Democratic Congressional Blow Out Shaping Up For The Northeast

Carney, the most reactionary Dem, is the only one likely to lose his seat

Professional Inside the Beltway prognosticators claim there could be 60 House seats in play in November. Considering how thoroughly gerrymandered the country is and how skewered towards incumbents the campaign finance system is, that's a huge number. Almost all of the seats in play are currently held by Republicans. This morning's NY Times looks hard at the 81 seats in the Northeast. Right now 60 are held by Democrats. But next January when the new Congress is sworn in there is a good chance there will be only a dozen Republicans standing there with 69 Democrats!

The Republicans are taking aim at two Democratic freshmen, Carol Shea-Porter in New Hampshire, who has done a fantastic job but who refuses to take corporate money and Chris Carney from the northeast corner of Pennsylvania, who has done a really awful job and is awash in corporate bribes. Carol's record speaks loudly but she can't afford a megaphone. Carney can buy all the time he wants but all he can claim is that he's a Republican calling himself a Democrat. He voted wrong all many of the issues that are most important to Democratic voters. Carney has raised $1,638,542 (less than the self-funding Republican millionaire loaned himself for the race). The self-funding Republican millionaire, Chris Hackett, has taken in over $2,000,000.

Aside from my old Pennsylvania district (just below Carney's), where a far right xenophobic maniac is taking on dull backbencher Paul Kanjorski, those are the only Democratic-held districts where incumbents are in any danger at all-- and New Hampshire has been trending Democratic.

[T]he unexpected retirements of five Republican congressmen, two from New Jersey and three from New York, have created prime opportunities for Democrats. The benefits of incumbency, including high visibility and access to federal money for their districts, had long protected these lawmakers in an increasingly Democratic region.

Perhaps no better example is Representative James T. Walsh, a 10-term Republican from New York who announced in January that he would retire when his term expired. Mr. Walsh has a key role over appropriations and is a fixture in his Syracuse-area district, making him a formidable candidate to challenge.

But with Mr. Walsh out of the way, Democrats appear to be in a strong position to pick up his seat, in part because of the fund-raising advantage held by Dan Maffei, the Democratic candidate. Mr. Maffei, who lost to Mr. Walsh by about 3,400 votes in 2006, has nearly $1 million in his campaign account, compared with nearly $110,000 raised by his Republican opponent, Dale Sweetland, a former county legislator.

In another sign of trouble for Republicans, there are two Congressional districts in which the party’s incumbents stand only an even chance of holding on their seats, according to analysts monitoring the races.

One is Connecticut’s Fourth Congressional District, where Mr. Shays, the Republican incumbent, has proved to be a nimble politician who has frustrated repeated attempts to defeat him.

Mr. Shays, the only House Republican in Connecticut to survive the 2006 elections, has survived largely by blurring any distinction between himself and Democrats in a district that has voted solidly Democratic in the last two presidential elections.

Now, he is being challenged by Jim Himes, a former Goldman Sachs executive. Mr. Himes has $1.4 million on hand, compared with $1.7 million for Mr. Shays, according to the latest campaign finance disclosure reports.

The other embattled Republican incumbent is Representative John R. Kuhl Jr. of New York’s 29th District, in the state’s Southern Tier. His Democratic opponent is Eric Massa, a former Navy officer and a former staff member of the House Armed Services Committee, whom Mr. Kuhl defeated two years ago with 52 percent of the vote. In a measure of the tightness of the race, Mr. Massa has $652,000 in his coffers, compared with nearly $619,000 for Mr. Kuhl.

Eric Massa, Jim Himes, Dan Maffei and Carol Shea-Porter are all Blue America candidates, as are Sam Bennett (in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley), Dennis Shulman in the northernmost New Jersey CD, and Jon Powers in a district between Buffalo and Rochester in western New York. Jon will be live blogging with us Saturday at Firedoglake (2pm, EST).

Best case scenario for the Northeast:

Of Maine's two House seats, Chellie Pingree picks up the seat Tom Allen is vacating to run for the Senate while Mike Michaud is re-elected. This is pretty much a lock.

New Hampshire also has two House seats, both held by progressive Democratic freshmen. Paul Hodes seems like a lock to win and Carol should pull through, despite the non-stop attacks from far right Republican front operations like Freedom's Watch dumping millions of dollars into her race. But if there is just one candidate you are donating to, please consider Carol.

Vermont has only one House seat and the freshman Democrat, Peter Welch, is a progressive and he has no Republican opponent.

Massachusetts has 10 seats, all head by Democrats, few facing any opposition at all and all 10 expected to ride easily to re-election. There was some worry about the one freshman, Niki Tsongas, because her race was so close last year, but no Republican is bothering to run.

Rhode Island has two House seats, each occupied by a veteran moderate Democrat, Patrick Kennedy and James Langevin, and each considered completely safe.

Next comes New York, where ll the action is. There are currently 29 House seats, 6 still held by Republicans. As mentioned in the Times story, three of those seats will probably go Democratic, the Staten Island seat, the seat being abandoned by Walsh, and the seat being defended by Bush rubber stamp Randy Kuhl. After the primary next month, Jon Powers is likely to emerge as the favorite to win the seat being abandoned by Tom Reynolds. That leaves the Republicans with the 23rd CD in the huge northeast corner of the state (John McHugh's seat), and the 3rd CD (Peter King's seat) and neither is facing serious opposition. King shouldn't get away so easily as the once-daunting GOP registration lead has dropped from 100,000 to 13,000... and shrinking. It is likely the Republicans will lose 4 of there 6 seats in November.

New Jersey has 13 House seats, 7 held by Democrats and 6 by Republicans. The most likely outcome of the general election is that Democrat John Adler will take the 3rd district from retiring Jim Saxton and Democrat Linda Stender will take NJ-07, which is being vacated by Mike Ferguson. To make it an even 10 for the Dems, we need to see Dennis Shulman beat far right reactionary Scott Garrett, New Jersey's most vulnerable-- and most extremist-- congressman. It will be a classic race between Good and Evil, one of the clearest anywhere in America. Big Business has been rushing in to fill Garrett's coffers (especially Insurance and real estate companies, whose interests he represents far more than his constituents'). As of June 30, Garrett had taken in $992,248 and Dennis had raised $585,483, almost entirely from small donors who are sick of Garrett's crazed fanaticism.


Pennsylvania has 19 House seats. Right now eleven are held by Democrats. The most likely scenario in November will be a wash-- with Carney losing to Hackett and Sam Bennett defeating Bush rubber stamp Charlie Dent in PA-15. Dent is sucking up massive amounts of corporate case ($1,213,285, as of June 30) by Sam is managing to stay within striking distance ($539,640). Demographic trends also favor Bob Roggio in PA-06, the seat Lois Murphy nearly took from Jim Gerlach in 2004 and 2006 51-49% races both years). Gerlach had raised $1,870,994 and Roggio was only up to $405,216, not enough.

Delaware has one House seat and chances are strong that Republican Mike Castle will retain it.

Maryland has 8 House seats, 6 already in Democratic hands. It is likely that Republican Roscoe Bartlett will manage to keep his seat again but MD-01 is an open seat where conservative Blue Dog Frank Kratovil faces off against far right extremist Andy Harris. This one looks like a toss-up so far but it doesn't matter much since either will be voting against the interests of working families. It's a battle between the corrupt reactionary Blue Dog faction and the corrupt reactionary Club for Growth faction, the very worst of each political party.