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Republicans face the dilemma of the Big Blue Wall

July 9th, 2012 by Brian Mann

The last several decades, the Republican Party has been shaped profoundly by deepening roots in the American South.

The cultural and political landscape that stretches from the mid-Atlantic to Texas shifted the GOP sharply to the right.

The modern Republican movement has a sensibility that is far more evangelical Christian, more rural, more white and more traditionalist than observers even a decade ago would have predicted.

This political approach has produced strong results, with the GOP controlling the White House and Congress for long periods after 1980.

Indeed, by many measures, this has been a golden age for the conservative movement, with right-of-center leaders and ideas often dominating the national debate.

But it’s no secret that this broadly Southern reinvention of the Republican Party has also produced a countervailing trend, which has put the GOP in considerable peril in presidential contests.

While conservatives have fared well in smaller, rural states — building a vast coalition that includes much of the South, the Midwest and the northern Rockies — Democrats have moved to dominate 3 of the nation’s 5 largest states.

The Blue Wall effect in California. The state’s PVI (Partisan Voting Index) has shifted more than 12 points in favor of Democrats over the last eight presidential elections. Source: RealClearPolitics

California, Illinois and New York are now safe “blue” territory, providing a combined total of 104 electoral college votes, which can be counted upon without the expenditure of campaign cash, organizational resources or candidate time.

By contrast, Republicans can only count reliably on one mega-state:  Texas.

Democrats also have strong political and cultural advantages across the Great Lakes region, with Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin generally leaning into the blue column.

Those states, along with the relatively safe terrain of the Northeast and the Pacific Northwest, provide roughly 235 electoral college votes.

Which means that Democrats begin each race with significant advantages in states that provide  87% of the total electoral college votes needed to win.

That represents a huge systemic tilt, which the pundits have begun calling this the Big Blue Wall.

Already, this paradigm means that Republican presidential contenders must run campaigns that are essentially perfect, finding ways to win in battleground states like Florida, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Virginia.

It also means they have to compete successfully in places that are often out of sympathy with the overall demographic and ideological trend of the GOP.

As a consequence, Republican candidates haven’t enjoyed a blow-out win in the electoral since 1988.   They have eked by, prevailing by razor thin margins, even against relatively weak opponents.

This is the headwind that Mitt Romney faces.  His fate will likely hinge on whether he can capture one or two big bluish state like Michigan or Pennsylvania.

The present-day scenario scary enough for the GOP.  But conservatives could face an even greater danger going forward.

There is a very real possibility that Democrats will soon add one or two new chunks to their blue wall.

At present, it appears that Arizona and Florida are  following much the same cultural trend that reshaped politics in California, Colorado and New Mexico, with a rapid growth of minorities (primarily Hispanic) and urbanites who tend to vote Democratic.

Over the last decade alone, Florida’s Hispanic population rose from 16% to more than 22%. Over the same period, Arizona added 600,000 Hispanics.

And it’s not just immigrants contributing to this trend.  Native born Americans of Hispanic descent are growing in numbers rapidly.  (Hispanics already make up 45% of Arizona’s population under the age of 18.)

Unless these patterns reverse soon, America’s changing racial and ethnic landscape could shift American politics much faster than most people grasp.

As early as 2016, Republicans could face a Democratic opponent who begins the presidential race with a literally overwhelming structural advantage.

It is no longer beyond the realm of fanciful to imagine an American presidential contest — even one with two non-incumbents — where the outcome is essentially a foregone conclusion.

If Joe Biden were to enter the contest with a substantial lead in Florida, for example, he would open his campaign with a likely 264 electoral college votes — just six shy of the total needed to win.

Obviously, a lot of variables could change this near-future dilemma for the GOP.

Republicans are making a strong play to rebuild support in the Great Lakes region, for example, a region that is much whiter and more rural than the country as a whole.

If Mitt Romney can eke out a victory in Michigan or Wisconsin, the big blue wall will look far less formidable.

And it may be that conservatives will find a way soon to reach out more effectively to Hispanics, or even African Americans.

