Oberweis trotted out a traditional GOP platform of less government and more tax breaks, as well as the hot-button issue of illegal immigration. But it wasn’t hot-button enough to persuade voters.
Two months later Republicans witnessed another fissure open up in their formerly rock-solid base. In a Louisiana district that includes Baton Rouge and hadn’t sent a Democrat to the Capitol since 1974, Don Cazayoux pulled off an upset over Republican challenger Woody Jenkins. The seat had been held by 20-year-incumbent Richard Baker, who jumped ship for K Street. Dems didn’t even bother to field a challenger for Baker in 2006.
Cazayoux is pro-gun and anti-abortion, which seems to be the minimum criteria for any Democratic candidate hoping to win in the Deep South. Although he’s a social conservative, Cazayoux toes the Party lines when it comes to education and healthcare. Republicans tried to paint Cazayouz as a tax-happy liberal and linked him to Obama in television ads. But the Southern electorate seems to be wising up to GOP scare tactics.
The final, and perhaps biggest, blow in this Democratic trifecta came when Mississippi’s Travis Childers won a seat vacated by Republican Roger Wicker, who had held the seat since 1995, defeating Greg Davis by 8 percentage points. Bush won 62 percent of the vote in the district in 2004. Childers, a social conservative, is anti-abortion. So was his Republican opponent. Childers is a staunch supporter of gun rights. So was Davis. So what was the difference between the two candidates? Childers opposed the war in Iraq. Davis supported it.
Republicans spent nearly a million dollars on ads tying Childers to Obama and even to Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but the plan seems to have backfired, as it appeared to bring out more black voters than usual. And those votes went Childers’ way. Heck, they even called on their knight in shining armor, Vice President Dick Cheney, to ride into town and give his blessing to Davis. And when things started looking really desperate, they pulled out the nuclear option: First Lady Laura Bush. Not even the former librarian, in a recorded message sent to voters throughout the district, could woo enough Mississippians to vote for Davis.
What happened? According to Jack Bass, who has written extensively on Southern politics, the Democratic victories in the two traditional Republican strongholds in the South “suggest a region in transformation, with dynamic economic growth, an expanded black middle class, the arrival of millions of white migrants, the return of scores of thousands of African-American expatriates, and an emerging native white generation with little or no memory of racial segregation.” Or, more to the point, it suggests BIG TROUBLE for the Republicans, who have for too long relied on racism and religious extremism in the Deep South and elsewhere.
What do Republicans have to say about their situation? Let’s listen in:
Rep. Tom Davis wrote a 20-page memo to his Republican colleagues saying that “the Republican brand is in the trash can . . . if we were dog food, they would take us off the shelf.”
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich: “The Republican brand has been so badly damaged that if Republicans try to run an anti-Obama, anti-Rev. Wright . . . campaign, they are simply going to fail,” Gingrich said. “This model has already been tested with disastrous results.”
And: “Either congressional Republicans are going to chart a bold course of real change or they are going to suffer decisive losses this November.”
Suffer might be too polite a word. There’s the potential here for a political bloodbath. Here’s a look at 30 House seats we could possibly win—if we do the work that needs to be done . . .
ALABAMA’S 2ND DISTRICT
Bobby Bright
State Rep. Jay Love is on his way to winning the Republican nomination for Terry Everett’s open seat after a primary battle with State Senator Harri Anne Smith. Before entering politics, Love made his fortune by operating 16 Subway Sandwich franchises, opening his first shop in 1992. He’s now pumped at least $500,000 of his sandwich money into this primary race. Among his legislative accomplishments was the sponsoring of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act and a bill to prevent kids from being exposed to violent or sexually explicit videogames.
Popular Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright is the Democrat running in this district with a 29 percent African-American population. He stands a good chance of snatching yet another “safe” seat away from the Republicans. Bright considers himself a “social conservative,” who’s “pro-life, pro-gun” and “strong on military.” Well, okay, it’s Alabama. Chalk up one sure win for the Dems.
ALASKA’S LONE CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
Ethan Berkowitz
The Alaska Republican corruption racket is finally going out of business. Senator Ted Stevens and 18-term Republican Representative Don Young are both tainted by a federal corruption investigation, so Alaska Republicans are scrambling to hold on to their long-held seats in Washington. There has even been some infighting among the GOP, as Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell shocked the party by announcing his candidacy for Young’s seat. The primary takes place after this book is published, and polls showed Parnell and Young in a statistical dead heat.
In addition to the FBI corruption investigation, Alaska’s lone representative to the U.S. House is under scrutiny by the Justice Department for changing the wording of a $10-million earmark in a 2005 transportation bill—after the bill had already been approved by both houses of Congress but before the President signed it into law. The edit benefited a major donor to Young’s campaign.
The way things look like right now, all Republican challenger Sean Parnell has to do is show up at the congressional primary and he’ll beat the scandal-tainted Young. Parnell is currently serving as Lt. Gov., is a lawyer, and is a staunch social conservative who wants to leave healthcare in the hands of “the market” (translation: apply a little mascara, rouge, and lipstick to our moribund system).
