both parties.
It turned out Volvos are bad for your liver, so they switched to cookies.
Courtney will win, on the back of the huge Lamont wave that will sweep Mansfield and other towns in the district.
I thought liberals ate Birkenstocks...
Mmm..tasty haha
Seriously though, I can't trust anything people write about this race anymore. One person says its a wash for Simmons, one person says Courtney is ahead by just a few, one person says it's a dead heat. And all of their stories come out on the same day. If I were to make a prediction, I'd say that Simmons would win, if just by a tiny margin, because of the sub base ordeal and because of name recognition. Granted Courtney has some name recognition, but I honestly couldn't remember ever hearing about I started paying attention to the race. I didn't even know he ran in 2002 against Simmons, and I certainly didn't know he was a Lt. Gov candidate. I think Courtney's biggest problem was starting out on the attack with ads and stuff, whereas he should have gone out with positive ads first to set the tone of who he is, show how he's a great guy. People, for the most part, already know who Simmons is, so he doesn't have that same disadvantage. I think if Courtney aired positive ads to start off with, ran them for a while, and then went on the attack, he would be clear ahead. Ah, oh well.
Pepperidge Farms got its start in the Greenfield Hill section of Fairfield. It's in the 4th CD and always has been as well as being pretty Republican so I don't understand the imagery either.
Jambalaya - That's an interesting point. Courtney seemed to take the opposite approach, criticizing Simmons' record first, and introducing himself as a positive alternative more recently. On one hand, one might argue that hearing the first positive Courtney ads completely in the words of newspaper endorsements is a great first impression; on the other hand, as you pointed out, he may have well hurt his chances by not introducing himself sooner. It will remain to be seen whether he made the right choice.
There's a big reason I think Courtney has the edge in this race, though, and it goes even beyond demographics in the district or national disillusionment against Republicans. I have received AT LEAST six or seven calls from automated machines telling me that Joe Courtney is practically the spawn of Satan; now if I were an undecided voted with no pre-conceptions about either candidate until getting this barrage of phone calls, this would TOTALLY make me vote for Courtney in protest. The NRCC and Simmons have gone WAY overboard with these automated calls, as voters have far less patience for robots than actual people; more than two automated calls per voter is going to backfire hard with undecideds.
Shadow - I'm actually jealous of you. People keep telling me about these robocalls or whatever they're called, but I have yet to receive one. Most people I know have been getting ones criticizing Lieberman, Simmons, and Johnson, but I haven't really heard many coming from the repub side criticizing dems. I wish someone would call me :-( I haven't even gotten surveyed!
I got surveyed just once (it was by Lamont's people).
As far as the robocalls, every single one I've received has been attacks on Joe Courtney by supporters of Rob Simmons. I don't understand why anyone would have their robots call voters more than twice; after all, who's going to vote based on the vitriolic words of an automatic calling machine that won't stop bugging you, and that leaves long messages on the answering machine if no one picks up?
And this goes both ways - if anyone campaigning against Republicans ia being this persistent with their callbots, they should stop immediately, and for their own sake as much as ours; any campaigns, candidates, or committees that arrange their automated machines to call the same voter more than five times are just begging for their efforts to backfire, and deserve what they get on election day.
I completely agree. It's the whole "Jerk Factor". And even if the calls aren't coming directly from the campaigns, but from like PACs or whatever, people usually don't make a distinction. Meh, I think they're stupid. At least have the decency to have a real person call up and tell you the evil ways of the opposition hehe.
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