Mark D. Miller II -

White House race showing signs of tightening in June

13 June 2012 Mark Miller No comments

Over the past month or so, it has become hard to deny that while he is not yet the favorite in the presidential race, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has gained some ground against President Barack Obama both in national and state polling.

Much of this is due to Romney’s consolidation of the Republican base, which was just months ago bitterly divided between the now-presumptive nominee and the likes of ex-Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and Texas Rep. Ron Paul. Although Romney still trails Obama among independent voters in most states, and his efforts to scoop up disaffected Democrats have met with little success — with a notable exception, which I will discuss later — his strong showing among registered Republicans and the uncertainty of whether the November electorate will more closely resemble that of the Democratic banner year of 2008 or the Republican rout of 2010 means that the race looks a lot closer to a tossup nationally than it did just a month or two ago.

That being said, Romney is still the slight underdog in this race, and I would argue the election is less competitive than many media outlets and pundits predict. The reason for that still lies in the Electoral College, where Obama still appears poised to string together a winning coalition of states — despite the Romney campaign’s much-publicized strategy sessions gaming out scenarios that would get the ex-governor to the magic 270-vote mark or beyond.

State of the presidential race as of June 13, 2012. Yellow indicates Tossup, Tossup/Tilt Democratic and Tossup/Tilt Republican states and districts. Light blue and red indicates Lean Democratic and Lean Republican respectively. Medium blue and red indicates Likely Democratic and Likely Republican respectively. Dark blue and red indicates Safe Democratic and Safe Republican respectively. (Graphic by Mark Miller.)

Right up front, only two states moved in Obama’s direction between May and June, while several moved toward Romney. The magnitude of the shifts on the overall electoral map varies between them, but a few of the moves are potentially quite significant.

Tossups

Florida remains a pure Tossup. Although some commentators declared Obama to have lost any hope at retaining Florida after a couple of polls gave Romney a slight edge there, other polls have shown a very tight race or given an edge to the president.

One wildcard here that I did not mention last time is Republican Gov. Rick Scott, whose administration is engaged in a holy war to make it harder to vote in the Sunshine State, ostensibly in the name of curbing voter fraud. Parts of Florida are covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires any change in election law to be approved by the United States Department of Justice before taking effect.

Obama’s Justice Department, responding to complaints from third-party voter registration groups like the League of Women Voters, leaders of Florida’s Latino and black communities, and Florida election officials unhappy with the new laws, has rejected Scott’s efforts — but the administration has vowed to continue purging voter rolls in accordance with the state’s new laws, setting up a legal showdown with the federal government. At this time, it is unclear whether Florida’s new restrictions will succeed in significantly altering the state’s electorate by November.

North Carolina previously tilted to Obama, but some big events have prompted me to move it to Tossup/Tilt R. The biggest of these events was the one-two of the state overwhelmingly approving a constitutional amendment banning legal recognition of same-sex couples, followed by Obama endorsing marriage rights for same-sex couples the next day.

Surrogates for Obama optimistically predicted that the president’s announcement would have no effect on North Carolina voters’ decision this fall, and they might be right — but even Public Policy Polling, which has produced poll after poll from their home state giving Obama a small advantage, had Romney up by low single digits in their most recent survey this week. Critically, the Republican candidate improved his standing with Democratic voters in the state, perhaps siphoning off conservative, culturally Southern Democrats turned off by Obama’s support for a legalized relationship the state so resoundingly rejected last month.

Whatever the reason, North Carolina seems to have moved in Romney’s direction, though the polls and the campaigns’ aggressiveness in contesting the state suggest it remains within Obama’s reach.

Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district continues to be Tossup/Tilt R. Democrats did nominate their more competitive option in the district’s potentially close House race, but it is unlikely that the Obama campaign will base its spending decisions on their potential for boosting Democrats down-ballot unless the state of the race swings significantly in the president’s favor.

