Summary: As Dorgan, Dodd, and Ritter announce their plans to retire, the Democratic Party may stand to lose more races up and down the ticket
Last night it was reported that Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) will retire this year, leaving an open seat in the Roughrider State.
This was unquestionably bad news for Democrats. Dorgan was able to hold on to the seat solely based on the incumbency effect - the national Democratic Party is not very popular in North Dakota. At least it won’t be in 2010.
Two candidates have emerged to possibly run as Democrats for Dorgan’s seat: at-large Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) and MSNBC talk show host Ed Shultz. Shultz is way too liberal to be elected in North Dakota, and we’ve mentioned before how TV personalities would have a lot of difficulty running for office.
But for Democrats, the best case scenario would be a Shultz campaign and Pomeroy keeping his House seat, because that would likely turn red if he ran for Senate - and there’s no guarantee he’d win the higher office. Obviously, some Democrats disagree.
There was some light at the end of the tunnel for the Dems, though, when it was reported Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) will retire as well. Dodd was in really bad shape for a 2010 re-election and a GOP pick-up would not have been shocking. Now it will be.
Democrats have already lined-up their candidate for the Constitution State: the popular State Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal. And Blumenthal has already told the press he’s all-in, leaving little doubt that this was all planned out ahead of time.
Regardless, a Dodd loss was not inevitable, and now a Democratic loss in North Dakota may quite possibly be.
Also recently announced, Governor Bill Ritter (D-CO) may be stepping down after his term is complete. That leaves a big open-seat race in the Centennial State. However, Republicans have been campaigning in full swing already to take down the incumbent Democrat, and they have a long head start over any Democrats who would now have to step in to replace Ritter. While it could have easily been a GOP pick-up anyway, this retirement probably hurts Colorado Democrats a lot more than it helps.
Back in November, I took a look at Senate and Gubernatorial projections for this year and estimated net losses of less than 6 Senate races and less than 5 gubernatorial races for Democrats.
While these retirements don’t significantly change those figures, I think it makes the prospects for how many less a bit worse. It’s simply a bleaker picture than it was yesterday.
Nate Silver has a much more conservative estimate of Democratic losses. In a post today, he had this to say:
"If I aggregate my estimates from the individual races, I show Republicans picking up an average of 4.60 Democratic seats, but also, Democrats picking up an average of 2.65 Republican seats, for a net Republican gain of 1.95 seats…
… It also bears remembering that, although I remain quite pessimistic about what will happen to Democrats in the House, the Senate playing field is intrinsically more favorable to them. The Senators who are up for re-election this year are those who were elected in 2004 -- a good cycle for Republicans. And while Democrats were hurt by their retirements in North Dakota, Delaware, New York, Illinois and probably Colorado (they were helped by Chris Dodd's retirement in Connecticut), the Republicans have created opportunities for them with the retirements in Missouri, Ohio, New Hampshire and perhaps Florida (they were helped by Jim Bunning's retirement in Kentucky). If the 2006 senate class were up for re-election this year, Democrats would potentially face very substantial losses, but fortunately for Democrats they aren't."
Of course, 2010 is not only important because it is a likely backlash-year for the majority party, it’s also a critical election year at the state level. The State Legislatures will be redistricting their states after this year’s census, and Democrats were already at risk in those races.
With these retirements on the federal level, state Democrats may be feeling ambitious enough to run for higher office, leaving their seats open for competitive races (the Political Ripple Effect). Obviously, this isn’t a big deal per se in North Dakota (which isn’t big enough for 2 congressional districts) but it could be in Colorado and even possibly in Connecticut.
That could be very beneficial to the GOP for the new decade.
Today WAYLA reports on local politics from Colorado.
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In 2008, Colorado proved to be a good state for Democrats. President Obama won the state with a 54% - 45% margin, while Senator Mark Udall won his first state-wide election by a 53% - 43% margin.
Additionally, both houses of the State Legislature as well as the Governor’s office are controlled by Democrats.
But all that appears to be changing. In recent months, Democrats have lost considerable support from residents of the Centennial State. A Public Policy Polling survey from last month finds President Obama with a 49% approval rating - far below the national average - with 45% disapproval in the state of Colorado.
Udall, meanwhile, suffers 41% approval and 46% disapproval ratings.
And this means trouble for the 2010 elections. According to another April poll, Democratic Governor Bill Ritter’s approval rating is 41% while his disapproval rating is 49%. Furthermore, a plurality of respondents said they would back Republican Scott McInnis over Ritter. Other state-wide offices appear to be slipping away as well.
