1. Wild, Wonderful, West Virginia! The blogosphere was abuzz with talk of the PPP poll showing Republican candidate John Raese ahead of Democrat Joe Manchin, 46-43, in the Senate battle in West Virginia, the Mountain State.
That seems a little too good to be true.
There is no doubt that West Virginia has moved rightward in its presidential vote over the last couple cycles, going for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, then for John McCain in 2008. But on the sub-presidential level, it is still quite Democratic.
West Virginia was strongly Republican from about the Panic of 1893 until the Great Depression. The only time during this 40 year stretch that it voted for the Democrat for president was in 1912, and that was when the GOP vote split between Taft and TR. But the Depression transformed West Virginia into a Democratic bastion, and the GOP has not controlled either chamber of the state legislature since Hoover was president. It’s been competitive for the governor’s mansion since about 1968, but the last time the GOP won a U.S. Senate election in the Mountain State was all the way back in 1956.
The national Democratic party has moved away from West Virginia, which is why Bush and McCain were able to carry the state with relative ease. Culturally and even economically, West Virginia has little in common with the liberals from the Northeast and the Pacific Coast who now dominate the Democratic party. That’s how the Republicans have managed to carry the state’s five electoral votes in the last three contests.
But the funny thing about the Democratic party is that there are sub-national versions of it, and local and statewide Democrats have often been able to thrive even as the electorate votes for the GOP on the presidential level. The best example is the south. It has been voting Republican for president in some form or another since 1952, but it was only in 1994 that the GOP won a majority of the House seats in Dixie.
Joe Manchin is a great example of a Democrat thriving despite the national trends. He was elected governor in 2004, then again in 2008. He carried 45 percent of the Bush vote in 2004, then a whopping 59 percent of the McCain vote in 2008!
The way for Raese to win is to tie Manchin to Barack Obama and the national Democratic party, which is very unpopular in the Mountain State. But that will be easier said than done. Manchin has not been in Washington, D.C., he’s been in Charleston, WV. That gives him an opportunity to strategically cultivate ambiguity. That makes Raese’s job difficult, though certainly not impossible.
There have been two polls taken recently in West Virginia – the Rasmussen poll showing Manchin up 7, but just at 50 percent, and the much-discussed PPP poll. My gut tells me that the Rasmussen poll is closer to reality.
2. Another Washington Waterloo for Dems? SurveyUSA is just putting out terrible numbers for the Democrats in Washington, the Evergreen State. It’s shown Republican Jaimie Herrera cruising against Democrat Denny Heck in the WA-3 open seat, and it’s found incumbent Democrat Rick Larsen down to Republican challenger John Koster in WA-2. Now it finds incumbent Democrat Adam Smith in a dead heat with Republican Dick Muri in WA-9.
That means 3 of the Democrats’ 6 House seats in the state appear to be in jeopardy. My goodness! Washington was the most ornery of the 50 states in 1994, booting 6 of the state’s 8 House Democrats in a fit of pique that has not been matched in the 16 years since. Is Washington gearing up for another Republican sweep?
I’ll look forward to SurveyUSA’s next poll of the Senate race between Patty Murray and Dino Rossi. Other pollsters have found movement toward Murray in the last couple weeks, and it will be interesting to see if SurveyUSA discovers something similar.
3. Mailbag…Idaho?! As many of you know, there is currently a Democrat in Idaho’s First Congressional District. Democrat Walt Minnick defeated Republican incumbent Bill Sali by about 4,000 votes in 2008, even as John McCain carried the district by more than 90,000 votes. Your first guess would probably be that Minnick is a sure loser this cycle, but things aren’t shaping up that way. The first-term Democrat is holding on, though a recent Mason-Dixon poll found Minnick under 50 percent of the vote.
Scott from Boise, Idaho is puzzled. He writes:
As a matter of fact, Scott, I do!
Idaho, also known as the Gem State, is a deeply Republican state today, but it has not always been that way. It was brought into the union in 1890 when the “Billion Dollar Congress,” controlled by Republicans, added a bunch of states to the union in the hopes of strengthening the GOP’s position. Yet Idaho went for the Populists in 1892 then for Democrat William Jennings Bryan in 1896 and 1900. Western Idaho even gave Bob LaFollette and the Progressive Party a strong measure of support in 1924. Long time Republican Senator William Borah was a progressive Republican, and actually supported many key New Deal measures. Like much of the rest of the Mountain West, Idaho went big for FDR four times then again for Truman in 1948. The Democrats long have had a base in the panhandle, where mining is an important industry. Johnson carried the state in 1964 thanks to the panhandle, and most Democrats up through Clinton did all right there even as the GOP consistently won the state.
The point of this history lesson is to say this: The Democratic party has roots in Idaho, especially in the panhandle which is a big part of Minnick’s district. This gives an opportunity to a smart Democrat to hold the seat so long as he carves out an identity separate from the national party. That’s exactly what Minnick has been trying to do. He has been a very unreliable vote for the leadership, and can go back to his residents and claim, with a fair degree of accuracy, that he’s an independent Democrat.
This kind of strategy is exactly what Gene Taylor is doing in southeastern Mississippi and of course Manchin in West Virginia. They’re all trying to evoke an old, positive sense of what the Democratic party once was so as to distinguish themselves from what the national party has become under Pelosi and Obama. It’s much more likely to pay off for Taylor, who by all accounts is safe this cycle, than Minnick, who does appear to have a race on his hands. But Taylor has been playing this kind of positioning game for more than 20 years while Minnick is still new, and thus more susceptible to negative branding by the GOP.