In the Tossup/Tilt D column remains Ohio, where polls show a close race but the aggregate of polls still give Obama a slight edge. Romney has been going hard after the Buckeye State, which was the critical state for President George W. Bush in 2004 but went for then-Sen. Obama of nearby Illinois in the 2008 presidential election. But Obama, along with Vice President Joe Biden, has matched him blow for blow. This is one swing state where Romney’s momentum elsewhere does not seem to have registered yet.

Joining Ohio in the field of Tossup/Tilt D states, though, are Colorado and Iowa, which I previously rated Lean D. For two states frequently bandied about as potential bellwethers — especially Iowa — they have suffered from rather infrequent polling, perhaps because there are no particularly interesting statewide races down the ballot in either this cycle.

Colorado should still vote for Obama, but the polls have tightened somewhat. However, Romney has not engaged in the state to the extent he has in the likes of Ohio, North Carolina, and Virginia. I did see enough of a shift in the polls to warrant a Tossup/Tilt D rating for Colorado, but it remains a borderline case.

PPP’s poll from last month giving Obama a double-digit edge in Iowa now looks like something of an outlier. While most polls still show an Obama lead, no outfit has corroborated such a strong advantage for the president, and both campaigns seem to be treating Iowa as a potential “tipping point” state — one that could put either Obama or Romney over the top in the electoral vote count.

Maybe Iowa never was truly a Lean D state. I have it at Tossup/Tilt D now, with no compunctions about the rating.

Lean Republican states

The Lean R group of states has one addition, Arizona, and one departure, Georgia. Although the Obama campaign has not publicly declared defeat in Arizona, where it is embarking on a voter registration drive to boost state Democrats, a recent campaign video indicated campaign manager Jim Messina considers the state to be Lean R — for public consumption, at any rate, which may or may not truly reveal the campaign’s thinking. Coupled with polls, particularly from PPP, giving Romney an advantage in the high single digits over Obama in the state, I feel comfortable calling this one Lean R for now.

Missouri, Indiana, and Montana all remain Lean R. The former two were shaded Lean R on Messina’s map. The latter was not, but Obama made a late play there in 2008, and with competitive statewide House, Senate, and gubernatorial races, I have a hunch Montana could see some 2008-style drama in November.

Indiana continues to largely fly under the radar, but in what is perhaps a coincidence, an example from Indiana and an example from Missouri of Bain Capital’s gutting of local businesses while Romney served as a prominent executive at the venture capital firm formed the basis for a double-barreled attack the Obama campaign launched at the Republican last month.

While neither campaign has gone up with broadcast ads in either Indiana or Missouri, not even to highlight the Bain controversies indigenous to them, the Romney campaign displayed perhaps a bit of anxiety over the latter state by sending its candidate to campaign near St. Louis last week. Obama made a recent stop in Missouri as well, but it was on official presidential business: delivering the commencement address at the Joplin High School graduation, one year after a tornado virtually leveled the town.

The low level of campaign activity in the Show-Me State comes in spite of a PPP survey late last month giving Obama a one-point lead, well within the poll’s margin of error. While PPP is a consistently top-notch pollster, the campaigns’ Missouri internals are probably showing the state is advantage Romney, if not completely locked down. Obama, knowing Missouri will not be his “tipping point” state, may simply have bigger fish to fry, leaving the Romney campaign to fret quietly about locking down the state’s 10 electoral votes for good.

Lean Democratic states

On the other side of the electoral divide, there are four additions to the Lean D column since last month. Three were shifted from Likely D, while one was actually moved from Tossup/Tilt D.

The latter state, New Hampshire, is the only one where movement between May and June appeared to countervail the national movement. While Romney was once considered quite likely to really give Obama a stiff challenge in New Hampshire, where he practically lived from 2007 until the state’s primary early this year, polls now give Obama a consistent advantage there. While it is definitely a swing state and Romney certainly could win it, especially considering the elasticity of the state’s fickle electorate, New Hampshire is looking like a decent bet for Obama again this year.

