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Blame Pat Toomey First

By W. James Antle, III on 4.22.09 @ 11:16AM

Republican environmentalist David Jenkins repeats the claim that the Club for Growth cost Republicans their congressional majorities. I've dealt with the Rhode Island Senate race at length before. The only thing I'll add is that Sheldon Whitehouse didn't exactly "eke out" a victory over Lincoln Chafee -- he beat him 53 percent to 47 percent, a 6-point margin that isn't exactly a landslide but is comparable to Barack Obama's popular-vote margin over John McCain. George Allen, Conrad Burns, and even Jim Talent all came much closer to holding on to their seats.

I've also previously written a column and a piece for the May issue of the magazine arguing that the anti-Club revisionism is overstated at best. But let's return to the subject one more time, since it doesn't seem to get old for some people: The Club has unseated exactly two moderate Republican incumbents in its history, only one of them in a blue state and both of them -- by Jenkins' own admission -- in heavily Republican congressional districts.

Tim Walberg beat Joe Schwarz in Michigan in a 2006 primary. Walberg went on to victory in November, but failed to win reelection in 2008. Andy Harris beat Wayne Gilchrest in a three-way primary in Maryland in 2008 but lost the November election. In both cases where the Club-backed candidate lost the general, the defeated Republican incumbent actively supported the Democrat during a peak Democratic year. The third example is Bill Sali of Idaho, who won an open primary and the general election in 2006 but lost a reelection bid in 2008.

This means that you can blame the Club for exactly three of the 51 House seats the Republicans have lost since 2006. Two of the three Club-backed Republicans managed to win general elections in one very Democratic cycle, though they lost in the second Democratic cycle (Jenkins' comparisons of winning percentages between the conservatives and the moderates they beat doesn't take into account how political conditions changed between 2004 and 2006). Who wants to bet that at least two of these three districts will be back in Republican hands after 2010?

Maryland's First Congressional District is a case in point. It can certainly elect a more conservative congressman than Wayne Gilchrest. At some point, possibly as soon as 2010, it probably will. So in the long term, the Club's support for Harris made sense if you view politics with a longer-term perspective than the next election. (By the way: one of the issues Gilchrest's primary opponents used against him was his opposition to the Iraq war. Didn't some New Majority types back a similar primary challenge against the much more conservative Walter Jones?)

Jenkins' final example is the Club for Growth's support for Steve Pearce over Heather Wilson in the 2008 New Mexico Senate race. He hints Wilson could have done as well as Pete Domenici traditionally did holding that seat for the Republicans. As I've said before, there is no evidence for this point of view. Wilson had trouble holding onto her House seat in 2006. She polled no better than Pearce in head-to-head matchups with the Democratic nominee.

The Club's ideological approach to choosing which candidates to support doesn't always take into account the temperament of a candidate or the nuances of a particular district. Nevertheless, the claim that the Club is particularly high on the list of people to blame for the Democratic Congress is just false. But then, they always blame Pat Toomey first.

View all comments (7) | Leave a comment

Jeffrey Lord| 4.22.09 @ 11:32AM

"But then, they always blame Pat Toomey first."

And Arlen Specter is at the head of that line!

Sean Higgins| 4.22.09 @ 1:21PM

"Maryland's First Congressional District is a case in point. It can certainly elect a more conservative congressman than Wayne Gilchrest. At some point, possibly as soon as 2010, it probably will."

Maybe, but as somebody who spent three years as a reporter for a local daily paper in the First Congressional District, I can attest that it is much more moderate than its reputation. Bill Clinton-style Democrats fit in quite well there. I believe Gilchrest's environmentalism won him more votes than it cost him.

The thing that killed Gilchrest more than anything else was his anti-war stance. That did not go over well in a place where joining the Armed Forces is one better career paths available to young men and women.

W. James Antle III| 4.22.09 @ 3:14PM

Bill Clinton Democrats may fit in well there, but did Clinton himself ever carry the district? I know he lost to Bob Dole in 1996, even with Ross Perot taking 9 percent of the vote. I don't know who won the district in 1992, when redistricting pitted Gilchrest against another incumbent who was a Democrat.

But I agree about the war. People challenged Gilchrest from the right before. His turn against the war finally put a challenger over the top.

Sean Higgins| 4.22.09 @ 5:19PM

True, Clinton never carried the district, but he was competitive. In 1992 it was 44% for Bush, 37% for Clinton and 19% for Perot. The latter number gives you a sense of how large the potential swing vote is there.

In 1996 Clinton came within 4 points of Dole (47-43%). Perot got 9% as you pointed out even though by then it was pretty clear that he was a total nutjob.

George W. Bush did much better in 2000 and 2004. He absolutely slaughtered Kerry 62-36%, again largely on the war issue. But East Coast elite types like Kerry and Gore are uniquely bad candidates for the first district, which is still largely rural and where most peoples' education stops at high school.

At the same time Maryland's eastern shore is not the deep south. It is more akin to states like New Jersey and Pennsylvania: a poor, blue-collar place where populist Democrats can make inroads. There are also a fair number of well-off retirees from Baltimore and DC there. Those tend to be the NPR-style liberals.

My point is that the failure of Democrats at the presidential level in the first congressional district is a poor yardstick to use if you want to know how congressional candidates will fare.

Gilchrest -- an environmentalist and nobody's idea of a fiscal conservative -- regularly won primaries and general elections in the high 60s. In 2002 he won the general with 77%, in 2004 with 76% and in 2006 with 69%.

So the notion that Gilchrest was somehow to the left of his own district just ain't so. He was pretty much in the dead center of it.

Gilchrest could very well have represented it until he retired if he had moderated his comments about Iraq. But he didn't and now he is history.

Heather Wilson| 4.22.09 @ 7:43PM

The last time you wrote about New Mexico, James, I called to offer to give you greater insight about politics here. You didn't return my call. Now you write again that, "As I've said before, there is no evidence" for the point of view that I would have been a stronger candidate to hold Senator Domenici's seat against Tom Udall. Sounds to me like you see what you want to see. Not unusual, but at least be honest about it.