Will Gerrymandering Backfire for Republicans in 2018?

For more than a half dozen years Republicans have held on to a majority in Congress and in many state legislatures through gerrymandering that carefully drew districts to ensure Republican majorities.  But often, to maximize the number of districts with Republican majorities, the actual party majority in favor of Republicans was slim: 52 to 55% in numerous districts.   In normal years, this thin majority was enough to allow Republicans to skate to easy victories.  So far, 2018 is proving to NOT fall into the "normal year" category (neither did Virginia's 2017 election that saw 15 Republicans in the House of Delegates go down to defeat).   As a story in Politico notes, Republicans may now be poised to lose a number of their thin majority districts as Democrats are energized and out to take revenge on Trump and the larger GOP.  Here are story highlights:

Republicans redrew congressional districts across the country in 2010 in an attempt to consign Democrats to a semi-permanent House minority.

But in 2018, the long-successful GOP insurance policy is at risk of backfiring in a big way — not only carving a path for a takeover, but possibly allowing for bigger Democratic gains.

In many states, Republicans maximized gains in the House by spreading GOP voters across as many districts as possible. Typically, that left Democrats with around 40 to 45 percent of the vote in those districts, making them difficult under normal circumstances for the minority party to contest.

But this election year is anything but normal. Many of the once-secure 55-45 Republican districts are very much in play, even in states that have not had competitive congressional races since 2012, the year new maps were installed. And North Carolina and Ohio — where Democrats chose nominees in primaries on Tuesday — are turning into the prime examples.

[A] half-dozen Republican districts that could become fierce battlegrounds this fall, including the fast-changing suburbs of Cincinnati, Charlotte, Columbus and Raleigh. President Donald Trump won less than 55 percent of the vote in each of the seats in 2016 — and some of the Republican incumbents have been caught by surprise by the ferocity of their competition. . . . . “because of the way the maps have been drawn and the environment that Republicans are facing, you have a whole bunch of Republicans who have never been in a competitive race in their life, who are running [in one] right now.” “In a normal year, you're safe in these seats, but in a time like this, Democrats are within striking distance,” Jackson continued. “This is when gerrymandering backfires.” Pittenger’s district [in North Carolina] could end up being the biggest gerrymandering backfire of 2018. The Republican lost his primary Tuesday night to Mark Harris, a conservative pastor who cast the three-term congressman as a part of the “Washington swamp,” effectively tapping into the anti-establishment anger driving the GOP base in a seat where Trump, Mitt Romney and John McCain all got between 53 percent and 56 percent of the vote in recent presidential elections.

But Harris, who lagged behind Pittenger in fundraising, now faces Democrat Dan McCready, a veteran and businessman who has vowed not to support House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for speaker and banked more than $1.2 million in cash on hand in preparation for November. Harris’ campaign had $70,000, according to his pre-primary FEC filing.

Trump won North Carolina’s 9th District, which stretches from the Charlotte suburbs to Fayetteville, with 53.5 percent of the vote in 2016. But the area is stocked with suburban, college-educated voters — a cohort that trended away from Republicans over the past year.

[I]ncumbents in safely drawn seats can also be out of practice. “You win every two years, and you put it on cruise control, then before you know it, you’re in an environment you’re not ready for,” said Chip Gerhardt, a Republican consultant in Ohio.

Let's hope the story proves right and many Republicans to their surprise go down to defeat. 

Trump is Accelerating Virginia's Shift to a Blue State

click to enlarge image

The reverberations of Tuesday's election triumph for Democrats continue to shake Virginia and my well lead to further Republican defeats next year: Ralph Northam won roughly seven out of Virginia's eleven congressional districts and could put Republican incumbents on the firing line in the 2018 mid-term elections. Change has been coming to Virginia for years now, but one thing seems to be accelerating change and a rejection of the Republican Party: Donald Trump.  While popular in backwards, reactionary Southwest Virginia, parts of Southside and a few areas with lots of military personnel and retirees - although Virginia Beach went for Northam - Trump is increasingly toxic everywhere else, especially in the large population areas.  The map above shows locality drawn to reflect the number of registered voters.  The take away?  Southwest Virginia and other rural areas simply do not have the votes to elect Republicans statewide if Democrats run good candidates and smart campaigns.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the seismic changes taking place in Virginia.  Here are excerpts:

The sweeping gains won by Democrats in Tuesday’s elections complete Virginia’s transformation into the only blue state of the old Confederacy. Where the Harry Byrd machine once conspired to keep black students out of white schools, now a transgender delegate will take her seat alongside Latino women, a socialist and only the second African American elected statewide since Reconstruction.