The first of the former states is Nevada. Last month, I considered Nevada to be just across the line between Lean D and Likely D, but as polls continue to show a close race and the campaigns continue to focus much of their attention on the Silver State, I doubt my own instincts enough to move it to the other side of that line. I will reiterate, though, that public polling shows a strong and predictable predilection to underestimate the Democratic vote in Nevada — which is a big reason why I think Republicans’ optimism about the state is misplaced so long as polls are showing Obama up by at least a few points.

The second is Wisconsin, where Republican Gov. Scott Walker convincingly repulsed a recall effort last week. Messina’s map called the state a Tossup, but aside from a “poll” by Republican narrative-pushing firm Rasmussen Reports — ranked one of the least accurate pollsters in the country by The New York Times‘ Nate Silver, and infamous for consistently churning out polls far more favorable to conservative candidates than the polling consensus shows at any given time — Romney has never mustered a lead in the state. Even as Walker dispatched Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, his Democratic opponent, by a seven-point margin last Tuesday, exit polls gave Obama a modest lead over Romney among recall voters. I do think Walker’s victory has given Republicans the feeling they have a formula for winning Wisconsin, but I am not convinced it is any worse than Lean D — though no better.

The third state that changed to Lean D from Likely D this time is Michigan. Although I am reluctant to move the Wolverine State on the basis of an obvious outlier from EPIC-MRA, a local pollster prone to dramatic Republican house effects despite being a politically independent firm, putting Romney ahead there by a point, the notion of Michigan as potentially competitive seems to be reflected in innuendo beyond EPIC-MRA. Republican strategists both in the Romney campaign and outside it have publicly stated that they believe Michigan could be part of a winning coalition of states for Romney in November.

But the fact that, although it is one of Romney’s home states — his father, George Romney, was its Republican governor in the 1960s — Michigan continues to be counted by many as a probable Democratic hold suggests it is not at the forefront of either campaign’s efforts. Like Nevada, it is closer to Likely D than other states in this column, but Lean D is probably a good rating for now.

There has been some scuttlebutt about Romney effectively conceding Pennsylvania. While I doubt Romney will withdraw from Pennsylvania altogether, considering his upside in the Democratic-trending but still competitive Philadelphia suburbs, it does seem that the state is more firmly in the Lean D grouping than it was when I hesitantly classified it as just beyond Tossup/Tilt D range last month.

Virginia remains Lean D, even though Karl Rove has touted it as being among the top tier of potential pickup states for Romney. Republicans seem to really want to believe Virginia is still a red state, but all the evidence points to a state that is purple at best, and perhaps even light blue. Romney cannot seem to buy a lead in the Old Dominion, with all remotely credible polls showing Obama ahead by low to mid-single digits in the Commonwealth.

The stubbornness of Obama’s lead in Virginia is really the key here for the president. Virginia is Obama’s most important firewall. As Rove and others have acknowledged, implicitly or explicitly, it is very hard to see how Romney wins without Virginia. Without projecting Tossups, I have Obama perched right at the magic 270-vote threshold this month; even if Romney swept the Tossups, winning states like Colorado and Ohio where Obama has generally led, he would still lose the election without at least one of the Lean D states. And Virginia is probably, of the lot, the lowest-hanging fruit.

If Romney can really wrestle Virginia back from Obama’s column, the race gets interesting — but right now, I am just not seeing that.

Likely Republican states

Of the Likely R states, I have little to add. Georgia got some attention from Obama earlier this year, and there was idle talk of voter registration efforts making the state this year’s version of North Carolina, where Democratic groups in 2008 succeeded in registering enough new voters to defy conventional wisdom and help Obama to victory. But neither campaign has expressed much interest in Georgia, and I think the feeling is that if Obama’s hand were stronger this year, it would be a potential battleground — but the economy is still lousy, so Georgia is not in play. If the bottom falls out from the Romney campaign, maybe it could be somewhat competitive, but right now, I think Likely R is the best rating.

I was bullish on Obama’s chances in Kentucky because of some vague hints Obama and his campaign dropped about the Commonwealth over the past several months. But Obama’s embarrassing showing in the Democratic primary there, being held below 60 percent by and losing a majority of Kentucky’s counties to “uncommitted,” has decidedly disabused me of the notion. I have moved it from Likely R to Safe R.

