The Districts that will Determine the Majority
Four Races in Pennsylvania to Watch
By Leon H Wolf Posted in 2006 — Comments (25) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Handicapping the race for the House majority is dicey business. Recently, while browsing around the web, I came across a headline which read, "House Republicans brace to lose between 7 and 30 seats." Sounds about right. Of course, there's a mighty wide gulf between losing 7 seats and losing 30 seats, and it's difficult to know where on the spectrum things currently stand.
At the moment, four Congressional Districts in Eastern Pennsylvania stand out as a bellweather for the rest of the country. All four are held by Republican incumbents who are vulnerable. Because of their location, the returns for these districts should be among the first to come in. If, on election night, we manage to keep three of the four seats, I'll feel good about keeping the majority. If we only keep two, I'll start being nervous. And if we lose three or all four, I'll start feeling doomed.
Below the fold for analysis...
PA-10 is in the northeast corner of the state, north of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area. The seat is currently held by one-term(UPDATE: LHW) four-term incumbent Don Sherwood. This seat should be one of the safest Republican seats in the whole country, but Sherwood has made quite a mess of his personal life. In a district this rural, that has really hurt him in the polls. Despite these problems, Sherwood was still up in April of this year, but more recent polling shows him in trouble. This race could be significant because it involves a district full of people who really don't want to vote for a Democrat, but may be disgruntled enough with the personal indiscretions of their Congressman to have no choice. In other words, this may predict the larger pull of the Foley effect somewhat.
The other three districts (6, 7, and 8) are all in the Philadelphia suburbs.
District 6 is currently held by Jim Gerlach, who is somewhat of a milquetoast Republican (although we have many, many worse). In 2004, Gerlach squeaked by Lois Murphy by a 51-49 margin, and Murphy has returned for a rematch. The last non-Zogby poll of this race was a Keystone Poll which showed Gerlach clinging to a very slight lead. The complete set of PA-6 polls is here which shows that this race is a toss-up yet again, in a district that just barely went for Kerry in 2004. This is the one race that I have my eye on as probably the truest bellweather on election night.
District 7 is currently held by Curt Weldon, one of the leading Able Danger trumpetblowers. He is also the author of the Weldon Amendment, one of the more reasonable (and therefore hated) pieces of pro-life legislation in recent years. Weldon is alleged to have some lobbyist issues, and hasn't been as staunch as he should have been on spending issues, but in my estimation, he's certainly a Critter worth keeping. A recent Keystone poll showed Weldon trailing by 1 point in a very small sample, previous polling had Weldon with double-digit leads. If Weldon loses his seat, expect election night to be a very long one, indeed.
In PA-8, one-term incumbent Mike Fitzpatrick is squaring off against netroots favorite and Iraq war veteran Patrick Murphy. This is a district that is red, but slowly trending blue. This district will be an interesting indicator of the extent to which Democrats are able to beat incumbent Republicans on the basis of a strong alliance with Bush. If Murphy pulls off a victory here, anti-war sentiment may carry several other Democrats to Congressional upsets.
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We'll know when the first polls close in Kentucky and Indiana at 6. If Chocola and Hostettler win, the GOP may be gaining a few seats. If only those two lose, it is probably a 5-seat loss or so. If Sodrel or Lucas loses, probably closer to 10. Both of those two, probably around 15. If Anne Northup loses, probably 25. And if Ron Lewis loses, the bottom is really falling out for the GOP.
BTW, I predict that Republicans will hold between 150 and 350 seats in the next Congress. See, I could be a WaPo writer too!
3 very conservative men in a very conservative state are close to losing their seats. Chocola, Hostetlet, and Sodrel will tell us much about how enthusiastic the base was in voting.
Isn't Rep. Sherwood a four-term incumbent? I think he will be this cycle's Phil Crane, but the others are probably going to pull through. Indiana and Ohio might be the danger states, but on the bright side, those are not enough to hit #fifteen.