But competing successfully in those places and with those voters over the long term would likely mean a significant shift in policies and agenda, one that would sit uneasily with established Republican voters in the southern U.S.

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NY-21: What Obamacare ruling means for North Country politics

June 28th, 2012 by Brian Mann

The 5-to-4 decision on Obamacare will resonate powerfully this summer and fall as the NY-21 congressional race unfolds, with Matt Doheny (R-Watertown) and Bill Owens (D-Plattsburgh) forced to get much more specific about healthcare policy.

Until today, this was  in large measure an ideological debate over the question of the Healthcare Reform Act’s constitutional legitimacy.  That’s now resolved.

But everyone agrees that the reform effort was deeply flawed.  So the question now going forward will be, in far more specific, nuts-and-bolts terms:  What next?

How would Bill Owens work to refine and improve HCA if given another term by voters?  How would he improve the act’s affordability?  Or is he essentially satisfied with the law as it stands?

And for Matt Doheny, as well, questions will be much more specific.

As recently as June 9th, he called Obamacare “a disaster.”  If he still wants to repeal Obamacare, as I assume he does, what exactly would he put it in place?  How would he pay for it?

How would he treat popular measures of the act, including protections for 20-somethings who are allowed to remain under their parents’ coverage, and people with preexisting conditions?

If I’m right, reporters like myself and rank and file voters won’t be satisfied now with broad political bromides from either major party candidate.

I also think this puts a slightly greater burden, politically, on Doheny.

Given this ruling, and the fact that we now have a law that shapes roughly a fifth of the nation’s economy, the Republican will have to make the argument that we need to go back to the starting line, rather than fine-tuning the existing policy.

That narrative may play well with the GOP’s conservative-tea party base, who see Obamacare as an assault on liberty.

But for moderates and independents — the kinds of voters who will decide the NY-21 contest –  it remains to be seen whether there is an appetite for that kind of wholesale do-over.

What do you think?  Will healthcare be a factor in your vote in November?  What do you want to hear from your candidate, whether that be Doheny or Owens?

 

 

 

 

 

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Rep. Chris Gibson exits North Country, battles for career

June 27th, 2012 by Brian Mann

A lot of North Country In Box readers won’t have had the opportunity to get to know Chris Gibson, the Republican former Army officer from the Hudson Valley who defeated Glens Falls Democrat Scott Murphy in 2010.

Gibson represented the old NY-20 district, a madly gerrymandered chunk of political turf that stretched from Poughkeepsie to Saranac Lake.

Through the couple of years that I interacted with him, I found Gibson to be one of the most intelligent, interesting, nuanced thinkers in Congress.

He’s conservative, but not ideologically rigid.  He often spoke passionately in favor of bipartisanship and compromised, and even praised President Barack Obama.

Redistricting has carved Gibson out of the North Country, where his re-election would have been a slam-dunk.

His chunk of our region has now been lumped into the NY-21 district which is being battled over by Rep. Bill Owens (D) and challenger Matt Doheny (R).

Gibson finds himself now living in the NY-19 district, which has far more of a Democratic tilt than the old NY-20 district.

He’ll now face Julian Schreibman, the moderate Democrat who edged out a more liberal contender in yesterday’s primary. Schreibman is seen as a rising star in his party and will have major backing from Washington DC.

This should be a ferocious political contest and it will be interesting to see if Gibson’s right-tilting brand of politics will play in the Hudson Valley and the Catskills as well as it played in the North Country.

In that part of New York state, where Cuomo and Obama are still popular, Gibson may find himself battling against the ideological image of the GOP, and Congress’s brutally low popularity.

If he doesn’t prevail, this may be one of those cases across the country where redistricting cuts short an otherwise bright and promising career.

 

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It’s on. Doheny-Owens rematch will be one of country’s top races.

June 27th, 2012 by Brian Mann

After nearly two years of maneuvering, name-calling, backroom finagling, map redrawing, and good old fashioned North Country politicking…it’s on.

Matt Doheny, the investment banker from Watertown, will face off against Bill Owens, the former businessman and attorney from Plattsburgh.