The opposite is the case in Tennessee, which might be the least consequential change on the map. I am not sure how much I buy last month’s Vanderbilt University poll, which gave Romney only a seven-point lead over Obama among registered voters, and just a one-point edge among Tennesseans 18 years of age or older. But Tennessee — like Alaska, its companion in the Likely R column — is an example of a red state with a long tradition of moderate Republicanism, and it is remotely possible that if Republicans try to win in November with the “Tea Party” model of highlighting “severe conservatism” as a qualification, some voters could be driven toward Obama. I have Tennessee as Likely R now, but really, it probably doesn’t matter because I really do not think Obama will win the state unless there is a spectacular landslide.

Likely Democratic states

Joining New Mexico and New Jersey, as well as Maine’s 2nd congressional district, in the Likely D grouping this month are former Safe D states Oregon and Minnesota. Once upon a time, and actually not that long ago, Oregon and Minnesota were considered swing states. In both 2000 and 2004, the Democratic nominees had to fight to keep them blue. But in 2008, Obama walloped Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the Democrat’s general election opponent, in both states.

Oregon was the victim of a truly awful drive-by poll from SurveyUSA. Although SUSA, as it is often known in the polling community, was one of 2010′s most accurate pollsters, its results in the mail-only voting states of Oregon and Washington are infamous for being wildly off base more often than not. It botched the nonpartisan Portland mayoral primary last month just days before Election Day, showing businesswoman Eileen Brady in the lead; Brady ultimately finished more than 10 points behind the second-place candidate, state Rep. Jefferson Smith, well out of runoff position.

Anyway, using a sample showing nearly equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, SUSA wound up releasing a “shock poll” showing Obama up by only four points in Oregon, which he won by 16 points in 2008. The problem is that Democrats actually hold a typical turnout edge over Republicans of seven to 10 points in Oregon. Even still, adjusting the poll to reflect that, Obama’s position in Oregon has eroded from its 2008 zenith. Although the Beaver State is not likely to resume its swing state status this year, I think a Safe D rating is too extreme and a Likely D rating is warranted.

Minnesota also merits the change to Likely D. There has not been much polling of the state, but PPP tested the presidential matchup there last week and found Obama up by low double digits — seemingly contradicting Messina’s map showing it as Lean D. With the race heating up in neighboring Wisconsin, which has many voting patterns in common with Minnesota, I am inclined toward a view of the state as Likely D roughly on par with New Jersey. I think if Romney had more resources and was a stronger candidate, he could put enough into Minnesota — or New Jersey — to seriously contest the state. But as it is, barring an Obama meltdown, it is probably out of his reach.

Conclusion

The past few weeks have not been great for Obama. A slowdown in job creation, fallout from conservative victories in North Carolina and Wisconsin, and the coalescing of the Republican base around Romney have taken their toll on the president and his reelection chances. But his firewall in Virginia remains intact, and if he can force Romney to defend his gains in traditionally Republican states like North Carolina and Arizona while regaining ground in states like Colorado and Iowa, he can build up a respectable buffer like the one he was sporting last month.

If I force the Tossup/Tilt D states to Obama’s camp and the Tossup/Tilt R states to Romney’s camp, Obama looks quite a bit stronger.

State of play of the presidential race as of June 13, 2012, with Tossup/Tilt Democratic states and districts added to the light blue Lean Democratic pile and Tossup/Tilt Republican states and districts added to the light red Lean Republican pile. (Graphic by Mark Miller.)

The takeaway here, though, is that this election is going to be close. It may be the case that Romney just cannot make up the difference and catch Obama in the electoral vote count, but I see the odds of a blowout in either direction as quite remote, and I do see some warning signs for Obama. It is no easy task to run on the economic recovery if it appears that recovery is flagging — and Obama might want to have a Plan B in case the likes of the May jobs report become the monthly norm.