The Democrats are resting their hopes on former state House Minority Leader Ethan Berkowitz (he of the famed Fairbanks Berkowitzes, not the lesser-known Nome Berkowitzes). He supports withdrawing the troops from Iraq, saying that “our continued presence [there] isn’t making us any safer.” Unlike most Democrats, but in line with his Alaskan constituents, he supports drilling in ANWR.
ARIZONA’S 1ST DISTRICT
Ann Kirkpatrick
The Republicans are trying to hold on to a seat vacated by Rep. Rick Renzi, who faces 35 counts of corruption in federal courts. The party’s top recruit to succeed Renzi decided to quit the race early, so Republicans have been desperate to find a good candidate to replace the ethically-challenged Renzi.
Sydney Hay is the likely Republican candidate. Hay, a former conservative talk radio host, is the president of the Arizona Mining Association. She says she was “inspired by the Reagan revolution” and is “concerned about the coarsening culture in America.” She opposes a woman’s right to an abortion and supports school voucher programs. Her proposal for addressing the nation’s healthcare crisis is straight out of the health insurance industry’s play book—encouraging investment in health saving accounts, reducing the ability of lawyers to sue, and encouraging healthcare “consumers” to “shop around.”
Democratic candidate Ann Kirkpatrick is a former State Representative and has the support of popular Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano. After earning a law degree, Kirkpatrick became the first female Deputy County Attorney of Coconino County and later became City Attorney of Sedona. She’s a mother, has served her community as a legislator, teacher, and a member of many local organizations such as the United Way of Northern Arizona and the Board of Directors of Big Sisters. Emily’s List quotes her as saying that “Washington needs to start working for people again and focus on what really matters—like preserving our open spaces and way of life, while creating jobs, restoring fiscal responsibility, and improving our schools.” She calls the war in Iraq a “disaster” and says we must make it a top priority to end our involvement in it. She has worked for equal pay for women and minorities, and the Sierra Club has given
her an A for her environmental record. She doesn’t run a mining association, but my guess is Ann Kirkpatrick would strip-mine Congress of its BS if she were elected.
CALIFORNIA’S 4TH DISTRICT
Charlie Brown
Republican candidate Tom McClintock has been involved in California politics for several years. He’s currently a State Senator and has made losing bids in the 2003 gubernatorial recall election and the 2006 lieutenant governor campaign. He loves capitalism and wants the rich to keep their money while the country goes broke. His love of money has led him to take advantage of a tax-free per diem entitled to California legislators who live more than 50 miles from the capital. The problem is, McClintock lives only 14 miles from the capital. During his years in elected office in California he’s raked in $306,000 in per diem money.
The issues McClintock is most heavily involved in are economic and tax policies, where he is a “Club for Growth”-certified conservative. He receives A ratings from all of California’s big business, antitax interest groups as well as straight A’s from the California Republican Assembly, who support candidates with “unwavering Republican principles.” He promises to support making the Bush tax cuts for the rich permanent and “reduce the size of the federal government.”
Democratic candidate Charlie Brown is a 26-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force and a 22-year member of the Sierra Club. He opposed the Iraq war from the beginning and came close to winning this seat in the 2006 elections. With the retirement of Republican Rep. Doolittle (who is under investigation for his ties to imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff) and a big year for Democrats approaching, he’s in a good position to take this seat for the Democrats.
After a career serving in the Air Force, the country’s continued involvement in the Iraq war has inspired Brown to run for office. Before the war began, he didn’t believe there were any WMD and did not support the invasion. He also wants Congress to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Domestically, he supports a ban on members of Congress becoming lobbyists within 5 years of leaving office. He also supports allowing the federal government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to bring down the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare recipients. He’s against Social Security privatization and supports raising the income cap on Social Security to help make it sustainable.
COLORADO’S 4TH DISTRICT
Betsy Markey
Winning with the slimmest margin of any candidate in 2006, the Democrats see Republican Marilyn Musgrave’s seat as prime for the picking. Musgrave is notorious for using divisive social issues to boost conservative turnout, and she’s doing it again this election cycle. She supports a state ballot measure on “personhood” that would define a person as “any human being from the moment of fertilization.” It’s the first ballot measure of this kind in the country, but if it helps the desperate Republican Party hold on to seats in November, you can bet your Rocky Mountain high that other states will give it a go.
She was on Rolling Stone’s list of the 10 worst members of Congress because of her career focus on “regulating the bedroom behavior of her fellow Americans.” This includes running for school board on a platform of eliminating sex education; she was able to achieve “abstinence only” programs with sex-related passages scrubbed from health textbooks. In the U.S. Congress, she’s proposed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, calling it “the most important issue that we face today.”
Challenging a seat that has been held by the Republicans since 1973 is Democrat Betsy Markey. She is a former aide to Colorado Senator Ken Salazar and a former State Department official, as well as a businesswoman. She counts healthcare and education as two of the most important issues facing America and has the backing of Emily’s List. Her economic plan also includes something we don’t hear people propose or mention too often—cutting government spending by cutting the federal government’s PR contracts by 10 percent. This includes no-bid contracts given to the likes of conservative commentator Armstrong Williams, who was given tax dollars to promote No Child Left Behind in his newspaper columns and his pundit stints on cable TV.
