Thursday, September 3, 2009

A 'Tailor-Made' Midterm For Republicans?

By Theresa Poulson  

David Wasserman

House editor, Cook Political Report

In 2008, Democrat Tom Perriello had one of the cycle's biggest upsets as he unseated Republican incumbent Virgil Goode in Virginia's 5th Congressional District, which went to John McCain in the presidential race. Now, what was already an against-all-odds re-election bid is even more precarious as Obama's health care reform effort and conservative protests are placing Perriello and others like him between a rock and a hard place.

NationalJournal.com recently sat down with the Cook Political Report's David Wasserman to discuss Democrats' outlook in House races in 2010. Wasserman talked about the conditions that led to Perriello's victory in 2008 and the potential of a viable congressional candidate emerging from the conservative grass roots.

For more on Republicans' chances in 2010, including video clips from Wasserman's interview, watch NationalJournal.com's multimedia report.

NJ: The Cook Political Report recently issued a special update saying that Democrats will be more vulnerable in 2010 than you’'ve previously predicted.

Wasserman: Well, we've been saying for a couple months now that things have been looking increasingly ominous for congressional Democrats.... Fundamentally, I think Democrats have two problems going on here. Number one: the composition of the electorate. The midterm electorate is looking tailor-made for Republicans. We've talked for decades about this gender gap between the two parties in American politics. But what Democrats are suffering from right now is more of an age gap, and this is reinforced by the health care debate.

In the 2008 election, Obama had support among 18-to-29-year-olds that was 20 points higher than it was among voters 65 and older. Who shows up in midterm elections? These are older voters, they are whiter voters, and this is a big problem for Democrats. And thanks to that, Democrats would be on track to lose between five to 10 seats anyway.

When you add on top of that the kind of climate they're facing right now, it adds to their losses. I think Democrats are looking at a tough slate of races, especially in districts that are moderate to conservative districts where Democrats are not adamantly against the president's proposals on cap-and-trade and health care.

NJ: Could you name a district where this is the case?

Wasserman: I look especially to districts where Democrats won in 2008 because the Democratic base or elements of the Democratic base were unusually energized. I don't think it's appropriate to say yet that the Democratic base is depressed. I think it is fair to say, however, that the Democratic base was unusually energized in 2008, and that played into Democratic victories in more than a handful of districts. I sort of break these up into three categories: those districts where the youth vote was particularly high, where the black vote was particularly high, and where the Hispanic vote was particularly high.... In Virginia's 5th District, the turnout in Charlottesville, where the University of Virginia is, was more than enough, was extraordinary, and put Tom Perriello over the top there. This isn't just a dynamic on college campuses, either....

Democrats are going to have these turnout dynamics that aren't as beneficial as they were in 2008. And a lot of these Democrats are going to have to make up for it through their hard work and incumbency, but then you throw in the kind of climate that Democrats are facing right now, and it could be just too much.

NJ: What other factors are at play in Virginia’'s 5th that might make it more difficult for Perriello to win re-election?

Wasserman: I'm the first to admit that we were extremely skeptical about Tom Perriello. Part of it... [was having seen] Democrats mount pretty weak challenges to the incumbent at the time, Virgil Goode, and get throttled. And so we were very skeptical that a Democrat who had moved back into the district after spending seven years at Yale could mount a substantial challenge to a guy who was very well liked and in fact an institution in Southside Virginia politics. And as it turned out, I think there were three things in play that helped Tom Perriello defeat Virgil Goode in 2008:

Number one was certainly the fundamentals of the year. I think the student turnout at U-Va. and the youth vote in Charlottesville, combined with the increased African-American turnout in Southside, were a double whammy for Virgil Goode. They were sort of necessary preconditions for Tom Perriello having any chance in this race.

The second thing was that Tom Perriello raised a lot of money, not only from his friends from college, but those who had been liberals in the Charlottesville community for a long time, and others in the district. He was able to mount a credible campaign on broadcast television, and Virgil Goode had simply never faced an opponent before with the kind of resources to go on TV in the Richmond, Roanoke and Charlottesville markets before. And so Virgil Goode ended up looking simply unprepared to mount a defense of his seat, and indeed, ran ads that looked like they might be good ads in the 1980s, but you wouldn't even be sure of that.