That puts Romney in the morbid scenario of having further economic pain or another sort of burgeoning national emergency appear his best chance at becoming the United States’ 45th president. But that has been apparent for a while now.

Republicans look good in many gubernatorial races as of May, but safe in none

20 May 2012 Mark Miller No comments

I must apologize for the lateness of this update. I had intended to do it several days ago, but developments last week in my personal and professional life (all good ones, rest assured) forced me to defer it to the weekend.

With that noted, let us proceed to the first edition of these 2012 gubernatorial race ratings.

State of gubernatorial races as of May 20, 2012. Yellow indicates Tossup, Tossup/Tilt Democratic or Tossup/Tilt Republican states or territories. Light blue and red indicates Lean Democratic and Lean Republican respectively. Medium blue and red indicates Likely Democratic and Likely Republican respectively. Dark blue and red indicates Safe Democratic and Safe Republican respectively. (Graphic by Mark Miller.)

You will notice I have included the recall election in Wisconsin, to be held June 5, 2012 — as such, this will almost certainly be the first and last post to rate the likely outcome of that race — as well as the gubernatorial election in the island territory of Puerto Rico, home to nearly 4 million Americans.

Tossups

Montana might be the truest Tossup of them all this cycle. The few credible polls done of this race have consistently shown Montana Atty. Gen. Steve Bullock, the likely Democratic nominee, and ex-Rep. Rick Hill, the likely Republican nominee, locked in a statistical tie, with neither breaking above the low 40s at the most. This race will likely come down to whether Bullock’s personal likability, as well as the support of popular, term-limited Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer for his would-be successor and the strength of Montana National Guard Brig. Gen. John E. Walsh as Bullock’s running mate, can rise above Montana’s natural Republican bent. Like the Senate race in Montana this cycle, this contest will likely be very, very close.

The gubernatorial race in New Hampshire actually has a lot in common with the race in Montana. The state’s popular, centrist Democratic governor is not running for reelection, and the race to succeed him is a Tossup according to the polls. While Montana usually votes for Republicans at the presidential level, though its two senators are both Democrats, New Hampshire is a generally blue state that is nonetheless prone to dramatic shifts in the mood of its electorate, resulting in a landslide victory for Republicans seeking to take control of the state’s enormous legislature in 2010.

Whoever the Democratic nominee, who appears likely to be one of two former state senators — staid Jacalyn Cilley, or unorthodox Margaret Hassan — she will face a close battle with unsuccessful 2010 Senate candidate Ovide Lamontagne, who holds a wide lead over a field of Republicans vying to carry their party’s standard into November. Like Montana, the race could hinge on the well-liked outgoing Democratic governor, Gov. John Lynch, and how strongly he makes his presence felt on the campaign trail.

In the Tossup/Lean R category for now, though a recent Public Policy Polling survey was the first (in a while, at least) to show the race nearly tied, is Washington. Democratic ex-Rep. Jay Inslee resigned his seat in the northern Seattle suburbs earlier this year to focus on his run for governor. In Washington’s top-two primary system, Inslee and his Republican rival, Atty. Gen. Rob McKenna, appear all but certain to finish one and two in whatever order and advance to the general election in November. Those primary results could be instructive as to how the general election will play out, though it is often dangerous to extrapolate a general electorate from a primary electorate — even in a top-two state like Washington.

McKenna, who has strived to cultivate a “moderate” image while in Olympia, led in most, if not all, polls prior to the latest PPP poll. That’s why, gun to my head, I think McKenna will break Washington’s streak of Democratic governors off at 28 years and render neighboring Oregon, which has not has a Republican in the governor’s mansion since 1987, the state with the longest bout of consecutive Democratic governors.

Lean Democratic

At this point, I have to mention several caveats.

First, the Democratic candidate in Puerto Rico is running on the ticket of the territory’s Popular Democratic Party (PPD), which is identified with the color red in Puerto Rican politics, and the Republican candidate’s Puerto Rican party, the New Progressive Party (PNP) is linked to the color blue. Because the vast majority of my readership is in fact not Puerto Rican, for the convenience of a more general audience, I have shaded Puerto Rico light blue for Lean D, rather than light red for Lean PPD.

