UPDATE: What's up with the Arizona House races?
At 538.com, Nate Silver says …
… That Schweikert has a 75.7 percent chance in knocking Mitchell out of his seat. Recent polls show Mitchell holding his own, but the site doesn’t give much credence to them. Details here.
… That Ben Quayle has a 97.7 percent chance of beating Jon Hulburd. Details here.
… and that Giffords has a 58 percent chance of winning over Jesse Kelly. Details here.
Real Clear Politics gives Ben Quayle Shadegg’s seat over Jon Hulburd in the third district.
In the fifth, it says David Schweikert has the edge over Democratic incumbent Harry Mitchell.
It says the first (Paul Gosar vs. Dem. incumbent Ann Kirkpatrick) and the eighth (Jesse Kelly vs. Dem. incumbent Gabrielle Giffords) are tossups.
Of these, the most portentous is the Mitchell race, because the site has recently downgraded his chances:
Mitchell faces the same problem that many first- and second- term Democrats face: The wind is no longer at their backs and a Democratic administration has forced them to cast votes in favor of liberal policies that never would have come up under a Republican president. Mitchell will face off again his 2008 opponent, David Schweikert. Schweikert held Mitchell to 53 percent of the vote in 2008, and this is a very different year than 2008.
12:27 PM
Democrats are doing triage to save the House, the NYT reports
Arizona makes only this cameo appearance:
In some of the most conservative districts in the nation, several Democrats appear to be emerging in stronger positions, largely because Republicans nominated candidates who appear to be weaker. Even Republicans conceded that Representatives Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, Walt Minnick of Idaho and Larry Kissell of North Carolina were no longer as vulnerable as once assumed.
8:44 AM
Doug MacEachern on Jesse Kelly: "A really, really angry guy."
The Arizona Republic’s Doug MacEachern comes to not bury Little Benny Quayle, but to praise him.
MacEachern’s argument: Quayle’s not a complete sociopath, like the guy the GOP nominated to run against Gabrielle Giffords in the eighth Congressional District.
(The district includes most of Tucson and extends to cover the southeast corner of the state.)
Jesse Kelly is a rabid former marine who unexpectedly knocked out establishment candidate Jonathan Paton, making life considerably easier for Giffords in a tough re-election campaign.
Kelly visited the Republic’s editorial board the other day, and in MacEachern’s telling he had a lot to say:
I met Kelly in an Editorial Board meeting. Honorable fellow: war veteran, like all the district’s GOP candidates. Indeed, he was a Marine combat platoon leader, the most dangerous job on earth. He is an honest conservative. And a really, really angry guy.
When asked about priorities, he gave an answer that, while perfectly suitable for a former Marine officer, it seemed a bit over the top for a prospective member of Congress: “We’ve got to kill all members of radical Islam.”
And, when asked if he could work with Democrats in Congress: “I hope there’s no Democrats left in Congress when I get there.”
Look, I like shock theater, too. And I’ve been known to be a bit edgy at times. But Kelly is that rare conservative who takes politics so personally that he has morphed into his worst enemy. Like far-left liberals, he doesn’t believe his political opponents are merely wrong; they’re evil: “I think liberals are destroying the nation. We had better go fight them in Washington before they destroy our children’s future.”
About Quayle, MacEachern continues the Republic’s odd insistence on mentioning at least once a day the scandal it did not tell readers about during the primary campaign, namely Quayle’s cheesy past writing for an ultraskanky Scottsdale nightlife web site.
That sordid tale is told in its entirety here.
PHXated’s complete Ben Quayle archive is here.
7:46 AM
On the GOP side of the 8th Congressional district
Jesse Kelly’s a Tea Party wacko and a much easier challenger for incumbent Democrat Gabrielle Giffords.
10:13 PM
It's primary day
Remember, what can help Arizona most is moderates who can improve the state’s standing nationally … and help bring in the federal dollars that pork disdainers like McCain and Shadegg have not.
Accordingly, the people to root for today are the weakest, dumbest and most politically wounded candidates in the various Republican primaries; they will be most vulnerable in the fall, right?
In other words, go Ben Quayle!
McCain — a bad senator, a bad person, and a bad man — seems safe from challenger J.D. Hayworth, who would have been fun to have on the ballot in November.
But there are some interesting Congressional races as well, notably the one for the retiring Shadegg’s seat, which came to national attention after Quayle’s cheesy past as a writer for a skanky web site came to light.
Again, PHXated hopes Quayle wins today, but has generously extended a blogging invitation to Quayle should he be unemployed tomorrow. The search for Scottsdale’s Foxiest Chick has just begun!
