This diary is part three of a five part 50-state diary that attempts to identify the bluest and reddest states and the ones in between, and evaluate how to divide the Democratic party’s resources in anticipation of the next election cycle and beyond.
The first two diaries were from soon after the 2008 election and are here:
20 Bluest states: http://www.dailykos.com/...
8 lighter blue states: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Today, FIVE purple states in the middle, and in need of special attention.
I haven’t used a lot of fancy math, here, merely a seven point ranking system in which each state can get a blue point based on Democratic wins in: Electoral vote for President, Governor, each US Senator, each chamber of the state legislature, and majority in the US House delegation.
Of the 28 states ranked as "blue", ten get a perfect seven points, 14 get six points (blue in all but one area, such as Michigan’s State Senate or Iowa’s one Republican US Senator), and four states (ME, PA, OH and NV) have five. After that, the scores of the remaining states drop hard and fast. There are very few three and four point states, indicating that the red/blue divide is very, very pronounced.
Here are the five states closest to the cusp, that, if flipped, would really ensure a Democratic American majority for the long term. Two narrow Obama states, and three narrow McCain states:
Arizona
Florida
Indiana
Missouri
Montana.
Together, just those five states deserve and need no less than a fifth of the Demoratic party’s resources and attention.
ARIZONA is the last and weakest of the four state "solid Southwest" bloc that should be a high priority for Democrats. Colorado and New Mexico have perfect scores of seven, and Nevada gets a five going on six due to the very weak Governor Gibbons, Arizona bottoms out at a whopping ONE point (for five out of eight Congressional representatives), two if you count that the state at least voted for a Democrat for Governor and has a Republican interim Governor solely because Obama appointed the incumbent Democrat to his cabinet. Why so different from its neighbors? I’m not sure. Some say that the higher senior citizen population results in ideas taking longer to take hold than in the other states, but that’s a guess.
Why then call it competitive? For one thing the demographics are moving in our direction, with the latino population increasing and the elderly hopefully moving toward the Democrats following Republican behavior on Social Security and Medicare issues. The Republican majorities in the state legislature are small, and have shrunk steadily in recent elections other than 2008. The presence of John McCain on the national ticket may have had a disproportionate impact on downticket races last year, and in fact, McCain did a lot worse in the state than people expected, and had he not been a long term Arizona politician, might well have lost the state as he did with the rest of the southwest. Therefore, we have some pretty good prospects here.
Additionally, with the state government now solidly Republican, we NEED to focus on Arizona. The state will gain at least one new Congressional district, maybe two, and we need to either retake the Governor’s mansion or a chamber of the legislature to ensure that the Republicans do not undo our Congressional gains at the stroke of a pen by, for example, drawing Pastor and Mitchell into one district. Either chamber and/or the Governor are potentially very competitive races, and MUST be made priority number one in 2010. the party and the netroots must make sure that our Democratic candidates have what they need to compete here.
Additionally, McCain is up for re-election, and although the pundits claim that he is invincible, it’s hard to see how he did himself any favors with his disastrous run for President and his continual refusal to cooperate with the White House. McCain’s local popularity is based on that "maverick" image of his, and if he continues his transition into just another lockstep member of the party of No, his days are numbered. Finally, if Bob Lord comes back for a rematch in AZ-03, that could be an exciting race as well.
FLORIDA, the ultimate swing state of the last ten years, gets TWO points, one for Obama’s win, and one for Senator Nelson. Although it is on the other side of the country from Arizona, it shares the following characteristics:
- The Republican dominance does not reflect the partisan makeup of the state, but is due in part to long term gerrymandering by one party, at state legislative as well as Congressional level.
- The entire state government is in the hands of Republicans.
- The state is due to gain seats at redistricting, and therefore we MUST mount a full court press in 2010.
However, UNLIKE Arizona, the state legislature has a LARGE Republican majority, and an incumbent GOP Governor who is extremely popular. In fact, "best of a bad lot" may be appropriate, and if Charlie Crist ran in my area and the Democrat was a jerky enough blue dog, I’d consider voting for him myself, which says a lot. Right now, almost nobody I know thinks we have a shot at FL-Gov or either house of the state leg. And yet, we absolutely cannot afford not to fight, because if they keep their hold, they will gerrymander the living shit out of Florida after 2010, probably putting our new Reps Grayson and Kosmas into one district and maybe Wexler and Wasserman Schultz as well.
The high profile open US Senate seat is not as important, but would nevertheless be a vital gain if we could get it. It seems to me a godsend would be if Crist ran for the Senate seat, though. I’d give it to him in a heartbeat and throw everything we had at winning the Governor’s race.
The third thing to work on is continued overtures to the Cuban community of Miami. We ran good candidates in the three Cuban districts last year, but did not win any of them. Trying again would show that we’re serious. More important, the deeper the Democrats go into the Cuban vote, the more difficult it is for the Republicans to create districts in a four county region (Broward, Palm Beach, Monroe and Miami Dade) that makes up over a full quarter of the state’s population. Flip the Cuban vote to Democrat and the Republicans will not be able to carve out GOP districts in urban south Florida, no matter what their majority.