And I think the third factor in the Perriello upset was the flap over Virgil Goode's office's involvement in a gay coming-of-age film that was produced by a former Virgil Goode staffer, and district office resources, in a very minor way, were used for this film. But when there was so little else in the local press over the course of the last few weeks before Election Day, it actually attracted attention that a lot of us up here in Washington didn't pick up until the very last minute. And I think if you look at the precinct-by-precinct election returns across Southside, it certainly did have an impact in the very conservative vote in Southside -- voters who certainly pulled the lever for John McCain at the presidential level but decided that this was offensive to their conscience and did not vote for Virgil Goode like they always had in the past. And that created a dropoff in Republican support at the House level that doomed him by 727 votes. But keep in mind that Perriello needed all of these things for this to happen.

Now, I know that's a lot, but looking at 2010, we have a completely different dynamic with Virgil Goode out of the race, and Republicans here in Washington are certainly glad that he is. Because part of the case that Tom Perriello successfully made in 2008 was that Virgil Goode had not only switched parties over the course of the 12 years that he was a congressman, but that he had also switched philosophies and was to the right of Tom Tancredo on issues such as immigration. And the undercurrent in the Democratic community in the district was that Virgil Goode was somewhat of a bigot for saying things such as fearing the number of Muslims who might be elected to office over the course of the next decade if we didn't do something over immigration.

Well, now that Virgil's out of race in 2010 any number of state legislators could give Tom Perriello a real challenge, but the one thing that Perriello does have going for him is that he has always been David to Republicans' Goliath in this district, not only in terms of stature, but in terms of his fiery way of standing for what he believes in. And it isn't just a straight-up liberal core philosophy that he has going on, he ties it into his Catholic faith and ties it into his whole culture-of-service M.O. and that actually plays well in elements of the district beyond the very secular Charlottesville base that gives him his largest margins. So Republicans have to be very careful not to underestimate Perriello or any of this appeal.

NJ: Factory worker and Fair Tax advocate Bradley Rees is running for the Republican nomination in the district. Even if it's not Rees himself, could you see someone without political experience who speaks to the conservative base coming out of the woodwork to win a congressional seat in 2010?

Wasserman: Republicans are always looking for outsiders. Now, whether they can actually convey a message to voters is another question entirely. But we and a lot of others in the political analysis establishment over the course of the last two years treated Tom Perriello as a Bradley Rees type character, or treated him as we're being dismissive of Bradley Rees' candidacy right now. But I think part of the reason that we're dismissive is that there are so many other Republicans in the fold here who are looking to run. I think a lot of Republicans who are going to join the fray will have a message that's similar to Bradley Rees'. They will aspire to have his everyman appeal, and say, "Even though I've been a politician for however long, or even though I've been a legislator for however long, I'm just like you. I'm feeling the impact of this recession." And I think Republicans have to be careful of tying Democrats to the recession in this district because, essentially, Southside Virginia's been in a recession for decades and it's been experiencing a downturn in manufacturing that most districts across the country haven't seen. And so voters here are not going to be easily swayed by a message as simple as that, and so Republicans are probably going to end up nominating one of the veteran state legislators that's in this district.

But it's worth noting how Bradley Rees' candidacy plays with a lot of the folks who are attending these "Tom In Your Town" town hall meetings across the 5th right now. And I think when you look at Bradley Rees' candidacy, you start to ask yourself, well, just how much of the kind of grassroots Republican Tea Party enthusiasm ends up spilling over into the political mainstream? Because certainly these legislators who have toiled in Richmond as conservative Republicans for a long time, they want to tap into a lot of the anger that's out there. But whether Republicans in the grassroots elements of the party see these legislators as a different breed is a good question. We could end up seeing some primary challenges to the choices that both parties in the national firmament end up making. It wouldn't shock me to see a few of these political neophytes end up winning nominations and even winning seats in Congress in 2010, because oftentimes in a wave election, second- and third-tier candidates can and do win.