Here’s Politico’s analysis of the Gabrielle Giffords race:
The 8th District — a vast expanse that stretches south and east from Tucson, through Sierra Vista and Tombstone, all the way to a corner border with Mexico and New Mexico — provides an ideal test case to understand the degree to which national political forces might sweep aside even a polished incumbent who has steeled herself for the onslaught by paying close attention to state and local matters.
“She’s done everything she needs to do. If she loses, it would be one of those cases where it doesn’t matter how much you spent, it doesn’t matter what you do,” said Rodolfo Espino, a political science professor at Arizona State University.
Here particularly, Giffords' position will be more secure if a nut named Jesse Kelly wins the GOP primary for the seat. Politico:
Conventional political wisdom holds that candidates like him can’t attract enough support in a general election-when the electorate is considerably broader and more diverse-but Kelly seems determined to test the proposition anyway.
In a district in which nearly 17 percent of the population was 65 years old or older at the time of the last census, Kelly wants to phase out Social Security — going a step further than the plan in Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wisc.) “Roadmap” that he also endorses.
Here’s 538.com’s analyses of the races:
AZ’s crowded Republican House primaries feature three contests in districts where GOPers think they have a chance of beating incumbent Democrats, and one for an open Republican seat.
The race that’s attracted the most national attention is probably in AZ-08, a Tucson-based district represented by two-term Democrat Gabby Giffords. A classic Establishment-Tea Party matchup involving former state senator Jonathan Paton, the early frontrunner, and Tea Party activist Jesse Kelley, is considered very close. Giffords is a veteran of two close races, and is building up her campaign treasury as Republicans squabble, but her opposition to the new AZ immigration law and votes for key Obama legislation have made her appear vulnerable.
In Phoenix-suburban AZ-03, where Republican John Shadegg is retiring, the early frontrunner was Ben Quayle, son of the former Veep from Indiana, but he is fighting to hold off self-funder Steve Moak. It’s been a battle of self-inflicted wounds, with Quayle hurt by association with an off-color internet site (to which he occasionally made posts under a pseudonym inspired by a porn-star character in Boogie Nights), and Moak battling claims of conflicts of interest between non-profit and for-profit businesses.
In AZ-05, another Phoenix-area district, former Maricopa County Treasurer David Schweikert is so confident of victory that he’s saving money for a general election against Democratic incumbent Harry Mitchell, but businessman Jim Ward remains financially competitive down the stretch.
And in the huge, largely rural AZ-01, dentist Paul Gosar is in a close race with 2008 nominee Sydney Hay for the right to take on freshman Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick. The incumbent beat Hay by a 56-40 margin two years ago.
… and, for variety’s sake, a sample from Greg Patterson’s:
CD 3
Conventional wisdom is that Quayle was the favorite, but self destructed with his handling of the Dirty Scottsdale revelations. That means that Moak is likely to take the race—assuming that Quayle self destructed early enough.
I think the candidate to watch is Waring. He’s represented the district for many years and he walks door to door every weekend. Remember that the race has 10 candidates and at least 7 of them are credible. So you can win with a really low vote count. CD 3 is actually looking like a large scale legislative race. That means that Waring’s shoe leather is likely to offset Moak’s money.
6:30 AM
PHXations—Wednesday, July 7, 2010
…and the boycotts continue to pile up:
The Gay and Lesbian Leadership Institute, who had been considering holding its 2011 conference in Phoenix, has chosen Las Vegas instead.
Up until recently, Phoenix was considered the frontrunner to host the December 2011 conference.
The Phoenix Host Committee, led by Councilman Tom Simplot and Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, had been working furtively to secure the conference. The conference would have attracted hundreds of gay and lesbian elected leaders.
GLLI alluded that the immigration debate in Arizona caused them to chose another site, according to the Phoenix Host Committee.
GLLI said in a letter, “The current political and legal climate in Arizona makes it complicated to accept your hospitality.”
GLLI helps equip gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people with the tools for success. The institute assists hundreds of individuals who go on to influential careers in politics, government, business and advocacy each year.
Mary Jo Pitzl is reporting that the voter surge resulting from SB 1070 is overwhelming benefitting independents:
The latest voter registration figures show increases in all categories, but the biggest gain continues to be in the ranks of independents.
In raw numbers, 14,716 Arizonans registered as “party not designated,” which is the technical term for independents. That’s more than the increase in Democrats (+3,879) and Republicans (+7,852) combined.
The numbers reflect registrations from May 5 to June 1, according to the Arizona Secretary of State’s office. That means they capture at least some of the aftermath of SB1070, when Democrats were saying that Latino voters were registering with the Ds as a protest against the state’s new immigration law.
And perhaps they were (registration numbers don’t include a demographic breakdown). But the Democrats' gains were eclipsed by increases in the GOP, and especially by independents.
