Winnable Congressional Districts In South Carolina And Texas. Sure Everything Changes... Except The DCCC

Fran Person and Mick Mulvaney

Late Friday, Trump announced that he's nominating South Carolina's far right, libertarian-leaning Mick Mulvaney Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Coincidentally, when the news broke I was on the phone with a DCCC staffer talking about thinking outside the box in targeting. (Caution: I was talking about thinking outside the box; he was telling me I'm an idiot and that Democratic losses last month were my fault, not the DCCC's.) Anyway, as soon as I suggested that the DCCC should find a good candidate for the special election in SC-05, he said his dinner date had arrived and he had to go. "Bye... and SC-05 is an R+9 district," he snickered before clicking off. We'll come back to that Cook PVI rating in a moment.

Mulvaney's district has all or part of 11 north-central South Carolina counties. Lancaster, York and Cherokee counties, though, pretty much decide the elections, and those 3 are basically part of the Charlotte, North Carolina suburbs and exurbs. The district isn't nearly as red, hopelessly red, as it's top neighbors to the west, SC-03 and SC-04. Clinton lost South Carolina 1,155,389 (54.9%) to 855,373 (40.7%) but her 29.0% in SC-03 and her 34.5% in SC-04 was a less deadly 38.8% in SC-05. And that 38.8 is the identical number Mulvaney's Democratic opponent, Fran Person, won this year, 114,936 votes, to Mulvaney's 175,139. Mulvaney spent $1,136,307 on the race to Person's $694,659. The DCCC made a little chirpy sound about supporting him early on... but they never stepped up to the plate-- not a dime, not a nickel. What if they had? What if there was any kind of a competitive campaign waged there, aside from just the media and energy spill-over from Charlotte? We'll never know, will we? And what about the special to replace Mulvaney? Oh, it's a got a PVI of R+9, so fergetaboutit. Or maybe not. Trump is, after all, pretty special. South Carolinians may figure that out-- the hard way-- by late winter/early spring when the special election for the empty seat is likely to take place.

These Cook PVIs can be pretty misleading if you don't view them in context. Look at TX-07, for example, John Culberson's Houston district. TX-07-- George H.W. Bush's old House seat-- is never considered winnable for the DCCC, a self-fulfilling prophesy, one of well over a hundred in the endless flow of DCCC defeatism. When Culberson first ran, in 2000, the DCCC didn't run anyone against him. An unknown, penniless Democrat, Jeff Sell took 24% of the vote. There was no Democratic candidate at all in 2002, nther penniless unknowns in 2004 and 2006 (who took, respectively 33% and 39% of the vote). In 2008, a big year for Democrats, a wealthy self-funder, Michael Skelly ran-- albeit with any help at all from the DCCC. He spent $3,080,655 to Culbertson's $1,757,226 but he only wound up with 42% of the vote. In 2010 the Dems were back to running no one at all and in 2012, 2014 (and again this year), James Cargas ran.In 2012 Cargas, a conservative Democrat got 36% of the vote, around the same thing he got in 2014. This year, spending $61,854 to Culberson's $1,142,775, he got a more promising 43.8% of the vote. He had no help from the DCCC, of course, but he managed to pick up 111,774 votes to Culberson's 143,369. Incredibly, Hillary won the district. Yes... she won it. She wound up with 124,722 votes to Trump's 121,204. (In 2012 Romney beat Obama there 143,631 to 92,499.

The Democrats should have been cultivating TX-07. Whites are now just 44.6% of the population. Hispanics make up 31.5%, Blacks 12.2% and Asians 9.6%. It's typical DCCC malpractice to not be competing there and building a Democratic case in the district. The district starts at Highland Village and West University Place, a couple blocks west of Rice University and heads straight west from Houston, through Southside Place, Belaire, Piney Point Village, Bunker Hill Village and out just past the Barker Reservoir. It's winnable, not easy but winnable... with hard work and real investment, foreign concepts to a DCCC that has learned how to lose and steadfastly, aggressively refuses to budge from it's losing ways. And the PVI is supposedly an R+13, even worse than SC-05's.

If the House Democrats want to stay in the minority forever, they can achieve that-- just keep everything the same, especially Pelosi and her disastrous, catastrophic loser DCCC chairs and their utterly incompetent and corrupt staffs. Beats hard work, amirite? And if Trump screws up as badly as everyone expects-- or even worse-- then the DCCC will have no candidates in districts like SC-05 or TX-07. Count on it. Below: a blast from the past: