Can The GOP Take Back The House?

So how good could 2010 be for Republicans running for the House of Representatives?

A phenomenal year is now in the cards, which is obviously not the same as saying that it will be a phenomenal year. In any off-year, discussion of the following year’s House races usually frames the battle for control of the chamber as a reflection of national mood. But even after elections that brought dramatic swings in the two parties’ fortunes – 1994, 2006 – the ascending party wonders if it let winnable seats slip through its fingers. In the end, control of the House comes down to 435 unique races taking place in a national climate favoring one party or the other.

“Environment matters, but you have to have all your ships in the sea, with their sails up, and pointed in the right direction,” says Brian Walsh, political director of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).

In other words, if you want to have victories driven by the national mood, you have to have good candidates; you can’t have lazy campaigners or guys from the wrong part of their district, and your candidates have to talk about the right issues. One Capitol Hill Republican mused that the party hopes to have 60 good, competitive races next fall in districts currently held by Democrats, and to face the delightful dilemma of where to spend limited resources; another argued that the number really ought to be 80. This is not to say that either of these Republicans thinks the party will win that many seats, but they do believe that each of these is a potentially winnable race under the right circumstances.

It all starts with the candidates. “We have a goal for how many candidates we recruit each quarter, and each quarter we’ve blown past that goal,” Walsh says.

As of now, Republicans are high on former congressman Steve Pearce’s bid to regain his New Mexico seat, and on Ohio state senator Steve Stivers’s rematch against Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy, whom he came within 2,312 votes of beating in 2008. Other strong prospects are Montgomery city councilwoman Martha Roby in Alabama’s 2nd District, Assemblyman Van Tran in California’s 47th, and former congressman Steve Chabot in Ohio’s 1st.

One of the Republicans’ favorites, based just on biography, is Adam Kinzinger in Illinois’s 11th District. Two years ago, Kinzinger, a captain in the Air National Guard, had just left a Milwaukee nightclub with some friends. Suddenly he heard a woman screaming, “He cut my throat!” Her knife-wielding attacker lunged for her again, and Kinzinger managed to grab his wrist, wrestle him to the ground, and hold him while one of his friends called the police. Kinzinger was named Hero of the Year by the Milwaukee Red Cross. He has also been awarded the Valley Forge Cross for Heroism for his service in Iraq.

Sometimes luck is on your side. In most elections, even a grade-A candidate like two-term Honolulu city councilman Charles Djou would have a tough time in heavily Democratic Hawaii. But he’ll be running against an unknown Democrat who is likely to be waging a tough primary campaign until September 18.

There is a logjam in Colorado’s 4th District, where three strong Republicans have declared their interest in the seat: the popular and respected state representative Cory Gardner; Tom Lucero, a University of Colorado regent who led the fight against Ward Churchill; and Diggs Brown, a Green Beret major in the U.S. Army National Guard (Brown has not yet formally filed his candidacy because he’s currently deployed with the U.S. Army Special Forces). The good news for Republicans is that unless the primary gets nasty, they’ll have a strong candidate against the incumbent, Betsy Markey, who seemed strangely hesitant about town-hall meetings with constituents during the summer recess.

You can’t help wishing one of those guys could run in a neighboring district – which is precisely what entrepreneur Steve Welch is doing in Pennsylvania. Welch had intended to run in the 7th District, where he lives. However, former Delaware County district attorney Pat Meehan announced his candidacy first. Instead of facing a contested primary, Welch decided to run in the 6th district, where he was born and where his business is based. A Republican source also noted that the expected Senate candidate, Pat Toomey, is so far polling well in all of the key House districts.

Colorado’s Betsy Markey, who was elected for the first time last year, is representative of a phenomenon bedeviling quite a few Democrats these days. In 2006, Democratic challengers could run against the Abramoff scandal and the “culture of corruption.” In 2008, they could be carried along by the tide of Obama enthusiasm, the exhaustion with President Bush, and the sudden onset of severe economic troubles. This year, these Democrats are the issue -and specifically, how they’ve responded to rising unemployment, a stimulus that doesn’t seem to stimulate, a massive health-care overhaul full of ominous details, a cap-and-trade bill that won’t sell in energy-producing districts, and a world that may or may not seem safer than it was when George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office.