MISSOURI: Until last year’s election results, I continuously held up Missouri as the median state of the nation, meaning that if you ranked the states from bluest to reddest, the Show Me state would be #25 or 26, and that therefore, if it seemed that MO was too conservative for us, then the Democratic party needed to move. Now, Missouri is closer to #30 than #25, but it is still important.
Last year, I also called as loud as my little blog voice could for Obama and the DNC to send troops to Missouri, and was ignored, or told that Missouri was an unalterable McCain state. As it turned out, Missouri was the closest state of them all, the last one called, and it went for McCain in a squeaker, and narrowly held two GOP Congressional seats that could have turned blue on Obama’s coattails. Your apologies are accepted.
That said, Missouri now stands at TWO points on the seven point scale, with a Dem Governor and one Senator. However, it also has a golden chance to pick up points in what may be the topmost open Senate seat race of the cycle; a 4-5 Congressional delegation with a chance to flip, and a lower legislative chamber that would flip with just 9 seats in a 163 member chamber (the State Senate, on the other hand, has an insurmountable GOP majority, but is at least the only solidly red part of the state government).
Those of you who want to marginalize the South, and the Republican party overall as a regional southern party are going to have to deal with Missouri. To be a long term majority party, we need not only the solid Northeast and Pacific, but the solid southwest AND Midwest as well. That means everything from Maine across the north border of the Ohio river, to...Missouri, with the Show-Me state anchoring an unbroken stretch of America. Which leads us to...
INDIANA, the other major Midwestern state not yet in Democratic hands (there is also, of course, the thinly populated prairie bloc of the midwest, from ND to KS, but that bloc is not even purple yet, and I’ll have to take them up in a different diary). While the rest of the Great Lakes states have blued nicely, Indiana has consistently risen up out of the South on the map to give Democrats the finger. Until 2008.
Unlike the other Great Lakes states, Indiana lacks a big urban area on a par with Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee to compensate for high Republican presence in the rural farm areas. Gary is not large enough to do the trick by itself, and Indianapolis is not as solidly Democratic as the real rust belt (I’m not sure why this is. Maybe there’s something about actually being on the lakeshore that attracts the liberal mind).
Indiana gets THREE points on the seven point scale (Obama, Senator Bayh, and five of nine Representatives in Congress), more than AZ, FL or MO, and yet I’m less happy with Indiana than with the other three states. Obama’s win was paper thin, the House majority is a mere one seat, and our democratic senator is proving one of the least reliable components of our majority in the whole chamber. Bordering on "embarrassment" status, even. On top of that, we failed to mount a strong challenge to the sitting governor in a wave year, and even LOST the lower chamber of the legislature.
We can and must do better.
As with the other states on this list, first and foremost, our mission is to get a seat at the table in redistricting. In Indiana, that means getting back the lower chamber of the legislature. The Senate is prohibitively Republican, and we’ve already blown our last pre-census shot at the Governor.
In fact, other than uphill fights for IN-03 and 06, the district by district, on the ground strategy of capturing office at the state legislative level is what’s on the table. Indiana’s only statewide race is Senator Bayh, who is 1). Safe, and 2). Not currently worthy of netroots contributions anyhow. This is a state that should get a large dose of White House and national party attention in the message wars. The voters are still on the fence about the Democratic party, and our own biggest spokesman, Bayh, is not delivering the right message.
MONTANA: Finally, we come to a state that is neither high population nor part of a regional strategy. Montana stands alone.
It stands alone in the point scale, being the only state to rank exactly halfway, with 3 ½ points: Dem Governor and 2 Dem Senators (YAY), Republican Congressional Rep, Electoral vote, and State Senate (BOO), and the State House tied at 50-50.
On the other hand, there are also some statewide executive offices (I didn’t include these in the ranking because they vary too much from state to state), ALL of which are held by Democrats, and the legislative majority is only a couple of seats. With no statewide office on the ballot in 2010, it falls on Tester, Baucus and Schweitzer to mount a full court pres on the state legislative elections, not because of redistricting, but to win the message wars in Big Sky country. Montana is our best shot at demonstrating HERE that when Democrats are in power, good things happen. Controlling Montana is our best shot at getting our feet in the door in the neighboring Dakotas...and even, one day, in Wyoming or Idaho.
There is also Rep. Rehberg to fight, of course, and if we get a good challenger there, I’ll be surprised and pleased. However, unless someone great emerges, I’m not all that focused on the at large house race. I’m assuming Schweitzer will go for that seat two years later, when he’s still more popular than brisket and his two terms as Governor have run out.
And that’s the five purplest states, complete. Next up, two diaries on the pink and red states. Hopefully there won’t be such a big time gap this time.