Second, Puerto Rico is not a state, but a territory. However, at the same time it elects a governor this year, voters will also participate in a two-part, non-binding referendum on whether the territory’s current status should be changed. Any change would have to be approved by Congress, and the most recent El Nuevo Dia poll suggested that the outcome of the referendum is entirely up in the air due to 45 percent of voters’ confusion as to what the options mean. While surveys have rendered a mixed judgment on statehood’s chances, with two polls last fall showing it with a plurality of voters’ support and the most recent poll this month showing it slightly behind, it seems at least possible that on July 4, 2013, a 51st star representing the Caribbean island will be added to the American flag, and the winner of this gubernatorial election will be the country’s 51st state governor.

Based on that latest El Nuevo Dia poll, as well as a poll earlier this year showing virtually the same result, I expect Republican Gov. Luis Fortuño will be defeated by Democratic/PPD state Sen. Alejandro Garcia Padilla. Although Garcia Padilla’s personal style is bland and he has yet to articulate a strong personal stance on many issues, the pro-statehood Fortuño has been dogged by scandals in his administration and faced criticism for taking an “austerity” approach to the recession. His personal following is strong, but it has dwindled considerably from his big 2008 win. While Fortuño could still pull out a win if the PNP runs a strong campaign and Garcia Padilla or his party stumble, right now I give Garcia Padilla the clear advantage.

Lean Republican

While Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his Wisconsin Republican Party have become national lightning rods and the Badger State is sharply polarized heading into next month’s unprecedented recall election, poll after poll is showing Republicans are enthusiastic to go to the polls in defense of their union-busting, government-slashing, take-no-prisoners governor.

Democrats are fired up as well, but between unions wanting to bash Walker over his controversial restrictions on collective bargaining rights for public servants, Democratic strategists wanting to make the recall election a referendum on Wisconsin’s severe decline in job creation under the Walker administration and a divisive primary between representatives of the two sides, the party has struggled to seize upon a clear strategy. Unions spent $2 million trying to boost former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk in this month’s primary, only for even Falk’s home county to vote overwhelmingly for a rematch between Walker and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who lost to the now-governor in 2010.

With Republicans appearing to have the enthusiasm edge and a stronger grasp on messaging, it is no real surprise that polls have produced a consensus around Walker topping Barrett by around five points. Conditions here are highly volatile and could change rapidly over the next couple of weeks before Election Day, but I do expect Walker to become the first governor in United States history to survive a recall election next month.

In November, Indiana and North Carolina look to elect Republican governors, but their Democratic opponents are not likely to give either race away easily. Indiana’s popular Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels is term-limited, and the Republican nominee to replace him, Rep. Mike Pence, is a far more outspokenly partisan conservative with strong ties to the Christian right. Pence is thought to have an edge over the generally disorganized Indiana Democratic Party’s nominee, ex-House Speaker John Gregg — but without public polling in this robopoll-banning state, it is hard to know for sure.

Like Rep. Joe Donnelly, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Indiana, Gregg is ideologically closer to Indiana’s median than Pence, but Pence is a savvier and more experienced politician than Treasurer Richard Mourdock, Donnelly’s Senate opponent. I expect Pence to outperform Mourdock by about five points on Election Day, which is why I think this race is Lean R while the Senate race is a Tossup.

North Carolina is in an opposite situation from Indiana, as well as New Hampshire and Montana, wherein the retiring governor, Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue, is deeply unpopular — similar to Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, whose lack of public approval is likely contributing to Inslee’s apparent deficit in that state. Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, Perdue’s number two, is set to face Republican nominee and 2008 gubernatorial nominee Patrick McCrory, the former mayor of Charlotte.