The effects of the federal lawsuit against SB 1070 its effects are likely to go beyond simply determining the law’s constitutionality:
The high-profile battle over illegal immigration could sway voters, helping determine whether Democrats retain or lose their majority in Congress. It could be a boon for Arizona Republicans who have supported the law. Some vulnerable Democrats urged the Obama administration not to file the suit.
The outcome of the case also could fuel or shut down efforts now under way to replicate the law in more than a dozen other states.
The lawsuit brought more national attention to the Grand Canyon State, which has weathered protests and boycotts since Gov. Jan Brewer signed the bill into law on April 23. Supporters say that they will successfully defend the suit and that it will hold up like other immigration-related laws that have faced court challenges the past few years.
Read the whole article here
Meanwhile, three Democrats Arizona legislators are worried about the effect the feds' lawsuit will have on their election battles this fall, Politico reports:
At least three Arizona Democrats saw trouble they could face in November, and broached the topic with the White House well in advance of the court filing, which the administration first announced last month.
Three House Democrats who are all facing tough re-election fights—Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick, Harry Mitchell and Gabrielle Giffords—asked the Obama administration last month to ditch any planned court battle, saying legal maneuvering isn’t going to fix a system that’s widely seen as broken.
The story quotes Kirkpatrick and Mitchell attacking the lawsuit as a sideshow.
Jan Brewer doesn’t like the feds' suit against SB 1070, the Business Journal reports:
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer characterized the federal lawsuit challenging the immigration law she signed in April as an “attack” from President Barack Obama and the Department of Justice.
The governor promised to assert the state’s rights and said Arizona will prevail against the lawsuits.
The NYT details how the Department of Justice decided to go after the law on the relatively uncomplicated issue of pre-emption: That immigration enforcement is a federal concern. Holder and company have the civil rights implications of its enforcement in their pocket for another day.
In a background call with reporters, a senior department official said the decision to file the lawsuit — and to do so on the ground that it pre-empts federal authority, rather than on civil rights grounds like racial profiling — followed extensive deliberations with the Civil Rights Division and others inside the department, and a trip to Arizona to meet with state officials.
Should the department fail to persuade the courts to block Arizona’s law, the official said, it would closely watch for signs that people of Hispanic appearance were being singled out.
4:07 PM
The Giffords race
The Republic analyzes:
“Giffords will have to use all of her considerable campaign-trail talents to defend her votes for the stimulus package and the health-care and energy bills in a district that has a track record supporting ‘middle of the road’ candidates,” wrote analyst David Wasserman for the “Cook Political Report.”
Giffords, whose 8th Congressional District encompasses parts of Tucson and communities in Arizona’s southeastern corner, voted with the president 90 percent of the time last year, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan publication Congressional Quarterly.
Although Democratic Reps. Harry Mitchell and Ann Kirkpatrick also are considered vulnerable, they are less closely identified with Obama at a time when his priorities have been losing support in public-opinion polls and at the ballot box.
The paper notes at the end of the story that she has $1.6 million on hand.
4:20 PM
How will Arizona's House delegation do in the 2010 elections?
(Update below.)
Over at 538.com, Tom Shaller has posted an overview of the most vulnerable Democratic House seats in 2010. The site doesn’t do on-the-ground political analysis so much as crunch numbers and assess macro factors like fund-raising.
In this case, Shaller took numbers on the races from the Cook Political Report and then added a few factors. In all, they included: The rep’s votes on health care and cap and trade; the traditional political nature of their districts; their most recent win margin; and the cash on hand they and their potential opponents have.
The bad news for Arizona Democrats is that two local House seats by these measures look vulnerable. Indeed, Harry Mitchell, of the Arizona fifth, is one of the nine most vulnerable across the country.
Gabrielle Giffords, from the eighth, is one of fifteen members on the next-most-vulnerable tier.
Their districts are superficially similar, with urban anchors in the affluent eastern parts of Phoenix and Tucson, respectively.
The Cook report is a very sophisticated operation (as 538.com is as well); I’d just make one observation that neither seems to have noted in the case of these two races; that the Arizona Republican vote in 2008 was skewed because of McCain’s favorite-son status.
McCain got less than 52 percent of the vote in Mitchell’s district, and just above 52 percent in Giffords’. It seems arguable that both would have gone at least slightly Democratic were anyone else running on the GOP side.
That said, the 2010 campaigns will be run in a much different political climate, and one without the energized folks who came out for Obama. Both parties are prepared for significant Democratic losses next year, and it’s possible two of them will come from Arizona.