In 2010, this race was settled by roughly 2,000 votes and that was with Doug Hoffman still on the ballot as a Conservative alternative (even though he had formally dropped out of the contest).

In a district that has historically been a GOP stronghold, Doheny clearly has a real shot at reclaiming the NY-21 district.  “The opportunity… it’s a clear one-on-one shot,” he told the Watertown Daily Times.

But a lot has changed since 2010. Owens has established himself as a true incumbent.

He’s navigated a markedly moderate line, championing farmers and gun rights at the same time that he was embracing President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan.

On the other hand, the district has also changed significantly, with the old NY-23 shedding its central New York turf and gaining a big swath of rural country in the Glens Falls area.

In those communities, neither Doheny nor Owens is the incumbent.

It also remains to be seen whether Matt Doheny has truly unified the Republican-Conservative-Tea Party coalition that he’ll need to prevail.  The Watertown report found some simmering discomfort with his candidacy on the right.

Polling 72% to 28% against Kellie Greene in yesterday’s GOP primary is a respectable showing for Doheny, but hardly dominant – particularly against an opponent who ran an underfunded, lackluster, largely invisible campaign.

That means Doheny garnered roughly 8,577 votes to Greene’s 3,396.  Remember that in the last Doheny-Owens match-up, the Republican fell short by 2,000 votes.  That suggests there’s some work yet to be done.

(It may not help that the NRCC is still calling out Doug Hoffman, describing him in a press release issued last night as a “spoiler” for his role in the 2010 vote.)

Doheny will benefit from the fact that redistricting made NY-21 even more Republican-tilting (by party registration) than the old NY-23 district was.  He’ll also have plenty of money to spend between now and November.

The bottom line is that this promises to be one of the most competitive, and fiercely contested, races in the U.S.

It won’t have quite the melodrama of 2009 and 2010, but this will be a campaign between two well-spoken, capable politicians.  Get ready for those TV spots and those robocalls!

UPDATE:  The Owens campaign is pushing a narrative today that Doheny received far fewer votes in this primary than he did in 2010, down roughly 47%.  In St. Lawrence County, the number of Doheny votes dropped by nearly two thirds.

The Owens camp describes this as a decline in interest for Doheny.

A more likely factor: this was an under-publicized primary, with an outcome that was largely settled, unlike the Doheny-Hoffman contest two years ago.

But it is fair to note that turnout and voter enthusiasm could be a big challenge for both candidates in November.

 

 

County Doheny Votes 2010 Doheny Votes 2012 % decline Clinton 958 787 -17.85% Franklin 383 293 -23.50% Hamilton 420 268 -36.19% Jefferson 2,967 1329 -55.21% Lewis 798 356 -55.39% Madison 1,972 NA NA Oswego 3,342 NA NA St. Lawrence 2,906 1078 -62.90% Essex* 823 623 NA Fulton* 831 837 NA Part of Oneida 911 NA NA Warren NA 1015 NA Washington NA 695 NA Saratoga** NA 1048 NA Herkimer** NA 268 NA Total 16,311 8597 -47.29%

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NY-21 GOP primary a big test for Matt Doheny

June 25th, 2012 by Brian Mann

Matt Doheny is the prohibitive favorite in this week’s Republican primary.  He’s run a far more aggressive, well-funded and vibrant campaign than Kellie Green.

After his high-profile contests with Conservative Doug Hoffman and Democrat Bill Owens two years ago, Doheny has the name recognition, and he appears to have unified the vast majority of Republican leaders in the newly formed 21st congressional district.

That said, tomorrow’s vote will be a big test for the man who would love to reunite, at long last, the fractious conservative movement in the North Country.

Ever since tea party and Conservative activists derailed Dede Scozzafava’s can’t-lose run against Democrat Bill Owens, in the special election in 2009, the right has been bitterly divided.

The feuding continued in 2010, and certainly contributed to Owens’ narrow re-election in a district that had long been viewed as a GOP stronghold.

Barring a momentous upset by Greene, the question will be how unified the Republican vote appears behind Doheny.

There are no significant geographic divides in this race.  The two GOP contenders are both from the St. Lawrence Valley — Doheny from Watertown, Greene from Sackets Harbor.