McCrory has yet to trail in a poll. He was up comfortably against Perdue before she announced she would not seek another term, and he is still up by a somewhat smaller margin now that Dalton is the Democratic nominee instead. Dalton still has time to pull ahead, much as he did to top ex-Rep. Bob Etheridge in the Democratic primary, but for now, McCrory looks likely to take the governor’s mansion for the Republican Party — especially with how disorganized the North Carolina Democratic Party is. So, I guess it has one similarity with Indiana.

Likely Democratic

Just one race belongs in this column, and because it is so close to being a Safe D race the likes of which I see no reason to write up, I will spend little time on it. Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, the Democratic incumbent, narrowly overcame Republican businessman and frequent candidate Bill Maloney to win the right to serve out the term of former governor and current Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., last year. Since then, a couple of polls have shown Tomblin’s approval rating much higher than it was when he was still acting governor, while Maloney was tarnished by a poor 2011 campaign. A rare recent head-to-head poll showing this year’s scheduled rematch being close to a blowout for Tomblin makes me think this year will be a lot less close than last time — even with President Barack Obama, who scraped up less than 60 percent of the vote in the West Virginia primary against a prison inmate earlier this month, on the ballot.

Still, the Tomblin vs. Maloney race was a hard-fought scrape last year. Maloney ran strong in usually Democratic Monongalia County, his home county, and ran up solid margins in the state’s Eastern Panhandle, which was relatively friendly to then-Sen. Obama in 2008. He was overcome by Tomblin’s strength in southern West Virginia, from whence the governor hails, and Democratic turnout in other population centers in the largely rural state. The same thing will likely happen this year, though if Obama can repeat his respectable showing in Jefferson County — technically part of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, and Obama’s best county in this month’s primary — Tomblin may actually get a rare boost from the president there, at Maloney’s expense.

Likely Republican

Both of these states really fit the same mold. In both Utah and North Dakota, the local state affiliate of the Democratic Party is heading into this cycle with a vengeance, full of gumption and radiating confidence that they can notch major wins despite being in deep red states during a presidential election year.

North Dakota is where Democrats — or Democratic-NPLers, as they are locally known — probably have their best chance of the two. An unanswered Democratic internal recently gave Heidi Heitkamp, their likely Senate nominee, a significant lead. (A rare public poll showed her down a few points last week, but that poll was of the likely primary electorate and contained enough truly bizarre numbers that I am disinclined to give it much credence.) They have a strong candidate for North Dakota’s at-large House seat in the form of Pam Gulleson.

But while North Dakota has a tradition of sending Democratic-NPLers to Congress, Republicans have historically dominated its state government. That is why Senate Minority Leader Ryan Taylor likely faces a significant uphill battle to unseat Republican Gov. Jack Dalrymple, who is seeking a full term over succeeding now-Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., last January.

Taylor, who likes to wear a large cowboy hat in public appearances and speaks with a generous Midwestern drawl, has a folksy and disarming personal style. If Democratic-NPLers really want to win the governor’s mansion, he is exactly the man to do it, and with such strong candidates in all three of the state’s major races this year, it is small wonder the party seems so rejuvenated and optimistic about its chances. But Dalrymple still has to be considered the favorite, and in the absence of polling, my hunch is that Taylor has a lot of ground to make up here.

In Utah, Democrats also landed a great candidate in the form of Utah National Guard Gen. Peter Cooke. He will take on Republican Gov. Gary Herbert, who has struggled to hold down his right flank against charges he is too soft on illegal immigrants. Herbert’s difficulty with some conservatives, though, has helped to formulate an image of the governor as a respectable moderate in the mold of his predecessor, failed 2012 Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman Jr. And Cooke, by floating the possibility of retiring Latter-day Saints Church Elder Marlin Jensen as his running mate, inevitably disappointed with his eventual choice of lawyer Vincent Rampton to join the ticket.

To Utah Democrats’ credit, though, both Cooke and Rampton received wildly enthusiastic welcomes at the party’s convention, and Democrats in the Beehive State maintain that with Cooke, they have their best possible chance to beat Herbert. The party has also lined up surprisingly strong candidates in difficult races like U.S. Senate, UT-02, UT-03 and Utah attorney general.