CONNECTICUT’S4TH DISTRICT
Jim Himes
Christopher Shays is a rare bird: a Republican congressman in New England. In the 2006 elections, the species nearly went extinct, with Shays—who supported the war in Iraq—the lone survivor. With Obama topping the Democratic ticket and voter registration on the rise, the Democrats have an opportunity to remove the term “New England House Republicans” from the political lexicon.
When it comes to issues that will lead to Shays’ exit from Congress, the first three that come to mind are Iraq, Iraq, and Iraq. He voted and vouched for the war and the Bush-Cheney Middle East policies. Five years after voting for the war, Shays admitted that he had yet to read the pre-war National Intelligence Estimate of 2002. He has openly stated that “I’ve been carrying the bucket when it comes to the war,” but representing a liberal district in Connecticut, he’s about to kick that bucket. And in a strange, creepy (and what I hope is a) coincidence, like Joe Lieberman at a previous State of the Union Address, Shays was caught on camera exchanging a kiss with the goofy-sounding guy who’d just stumbled his way through the speech. A changing position on Iraq is too little and too late to overcome his kiss of political death.
Democratic candidate Jim Himes was born in Lima, Peru, and moved to the United States at the age of 10. He went to Harvard and won a Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford. For the past few years, Himes has been an executive at a non-profit organization that addresses urban poverty by helping low-income families with tax preparation and financial assistance, funding affordable housing in the Northeast, and using green technology to lower energy costs. He wants to bring these types of solutions to government in Washington.
FLORIDA’S 24TH DISTRICT
Suzanne Kosmas
Republican incumbent Tom Feeney is also from the Jack Abramoff-wing of the Republican Party. In 2003, he took a trip to Scotland with the imprisoned former lobbyist and poster boy for the Washington culture of corruption. This is the same golf junket that led to Rep. Bob Ney being jailed on corruption charges. Feeney may avoid doing hard time, but he should start looking for another job.
He’s voted against withdrawal from Iraq and in favor of funding the war with no strings attached. He’s also voted for the FISA domestic spying bill to give the government more power to eavesdrop without a court order, and voted against SCHIP, the state children’s healthcare fund. Feeney is a reliable Republican vote, having sided with the GOP over 90 percent of the time.
Democratic opponent Suzanne Kosmas has served in the Florida House of Representatives and on local boards of the United Way Women’s Initiative, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Southeast Volusia Habitat for Humanity, and Volusia County’s Cultural Arts Advisory Board. She helped create the first local “Women Build” program with the United Way and Habitat for Humanity, which recruits female volunteers to build affordable housing for single mothers. She has the backing of many labor unions and Emily’s List.
ILLINOIS’ 10TH DISTRICT
Dan Seals
In 2005, Democrat-turned-Republican Mark Kirk said he was “OK with discrimination against young Arab males from terrorist-producing states.” He was immediately criticized by State Senator Barack Obama and Rep. Jan Schakowsky but stood by his comments. This is one guy the Democrats weren’t sad to lose. The incumbent Republican candidate has also been a war-enabling obstructionist, voting against the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and in favor of funding the war with no strings attached. In a vote to allow the federal government to directly negotiate with drugmakers to lower Medicare prescription drug costs, the Democrats voted in favor, the Republicans voted against, and facing re-election, Kirk was a no-show; he didn’t vote.
Democratic candidate Daniel J. Seals hopes to be part of a rising tide—led by Barack Obama—sweeping Democrats into office in Illinois. He’s aggressively going after his opponent for s
upporting the Bush administration, making false claims of “independence,” and failing to keep the price of gas in check. He also calls healthcare a “moral issue” and says that the government should “develop a national program of health insurance that provides a basic level of healthcare that is portable and affordable.” A future co-sponsor of Rep. Conyers’ HR 676?
ILLINOIS’ 11TH DISTRICT
Debbie Halvorson
Republican Rep. Jerry Weller is retiring, so the cash-strapped Illinois GOP is looking to ready-mix concrete magnate Martin Ozinga III to fund his own campaign for the open seat. He did a four-hour stint manning the pumps at a local gas station in June of ’08 to promote his “energy policy.” It was a perfect setting for a man whose less-than-innovative energy proposals include drilling the crap out of everything in sight in search of oil, building more refineries, and doing away with the Illinois state gas tax. He calls alternative energy a “second energy priority.”
All of this nonsense should hopefully make it smooth sailing for Ozinga’s opponent, Democratic candidate Debbie Halvorson. Halvorson is the first woman to be elected Majority Leader in Illinois and has been in the state Senate for 10 years. She was a leader in the effort to get low-cost prescription drugs to Illinois seniors and disabled individuals and has been called “arguably among the most powerful women in Illinois.” She told Emily’s List that “Our district has been underserved for too long, and I want to provide real leadership on the issues that matter to Illinois families.” Halvorson supports tax cuts for middle- and low-income families, she’s for closing the wage gap between the rich and the poor, and supports providing affordable, quality child care and healthcare for America’s working families.
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