A strong candidate at the top of the ticket rarely single-handedly determines the winner in a House race, but there are a couple of states where senatorial or gubernatorial races might affect turnout. There’s Nevada, where Sen. Harry Reid will be running for reelection (with miserable approval ratings) and his son Rory Reid may be the Democratic nominee for governor. In the 3rd CD, incumbent Democrat Dina Titus is vulnerable, but a candidate the GOP was high on, bank executive John Guedry, unexpectedly dropped out last Saturday, citing an unspecified family issue. An odd wrinkle to watch in a district with one of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation: How many 2006 and 2008 voters still live where they did during those elections?

Then there’s Florida, where the Senate race should feature either Gov. Charlie Crist or the up-and-coming former speaker of the state House, Marco Rubio, with either likely to trounce expected Democratic candidate Kendrick Meek, who has never run against a Republican. In the governor’s race, Attorney General Bill McCollum is leading his Democratic rivals so far. Vulnerable House Democrats in Florida include Alan Grayson in the 8th CD, Adam Putnam in the 12th (where Republicans are high on his expected rival, Dennis Ross), and Suzanne Kosmas in the 24th; Allen Boyd, in the 2nd District, faced big, angry crowds at his town halls.

Ohio will keep its status as a key battleground, with big races for senator and governor (the GOP is likely to nominate Rob Portman and former congressman John Kasich, respectively). Republicans think they have a blue-chip candidate in the aforementioned former congressman Steve Chabot, who will take on the man who beat him by about 2 percentage points in 2008, Steve Driehaus. (Turnout in that district in 2008 was almost 70,000 higher than in the 2006 midterm.) In addition to Chabot, Republicans are excited about the chances in Ohio’s 16th District because of Democrat John Boccieri’s highly unpopular vote for cap-and-trade. He’ll face either Matt Miller or Jim Renacci.

There’s an inverse effect of this phenomenon in Maryland’s most competitive House district, the 1st. Democrat Frank Kratovil won by the skin of his teeth in 2008 with Obama carrying the state by a wide margin. Next year, he’ll take on the man who almost beat him, physician Andy Harris, while the ticket is topped by the reelection bid of Democratic governor Martin O’Malley, who lost this district’s counties badly in 2008.

Next year, New Hampshire is likely to be an all-out battlefield. The Senate race will probably pit Democratic representative Paul Hodes against former state attorney general Kelly Ayotte (other potential GOP candidates include lawyer Ovide Lamontagne, publisher Sean Mahoney, and country-club owner Bill Binnie). The governor’s race is not yet competitive. Republican Charlie Bass, who represented the 2nd District for six terms before losing to Hodes in 2006, is likely to run for his old seat, and Manchester mayor Frank Guinta looks strong against Democratic representative Carol Shea-Porter in the 1st District.

Then there is Virginia, where no fewer than four House districts are expected to be competitive. In this state, the gubernatorial election is being held this year, and neither Senate seat is up in 2010; therefore the House members are the top of the ticket, an ominous prospect for any Democrat who was carried into office by Obama’s momentum in 2008. This year’s gubernatorial race is likely to generate a great deal of useful voter turnout data – for both parties.

There are some other interesting races strewn around the map. Rep. Walt Minnick, of Idaho’s 1st District, is attempting to vote carefully, but he will still be running as a Democrat in a heavily Republican district against Bronze star-decorated Iraq War veteran Vaughn Ward. In Tennessee’s 8th District, Blue Dog John Tanner’s consistent voting with Nancy Pelosi has brought farmer and gospel singer Steve Fincher into the race; Fincher has raked in $100,000 fairly quickly. Last year, Tanner ran unopposed, while McCain won his district by 13 percentage points. In Louisiana, a slew of Republicans and Democrats are running for the 3rd District seat being vacated by Democrat Charlie Melancon; he is running for the Senate, leaving an open seat in a heavily Republican region. In Mississippi’s 1st District, state senator Alan Nunnelee has a strong base of support to challenge freshman Rep. Travis Childers. In Michigan, Tim Walberg is aiming to win back the seat he lost in 2008 by three-tenths of a percentage point, in a state the McCain campaign abandoned early.

An NRCC source mentioned that sometimes when the organization is recruiting a candidate, the aspirant will ask about what kind of support the party can offer. The answer is that allocation of party resources is usually a late-game decision; the GOP wants to put its money where and when it will make the most difference. The hope, strangely enough, is that come next fall, the NRCC will have too many competitive races to choose among.