The one saving grace for Democrats is that virtually no one in Colorado knows much about Democratic Senator Michael Bennet - so few that a quarter of voters say they know too little to have an opinion about him. Bennet was selected by Ritter to replace Ken Salazar, who was appointed by Obama to head the Interior Department.
Bennet’s race looks particularly interesting. He’s an east-coaster who moved to Colorado twelve years ago, eventually became Superintendent of Denver Public Schools, and was never really involved in politics. But he’s somehow raised $1.4 million already for his 2010 campaign, and his top Republican opponent is a District Attorney that has cost his constituency $100,000 in court fees for raiding a tax service company without properly following the Fourth Amendment. Nonetheless, Bennet has a greater disapproval rating than his approval rating and he is slightly behind one of his speculated GOP opponents.
As one Denver Post columnist put it recently, “what a bummer it can be to be a Democrat in Colorado.”
Why are the Democrats slipping?
There are only a few ways to try to explain this trend.
First, Democrats have been fortunate in Colorado recently with the help of Hispanic voters. Census Bureau estimates for 2008 say that 20% of the population in Colorado is Latino. Yet only 14% of respondents to the Obama/Udall poll identified as Hispanic.
Since the recession began, Colorado has been the state with the largest decline in immigrant employment, thus many are leaving. Of course, non-citizens cannot vote, but it is possible that Hispanic citizens are leaving the state as well. A recent study found that the “immigrant unemployment rate is now 5.6 percentage points higher than in the third quarter of 2007, before the recession began. Native unemployment has increased 3.8 percentage points over the same period.”
If immigrant unemployment is rising faster than native unemployment, it suggests that employers are waning from hiring immigrants at the moment - either because of a sense of nationalism sparked by the recession, or because of a crackdown on employment of illegal immigrants - and by extension waning from hiring Hispanics in general.
It’s a pretty loose theory.
Second, particular Democrats are lagging, not necessarily the entire party. For example, liberal blog ColoradoPols.com currently has Sen. Bennet listed as “down” because he’s “not a natural campaigner by any means [and] has been sloppy.”
But Bennet is not that far behind other Democrats in his approval rating. In fact, none of his GOP opponents - whether or not they have announced - is viewed more favorably than unfavorably by the voters. So this explanation does not work too well.
Third, all politics is local, and state-level Democrats have been making the party unpopular. This is probably the best theory.
From a conservative columnist’s recent Op-Ed in the Denver Post:
“We're now slogging through a recession that Ritter recklessly failed to prepare for, his legislative allies are split and ineffectual…Democrats this session failed on a number of cherished goals, including a tuition break for illegal immigrants, easing sentences and ending the death penalty, quitting the Electoral College, and nanny-state rules for cellphones and seatbelts.”
These have been some big issues in Colorado’s State House. Thanks to TABOR, Colorado has difficulty producing surpluses in good economic times and the budget gets punished for it during bad economic times. It’s similar to the fiscal mess in California that has persisted since the passage of Proposition 13. Since a Democrat is in the Governor’s office, he is going to get the blame.
Other issues mentioned above are going to be equally unpopular. The Electoral College issue, for example, is one that probably doesn’t sit well with voters. The state Senate approved a bill to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, in which a state’s electoral votes would go to the overall national winner of a presidential race. Once enough states join the compact to reach 270 votes, the compact would go into effect. Because Colorado is a smaller state, they would effectively get less say in a presidential contest. Besides, a good communications director can easily argue that the bill is taking the vote away from Coloradans, and make a GOP political gain.
Voters do not necessarily separate the actions of national party leaders from the state party leaders. Hence, these local issues may very well be influencing Obama’s approval rating in Colorado.
Of course, even that theory is not concrete. As more stories and research on this issue develop, we will keep you informed as to why Democrats are letting Colorado slip away from them.
UPDATE: One explanation that hadn't been discussed is the possibility that Coloradans simply have an unusually low opinion of politicians in general (at least at the present time). For one thing it almost seems unreal that support for the Democrats would diminish so quickly in just six or seven months. Additionally, the favorability ratings of Republican challengers aren't too high either - which we mentioned before.
If this is the case the Democrats would not have to worry too much. As Kelly Fero told us in January, "In the end, every election is about accomplishing two goals: taking away the voters' permission to vote for your opponent and granting them permission to vote for you as an acceptable alternative." If all it takes is demonstrating oneself as the lesser of two evils, the Democrats will still have an even playing field come 2010.
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