« BACK  |  PRINT

RS

FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR

Politico: deniably declaring DOOM for Democrats in state legislatures.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  March 5th, 2010 at 10:44 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

The problem is that they don’t want to have to read ten thousand indignant emails, so they hid that as well as they could. The title (“State polls show gathering storm“) is nicely non-specific, the only actual politician quoted is a Republican, and then there’s this paragraph:

The dismal polling doesn’t reveal much about which political party will pay the price in November. And it’s hard to pinpoint how voters will react, since places like California, Connecticut and Rhode Island currently have Republican governors and Democratic legislatures. In Pennsylvania, the governor is a Democrat while control of the legislature is divided between the two major parties.

That was the paragraph that made me decide to go look up the state legislatures on Wikipedia, in fact. And, lo! Of the seven states mentioned in the article:

State Senate House
California Democrat Democrat
Connecticut Democrat Democrat
Iowa Democrat Democrat
New York Democrat Democrat
North Carolina Democrat Democrat
Pennsylvania Republican Democrat
Rhode Island Democrat Democrat

…the Democrats control all of the state houses/assemblies, and all but one of the state senates. Often by a lot.  And while gubernatorial races will certainly have an effect on state legislature ones this fall, it remains that anti-incumbent sentiment will tend to hurt more the party in power.  Particularly when the party in power favors the policies that are generating the anti-incumbent sentiment.  To give just one example: we’re not seeing a mass movement out there calling for more governmental interference in the health care system – and believe me, the Left has been trying to generate one.   While a Republican candidate or office holder may or may not be able to tap into the mass movement that is calling for less interference, it’s not precisely easy for a Democratic candidate to do so… and not very likely at all for a Democratic incumbent.

But, again: if the Politico actually wrote all of that out they’d get a ridiculous amount of hate mail.  So they didn’t.

Moe Lane

PS: If that’s not enough to make you vote a party-line ticket in November, consider this: redistricting will be coming up, soon.  Some of these legislatures are looking forward to the opportunity to eliminate troublesome Republican Congressional Districts.  Hard to do that if they don’t control the legislatures…

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Tags: ,

COMMENTS

POSTING RULES  |  LOGIN TO COMMENT  |  REGISTER TODAY
  • redneck_hippie

    has an article up on Rasmussen, analyzing the anti-incumbent tea (heh) leaves. A must for all election wonks:

    http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_rhodes_cook/2010_primaries_gauging_anti_incumbent_sentiment

  • http://blog.khelektopia.us Brian Johnson

    In the State Senate, Republicans will be on the ballot in all 50 districts. We believe this is the first time in modern history that this has happened. In the State House, Republicans will be on the ballot in 111 of the 120 districts. That?s a total of only 9 unopposed Democrats out of 170 races. (Compare that to the 2008 election when 36 Democrat legislators received no GOP challenger)

    I’m excited about the state elections. I don’t know anything that demonstrates the sliminess of the NC Legislature as the vote several years ago to pass the “education” lottery that was going to solve all of our education woes. Because, you know, throwing more money at a problem just makes it go away.

    NC politics has always baffled me….we’re considered a “Red” state (until this last time go round), but the majority of our governors and legislature have been Democrat. While people would come out droves to vote for Jesse Helms (God rest his soul).

    Obviously, it’s the fault of the People’s Republic of Chapel Hill….(credit to Moe for that brilliant description for our rivals in the south!).

  • Brian_Roastbeef

    Democrats around here really should be having a very rough time of it. First Spitzer’s trouble, then a bunch of stupidity involving Democrats in the Senate playing musical chairs with their leadership, now the charges against Paterson, along with Rangel’s continuing embarrassment of corruption.

    Republicans really should make massive gains in this state, except for the fact that the NYS GOP is so sorry out of shape. Its our own stupid fault. We conceded New York to the Dems, and now that they have made a mess of themselves and everything around them, as they always do, we’re caught with our pants down completely unprepared to take advantage of their vulnerability. No wonder candidates are always coming here from other states – can’t be hard to look at the batch of stupids on both sides and think you can do better… I’d be willing to support taking in a bunch of Texas implants right about now. KBH could look like a real conservative here.

    On the plus side though, I’ve just seen a television spot from the League of American Voters pressuring Arcuri to commit as a No vote on Obamacare. He’s got a tough challenge in Richard Hanna… time for him to remember why he calls himself a Blue Dog.

  • The_Gadfly

    exceptions of Iowa, North Carolina, and maybe Pennsylvania (although sadly my birth sate is definitely on the bubble in this regard) that list consists of states that are so seriously whacked I’m not sure there are actual Republicans to oppose the Dems. As Brian_Roastbeef noted, KBH or John McCain would be considered a solid conservative candidate in most of those states.

    With regards to Pennsylvania, I’m not sure how well the Senate Republicans will hold up. The batch that are up for election were in on the midnight pay raise before the last election. My Dad still spits nails about that when politics comes up and proudly announces the local establishment (20+ years) pol got primaried so bad he never new what hit him. I do expect the other groups to flip. Too many state workers went for too many weeks without paychecks. Even the Dems want somebody who can balance the books enough to keep themselves paid.

    PS. You might get so marginal gains by voting to control the redistricting, but many of the Republican efforts to protect incumbents have resulted in districts just as bad. And from my point of view at least, albatrosses who were even worse.

  • http://blog.khelektopia.us Brian Johnson

    “If NY23 was a beat down for Conservatives, what do you call what happened to Progressives in NJ and VA?”

    Isolated incidents, certainly NOT a rebuke of the Democrat policies of closed door deals and ram down legislation at any cost….

    Or, another way of looking at it — 2 (OK, 3, w/ Massachusetts) Republican jobs created or saved :-D

  • http://blog.khelektopia.us Brian Johnson

    The original comment was Progressive vs Conservative…my comment would’ve been more aptly “2 Conservative jobs created or saved”. Still, though, even as a New England Republican, Brown’s election was the people telling the liberals to go f…ly off a cliff.

  • rbdwiggins

    The anti-incumbent/anti-big-government sentiment offers the potential for a perfect storm: A nationwide Republican sweep of all fifty State legislatures just ahead of reapportionment.

  • mrorange

    I’m from Iowa and we are about to throw out our complete failure of a democrat governor. He has the poll numbers of David Patterson but none of the personality.

    The republican that is going to hand him his fat @$$ retired in 1998 as a successful 4 term governor. He’s coming out of retirement and has a 20 point lead before the campaign even starts.