For a GOP perspective on the race in the eighth, Greg Petterson points to the recent deposing of a longtime Democratic city council person in Tucson and offers this assessment:
When you are trying assess how Tuesday’s election will affect the 2010 race, remember that Tucson is the Democratic core of Gabby Gifford’s district. Yet, if the election were held today, Giffords would have to struggle to win an election in Tucson itself. Add back the Republican portions of the district and CD 8 is looking like solid Republican territory.
p.s. : As I noted above, the 538.com analysis wasn’t on-the-ground political prognosticating. It was all about crunching the numbers. Here’s the EVT’s Le Templar, who is on the ground, on an Arizona House race that didn’t get the blog’s attention:
The vice president is raising money today for one incumbent not included on that most-vulnerable list: Ann Kirkpatrick. The Congressional District 1 race is flying under the radar because Democrats have more registered voters and Kirkpatrick’s potential challengers haven’t raised much money, yet. But the district is quite conservative and Kirkpatrick won her first term in the fallout from former Rep. Rick Renzi’s criminal indictment for political corruption. There’s also this video where Kirkpatrick literally walked out of a meeting with her constituents. Expect that video to get a lot of air time and blogger references in the coming year.
My guess is Kirkpatrick will be at least as vulnerable as Mitchell and Giffords next year.
Arizona’s polity is obviously in a state of upheaval from top to bottom, and as it moved from red-state to swing-state status there will certainly be volatility. But speaking generally about the Democrats from the national perspective, it strikes me that what too often isn’t noticed is that bad times for the Democrats and the new president came conveniently early.
Just a year from the election the country seems to have hit bottom. The health-care debate and unemployment are still drags, of course. (And might turn out to be game-changers on their own if they are not resolved by next summer.)
Still, it’s an odd advantage, but an advantage nonetheless, that the party has a year to deal with the problems rather than a period of months or even weeks. That they might be resolved during that time is a possibility that is too-infrequently raised, I think.
7:29 PM
Joe Biden is in town today
Republic report here.
During a visit to Phoenix Monday morning, Vice President Joe Biden praised the federal stimulus for its early effects in Arizona and reminded state Democrats how well the economy has already responded.
“Only 12 states have gotten more money obligated than the state of Arizona has,” Biden said of the state’s $5 billion in federal aid.
Biden spoke to several dozen supporters at the downtown Wyndham Phoenix Hotel, where he attended a fundraiser for Democratic Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick and Harry Mitchell.
Emphasis added. Biden’s words are a reminder that Arizona, for all the states-rights bravado spouted by its Republican political representatives, is one of those states who get a lot more back from the U.S. Government than it puts it.
(Indeed, with the exception of Washington D.C., virtually all the whiny traditional “red states” benefit from taxes in this way. Details here—with an easy-to-comprehend map—and here.)
Le Templar, in the EVT, notes the political aims of the visit:
Vice President Joe Biden is in Arizona this morning, trying to build support for the White House economic stimulus efforts and attending a fundraiser for some Democrats in the state’s delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives. Biden’s visit coincides with a growing national consensus that Reps. Harry Mitchell and Gabrielle Giffords could be especially at risk to a national shift in voter sentiment back to the Republican Party.
12:00 AM
Biden holds fundraiser for Gabrielle Giffords
At the event, in Delaware, Biden raises worries of a GOP re-takeover of the House of Representatives. This story, in Roll Call, details the supposed vulnerability of three Arizona Dems:
Democratic members of Congress hold 49 districts that McCain won in 2008, including three in Arizona. Giffords’ district and that of Rep. Harry Mitchell (D-Ariz.) gave McCain 52 percent of the vote; Rep. Anne Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.) won despite McCain taking 54 percent of the vote in her largely rural First District.
[…]
The fundraiser, held in Greenville, Del., will benefit Giffords’ bid for a third term. Giffords beat state Sen. Tim Bee® by a 55 percent to 43 percent margin in 2008, as both parties spent heavily on behalf of both candidates.
It doesn’t pay to argue with Roll Call on political matters, But I don’t think the argument applies quite so strongly to the Arizona delegation. McCain’s results here were outsized because of his favorite son status. And in the event, of the three only Mitchell got less than 55 percent of the vote.
Right now it’s entirely to the Democratic’s advantage to have hyperbolic worries like this come into play. It’s best to be in trouble—or look like you’re in trouble—14 months out. The party has an entire year for the impact of the presumed health care reform sink in and the economy to be on firmer ground.
The ruling party is always supposed to suffer in the first mid-year elections; the Democrats could take hits in the off-year New Jersey and Virginia governor races in November; and of course new troubles, like Afghanistan, may come to the fore and strain the administration’s ability to lay the blame on the mess on the previous administration. (Where it of course belongs.)
But given the ebb and flow of political difficulties I think the Democrats can only be happy what seems like a major ebb is happening this far out from the next round of elections.
6:00 AM