And there are no big ideological differences. Greene has tried to portray Doheny as the “Wall Street liberal” in this race, but hasn’t gained much traction on specific issues.

Still, during the election in 2010, many rank-and-file Doug Hoffman supporters were deeply grieved by Doheny’s candidacy — almost as grieved as Scozzafava’s supporters were by Hoffman’s candidacy.

That’s a lot of cross-currents.  And by all accounts, Doheny has moved with caution and thoroughness to calm the waters.

(He won a major victory when Hoffman opted out of another run.)

We’ll see tomorrow whether or not Doheny has pulled it off and positioned himself well for a run against Owens.   A commanding victory would give him a big boost toward November.  (Sentence corrected.)

If we see a substantial showing for Greene, it could suggest that Republicans, Conservatives and Tea Partiers are still trying to find their way, making it more difficult for them to topple Owens.

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Mitt Romney’s long, risky summer road trip

June 20th, 2012 by Brian Mann

These early summer weeks have been busy with speculation that the Obama campaign must be close to panic.

After a bitter Republican primary, challenger Mitt Romney has leaped to parity in national polls — effectively tying the president.

With oodles of zillionaire cash following to pro-GOP Superpacs, and Barack Obama battered by the soft national economy, surely it’s time to pull the rip cord, right?

But in fact, Mitt Romney faces an equally long, risky journey though the summer.  In fact, his path is far more rocky than that of the president.

Because of the vagaries of the electoral college,Romney will be forced to compete in far more states than Obama, often on terrain that’s been friendly to Democrats, and where the president’s team has a powerful ground game.

As of this week, Obama leads by 5 points or more in states that give him 247 electoral college votes.  In other words, he has 90% of the votes he needs for victory.

He also leads by 3-5 points in two states — Wisconsin and Virginia — that give him the extra margin he needs to win.  Finally, Obama is tied (within the margin of error) with Romney in three additional states:  Colorado, Florida and Iowa.

(The latest poll in Colorado shows Obama up 7 points.)

By contrast, Romney is leading by 5 points or more in states that give him just 191 electoral college votes.  He still needs to find nearly 80 electoral college votes to claim the White House.

Significantly, he is not currently leading in any of those states by more than the margin of error.

To get a sense for how dramatic this is, Romney has been campaigning in New Hampshire, despite the fact that the latest poll there shows him down by 12 points.

He’s also been stumping in Pennsylvania, where the last two polls have Obama up by 6 and 12 points.

The optics of that are telling.  For Obama to be equally “desperate,” he would have to be campaigning and spending campaign cash in Hail Mary states like Montana and South Carolina.

The strategic contrast here is equally stark.  Obama can still eke out a win with the sort of trench-warfare, strategic targeting of states that won him the Democratic primary in 2008.

Pick up a Florida or an Ohio, lock down a state like Colorado, and it’s probably game, set and match, even if Romney picks up steam in a lot of other places.

Romney, meanwhile, needs to win big nationally.

He needs the country as a whole to decide in a sweeping way that Obama doesn’t deserve a second term, the way that the country broke against Jimmy Carter in 1980.

His message will have to resonate from Colorado to North Carolina to Pennsylvania.

But Romney is no Ronald Reagan and in our polarized, geographically divided nation, this kind of wholesale zeitgeist change is really tough to pull off.

It’s also significant that Romney needs to lock down come-from-behind wins in some of the American states with the most rapid growth in Hispanic population, making the feat even more complicated.

That’s not to say that Romney doesn’t have some powerful momentum.  And the fact that he will likely have at least a small — and maybe a big — money advantage down the stretch will be significant.

It’s also true that in many states, independents and late undecided voters will probably break against the Democrats, as they usually do against the incumbent in the White House.

Especially if the economy softens further, this will be a nail-biter.

But even with those wrinkles, it’s clear that Mitt Romney can’t afford to fall into a summer-long deadlock.

His bus tour has to do more than remind people that we’ve had three rocky years under Obama.  He also has to convince people that there is an attractive, hopeful alternative.

So far, the polls suggest that hasn’t happened.

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