The old edifices are falling faster than the state’s Confederate statues — but those are under scrutiny in Richmond these days, too. Even Virginia’s most politically powerful corporation — Dominion Energy — is being rattled: Some 14 of the newly elected Democrats have pledged to refuse contributions and challenge the priorities of a company that’s known as the state’s shadow government.

Change has been coming to the increasingly diverse state for years, but the evolution was turbocharged by the provocative influence of Donald Trump.  The president’s victory last fall and subsequent knife-twisting tweets inspired a surge of Democratic candidates to run for office and pushed many voters to the polls.

“This election, more than anything else, was a Trump-effect election,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington. Democrat Ralph Northam won the governor’s race over Republican Ed Gillespie by a comfortable nine-point margin, but Farnsworth said the outcome could have been much tighter if not for highly motivated anti-Trump voters.

The sentiment turned up in voices across the state. In Fairfax Station, where Pam Rodriguez, 44, showed up in the chilly evening rain to vote for Northam partly because she is “not a fan of Trump . . . I loved the commercial where Northam called him a narcissistic maniac,” she said.

It was in eastern Henrico County outside Richmond, where a few days before the election Nick Hall was all set to vote for the Democrat for governor even though he wasn’t sure of his name. Hall just wanted to strike back at the party of Trump. “Trump is an idiot,” he said.

An especially striking aspect of that anti-Trump fervor was that most of those new candidates he inspired were women. Of the 15 Democrats who were on track to flip Republican seats in the House of Delegates, 11 were women.  All of the delegates they will replace are men.

Some Republicans saw Tuesday’s result as a tsunami that couldn’t have been avoided — thanks, of course, to Trump.  “I’m for 90 percent of what President Trump wants to do, but I’m against 90 percent of what comes out of his Twitter,” said former Republican delegate Dave Albo, who stepped down this year and on Tuesday saw his seat in Fairfax County go to a Democrat.  The president whipped Democrats into a frenzy, Albo said. “One of the rules of politics,” he said, “is pissed-off people show up.”

The results did, in fact, amplify the state’s divisions. Blue regions got bigger, as more suburbs flipped for Democrats — especially in the outer D.C. suburbs and around Richmond and Hampton Roads. But rural red areas went for Gillespie in great numbers, sometimes even more than for Trump last year.

Now, Democrats need to unite and take aim at winning congressional races next year and reelecting Tim Kaine to the U.S. Senate.  Trump will likely aid in that effort through his constant toxicity. 

Virginia is Back at the Center of the Political Universe - Vote Northam

Our home - Ralph Northam Hampton get out the vote operations

Living in Virginia can be politically exhausting given the fact that we have important elections every year, not that many voters seem to pay much attention.  Getting out the vote is a never ending task year after year and the husband and I find ourselves on numerous host committees for fundraisers. This year's Democrat primary for the 2017 gubernatorial candidate is no exception.  WE ARE BACKING RALPH NORTHAM in every way that we can (Perriello is very weak on LGBT rights issues, not to mention that he's changed his position on almost every issue).  Last weekend and and again from yesterday through Tuesday night (Tuesday is the actual primary) our home is the Hampton base for the Northam get out the vote effort in this city.  We have had literature drop volunteers in and out of the house and phone banking volunteers here from morning to night (the first will arrive today at 8:00 am) with our kitchen staged with food and snacks for all of the volunteers.  The husband and I have even been filmed for a Ralph Northam campaign ad that will run at some point.  What is maddening is how so few people seem to be paying attention despite the huge impact the occupant of the Governor's mansion has on everyday life.  As the Washington Post notes, all of the campaigns are faced with voter in attention.  Here are excerpts:

On Tuesday, Virginians will pick one Republican and one Democrat to go head-to-head in November’s election for governor. The contest is shaping up to be the nation’s first competitive statewide race of the Trump era. But it’s more than that.

The outcome could point the way forward for two major political parties torn by populist ­establishment infighting. It will test whether the forces rocking Washington will consume state-level races. And it will show whether Democratic fury at Trump materializes at the polls — something that could turn the 2018 midterms into a wave election.

But first comes the primary. And canvassers for the three Republicans and two Democrats competing for the nominations are finding an electorate that seems largely tuned out.

“I tend to think the worst possible place for a candidate to become known is in the middle of the Donald Trump presidency,” said Stephen J. Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington. “News out of Washington has become an extraordinary obsession these last six months, and that makes it virtually impossible even for candidates for governor to get all that much media and public attention.”

About a month before the primary, fewer than 2 in 10 Democratic-leaning and Republican-leaning voters said they were paying “very close” attention to the governor’s race, and a significant number were undecided, a Washington Post-Schar School poll found.

 

“All these things at the national level have sucked all the local energy out of the room,” said Sharma, who after a little research settled on Northam.