I've followed the House races very closely over the past month and a half. The two races in Connecticut and the three races in Pennsylvania will tell us early on if Republicans will hold the House. Until the Foley mess, it appeared as though Simmons, Shays, Gerlach, and Fitzpatrick were all going to win. Sherwood, on the other hand, looked as though he was destined to go down in defeat. Now, it's a much different picture. In fact, Bob Novak has moved all of these races plus Weldon's race into the "leans Democrat" column solely because of Foley. I think Novak is much too pessimistic about this, but they were all very close races. It will be ineteresting to see what the next batch of polls have to say.
This is my home base. I just want to correct one thing: PA-8 is not "red, but slowly trending blue" -- it is blue. Gore, Rendell and Kerry all won it. Dems just had a lousy candidate there in 2004.
All those people you just mentioned won by very small margins, and prior to 2000, this was a reliably Republican district in all respects, if I'm correct (and I think I am on that point). Perhaps it would have been clearer to say that the Congressional seat is red, but the district is turning bluer.
"We could find a speck of dust and scribble down our life stories..." - The Refreshments
Here's some data -- it's still R, registration-wise, but hasn't voted for a Republican for President since 1988.
The seat has been red since 1993 (Greenwood); it had been blue for the previous decade (Kostmayer).
Speaking of PA races, this new Murtha-Irey poll will not be warmly received here.
I intend to liveblog the Simmons-Courtney race, as well as Wilson-Madrid, Pryce-Kilroy, Allen-Webb, Corker-Ford, and a couple of others starting a couple days before the election, and straight through election night. Just a heads up.
Oh, and Jim Gerlach is our candidate of the week for exactly the reasons set out in this post (OK, not the milktoast thing, but the closeness of the race).
Liz Mair is the editor of WWW.GOPPROGRESS.COM, a RedState-style blog for libertarian, mainstream and moderate Republicans
All this stuff concerning Foley is really very unimportant for PA voters. Even Sherwood's example has nothing to do with Foley. (He is a four term incumbent, by the way.) The thing I don't understand about Sherwood is why Republicans thought he was so safe in the first place; they should have known he was in big trouble right after the scandal erupted!
The real problem here was redistricting. In 2002, the Republicans got greedy, and attempted to maximize their number of Congressmen, which created too many marginal districts for them to defend in a down year. In 2002 and 2004, this barely worked, as the state went from a margin of 10 Republicans to 11 Democrats to a margin of 12 Republicans to 7 Democrats. (However, the GOP did lose the Gekas-Holden race, as too many Democrats were in that district.) But in 2002, and again in 2004, Gerlach barely won his race, showing his inherent vunerability. And now he, and Fitzpatrick, and Weldon are all in big trouble.
This need not have happened. In 2002, the GOP should have made then- Congressman Joe Hoeffel's 13th district solidly Democratic, and thereby shifted its remaining Republican voters into the 6th, 7th, and 8th Districts. Instead, the GOP kept them in the 13th, in the hope of giving Hoeffel a race, but of course, Hoeffel ran for Senate instead, and Schwartz easily won the 13th district race anyway.
In 2006, it looks like the PA GOP will pay for our own greed and shortsightedness.
but the 6th was still drawn as the "gerlach district" and they took a lot of GOP voters from the 16th to help him keep it.
IMHO, i think this district was always gerlach's to lose and he has come periously close to doing so.
in these races indicate losses. Wait until most of the results are in. Maybe I am misremembering, but I recall the PA numbers being the first indicator that the polling was seriously screwed up in the last election. Rendell is a machine politician, and he'll pull out all the stops on this one.
the media was VERY quick to call PA for Kerry, even though it (and I believe 4 other states, which split between Bush and Kerry) was closer than OH.
Don't forget that John Murtha is toast. A reporter friend of mine told me that he'll be lucky to get 20% of the military vote after his Haditha Marines comments. Diana Irey said that 18% of PA-12 voters are active- & reserve-duty & retired military, not counting their families. That means Murtha essentially starts with a 35,000 vote deficit. Forgive me if I don't believe he'll be able to pull that off.
Stop past Murtha Must Go for all the latest Irey-Murtha race information.
Did you see the poll upthread that had Murtha up 27%?
I'd be happy if we could hold two of those four seats. Sherwood seems to be in really bad shape, and Rendell is going to win SE PA by a huge margin. The upside to PA 10 being the most likely to fall is the fact that we can win it back in two years. Doing the same in PA 6 and PA 7 would be a heck of a challenge, less so in Bucks (PA 8) I suppose.
For the record, I live in Chocola's district and there seems to be some misunderstanding on this board and others about Indiana. It's true that IN is reliably red for presidential elections....but that's it. Chocola's district is in fact much bluer than people give it credit for. It was only Bush's coattails and the govenor's race two years ago that allowed the state GOP to take the legislature and for the US Reps to win as they did. In fact, its that sucess that's made it hard to win this year as the state's been through a lot of changes that makes small groups mad for the good of all. I'm thankful for having Chris for 4 years and will work to get him re-elected but I'll be surprised if he wins and it shouldn't be seen as much of a bell weather. South Bend is very much Dem terriority and, by far, the biggest city in the district.
and Donnelly is the most brain-dead candidate I have seen here in a long time. Does anyone even know what he stands for? All I know at this point is that Chocola is a lap-dog of "big oil" and "big pharmaceutcial." No issues. No stances. No ads telling us what he believes in. If he wins, it won't be because people believe in his cause...because he doesn't have one.
I hate to say it [-] the party has been good to us Libertarians** for so long [-] but the Repubs deserve to loose this November.
In one scandal after another, the party has betrayed its conservative principles in favour of electoral expediency.
An [u]nne[ce]ss[]ary [w]ar. Record [g]overnment [s]pending. The [u]nholy [a]lliance with the Christ[i]an R[ei]ch***. And now[ ]- news that they can't even keep one of their own from cybering with underage boys.
I'm a registered Republican, have been for 48 years. [I] [v]oted for Bush twice[,] and Clinton never. [I] [h]elped John McCain land the nod in [']86****. [I] haven't voted [for a] Democrat for Congress since Carl Hayden retired.
But I am tired[,] tired[,] tired of these leaders in Congress thinking they can walk all over Conservative***** priciples and still expect my vote.
Harry Mitchell****** is a[-]coming to Washington boys.
[*For the love of God, people: lose. LOSE! Spelling checkers are not a cure-all. - Moe Lane]
[**This is a toughie. Either he meant to lower-case the 'l', or he was actually fibbing about being a Republican. Hard to say. - Moe Lane]
[***He was fibbing. Republicans know how to spell Christian. Reich, for that matter, although that's because we're the ones who actually read history books for fun. - Moe Lane]
[****You have to be able to see his email to appreciate the irony of this one. - Moe Lane]
[*****I'm in the zone, here. Now, I know that you can be a libertarian Republican, or a conservative Republican, or a libertarian conservative or even a libertarian conservative Republican glaive guissarme glaive. But this guy really goes all over the map, huh? - Yeah, me again.]
[******Democrat for Arizona, District 5. This was probably the point of the entire post, and he forgot to include a link to the site. Tsk, tsk, tsk. - Guess?]
If we loosen whatever it is that we're supposed to loosen (you didn't specify), will we win in 2006?
Details, please....
When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail. -- Abraham Maslow
No way Weldon retains his seat now--- massive unfavorable local press regarding daughter's lobbying trevails for Serbian and Russian thugs. Tendency to appear slightly nutty when he's (frequently) in over his head intellectually doesn't help, either. Plus, a hawk with a teacher's deferment from the Nam doesn't stack up well against an Anapolis grad who got his flag. Hope this isn't indicative of something broader, recalling that Weldon knocked off Bob Edgar--- that right, the same "Rev. Bob" now with the National Council of Churches--- in the Reagan landslide. Sort of a living example of the dialectic, I suppose.
The contested races in Tx, Ga, and Fla are the ones that I will watch for an indicator. These are conservative parts of the country, and if the GOTV effort goes full speed in these areas the GOP are not going to lose those seats to the Dems. The MSM gets away with portraying voters in these districts as too stupid to vote. They are so wrong.
You’re a persistent cuss, pilgrim.
John Wayne to Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
I intend to keep an eye on the CT races, particularly Shays and Simmons, as a bellwether for what is to come outside of the Eastern Time Zone.
As for the WaPo story about the seven to 30 seat turnover range, well, that was a fairly safe prediction to be kind.