The outcome of the Democratic contest will hinge on turnout, political strategists say. Northam would benefit from a smaller electorate made up of longtime party stalwarts, who skew older. A surge of young people and progressives inflamed against Trump could help Perriello. Both campaigns are chasing the African American vote, which could make up as much as 25 percent of the electorate.

The Democratic race probably will turn on the voter-rich Washington suburbs, where neither Northam nor Perriello has a natural base. Northam is from the Eastern Shore; Perriello is from Charlottesville.

Voter participation always drops sharply in Virginia’s off-year elections, especially for late-spring primaries. In 2008, nearly a million voters cast ballots in Virginia’s Democratic presidential primary. The next year, just 319,168 Democrats, or 6.3 percent of registered voters, turned out for the party’s hard-fought primary for governor.

This is the first time in Virginia history that both parties are holding contested primary elections for governor on the same day, said Geoffrey Skelley of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. (Some years, the parties opt for nominating conventions instead.) That could help boost turnout.

Skelley sees signs of life on the Democratic side, with requests for absentee ballots twice as high in that party’s primary as in the Republican contest. Voters have requested nearly as many absentee ballots for Tuesday’s Democratic primary as they did for their party’s March 2016 presidential primary — 26,783 this year compared with 28,412, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. Republicans have requested 13,882 ballots compared with 27,569 for the March 2016 presidential primary.

The lopsidedness could reflect the relative competitiveness of the Democratic contest: Polls show Northam and Perriello in a tight race while Gillespie has enjoyed a double-digit lead over Stewart and Wagner.

In the homestretch, the candidates are trying to stay visible and get their voters to the polls. Each campaign takes a different approach, depending on financial resources, political ties — and the personalities of the candidates.  The contrast is most stark among the Republicans.

On the Democratic side, the financial picture is also lopsided — Northam had $1.3 million available as of June 1, while Perriello had $734,000 — but both have enough to air TV ads.

Both also have big-name backing. Northam has a lock on Virginia’s elected Democrats while Perriello has nationally prominent progressives.

Northam’s team can count on canvassers from the state’s gun control, abortion rights and gay rights groups as well as the state’s Democratic heavy hitters: on Saturday, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) gathered with Warner and Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) to launch door-knockers for Northam across Northern Virginia.

As all five campaigns make their final push, some see an opportunity in those blank stares.

“There are people who are saying ‘I don’t even know about the candidates,’ ” said Brown, Stewart’s Shenandoah Valley field director. “They can be persuaded. . . . You can rally some people into going and voting.”

GOP Donors Hire Consulting Firm to Research Independent Presidential Bid

The hysteria over Donald Trump continues within the GOP establishment and now Politico is reporting that some major GOP donors are seeking to potentially launch an independent candidate to challenge Donald Trump and the Democrat presidential candidate.  A GOP consulting firm has been hired to research ballot access issues and, perhaps to identify a possible candidate.  With the GOP seemingly about to splinter, Hillary Clinton mast have a big smile on her face.   On a wider scale, perhaps the movement, if it continues, will be the first step in the official death of the Republican Party.  Here are article highlights:

Conservative donors have engaged a major GOP consulting firm in Florida to research the feasibility of mounting a late, independent run for president amid growing fears that Donald Trump could win the Republican nomination.

A memo prepared for the group zeroes in on ballot access as a looming obstacle for any independent candidate, along with actually identifying a viable, widely known contender and coalescing financial support for that person. The two states with the earliest deadlines for independent candidates, Texas and North Carolina, also have some of the highest hurdles for independents to get on the ballot, according to the research.

“All this research has to happen before March 16, when inevitably Trump is the nominee, so that we have a plan in place," a source familiar with the discussions said. March 16 is the day after the GOP primary in Florida, a winner-take-all contest that Marco Rubio supporters have identified as a must-win to stop Trump's early momentum.

The research points to Texas and North Carolina as early tests for running an independent, conservative candidate against Trump and the Democratic nominee. The candidate would need to gather over 79,900 valid petition signatures in Texas by May 9 and over 89,000 in North Carolina by June 9.

Only two other states have thresholds that high, and gathering petitions can be an expensive and time-consuming process. What’s more, the Texas signatures would have to come entirely from voters who did not vote in this year’s Democratic and Republican primaries.

But “with 38 electoral votes in play in Texas and North Carolina’s true swing state status, failing to qualify in either or both states would render any independent candidate non-viable,” the report's authors wrote. “This is logistically possible but will require immediate action.”

By July 15, the independent candidate would need more than 460,000 voter signatures to make the ballot in 11 states. Assuming an April 1 start date, the campaign would have to gather 4,345 valid signatures per day to maintain a steady pace.