Ultimately, with Mormon and former Utah resident Mitt Romney on the ballot, Republicans will probably make out very well in Utah despite local Democrats’ enthusiasm and bullishness. But for their sheer pluck and for Cooke’s surprisingly strong profile for what should be an unwinnable race in an impossibly red state, I have to rate this a notch below Safe R. They must be seeing something that makes them smile here.

Summary

Overall, it does appear Republicans will do quite well in gubernatorial races this cycle. But it is notable that while I rate three races — Missouri, Vermont and Delaware, all of which have exceedingly popular Democratic governors running for reelection against weak Republican opponents — as Safe D, I rate none as Safe R at this point. Republicans hold advantages in many of the battlegrounds and potential battlegrounds this cycle, including the looming Wisconsin recall, but I think that in a worst-case scenario for them, they could lose every gubernatorial contest this year. I just think that is really unlikely.

I am not going to bother “forcing” the single Tossup/Tilt R on the map, because a majority of governors does not give a party any special level of control or victory beyond mere bragging rights. Besides, while I am tracking the Puerto Rico race, there is an “apples to oranges” issue that doesn’t seem necessary to get into. For what it is worth, I will predict Republicans retain a majority of state governorships after this cycle.

Incumbent parties’ advantages widen slightly in May edition of congressional race ratings

12 May 2012 Mark Miller No comments

Earlier this week, we explored the state of play in the presidential race. But now we turn back to what may be the real action on Nov. 6 — the battle for control of Congress.

Candidly, not much has changed from the previous update. But what few shifts there have been appear to have boosted the fortunes of the party that holds the majority in the respective chambers.

House

I am going to do something a bit different than last time and offer two projections here, and I am going to start with the more conservative prediction. I believe Democrats are clear favorites to win 182 seats, and Republicans are clear favorites to win 211 seats — 215, if the four representatives from Kansas are included. (Kansas still has not completed its redistricting process, making it hard to offer a firm prediction there, though it is likely all four seats will favor the Republicans to some extent.)

That leaves 38 districts, for now, as major battlegrounds. Twelve of them are true Tossups, which I will list below:

FL-09 — no incumbent
FL-18 — Rep. Allen West (R)
FL-26 — Rep. David Rivera (R)
GA-12 — Rep. John Barrow (D)
IL-13 — no incumbent, retirement of Rep. Timothy Johnson (R)
IN-02 — no incumbent, retirement of Rep. Joe Donnelly (D)
MI-01 — Rep. Dan Benishek (R)
MN-08 — Rep. Chip Cravaack (R)
NY-11 — Rep. Michael Grimm (R)
OH-16 — Reps. Betty Sutton (D) and Jim Renacci (R)
RI-01 — Rep. David Cicilline (D)
UT-04 — Rep. Jim Matheson (D)

A couple of these districts have become more competitive due to unexpected changes in the field of candidates.

Democratic lawyer Joe Garcia, who narrowly lost congressional races in 2008 and 2010 in what was then FL-25, rode to the rescue against Rep. David Rivera after a series of Democratic potentials flopped. Garcia will still need to contend with real estate agent Gloria Romero Roses, who was recruited by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee despite living well outside the district and having a fraught relationship with local unions, but he enjoys considerably more name recognition in the area and should be considered the favorite to win his party’s nomination.

Joe Garcia will certainly make for a stronger candidate than Luis Garcia (no relation), who dropped out of the race amidst a feud with the DCCC and Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, or Romero Roses, who lacks political experience and local connections that are invaluable for taking on an incumbent in any district. Expect Democrats to quietly back away from Romero Roses, who consolidated support before Joe Garcia’s unexpected entry to the race, and just let the primary play out.

Across the country, it looked like Rep. Jim Matheson would get to face off against yet another bland, unremarkable, utterly conventional Republican in his dark-red district. Thanks to Matheson’s impressive constituent service, his frequent departures from the party line and his status as the scion of one of Utah’s numerous famous political families, he has managed to win reelection year after year, and it is important to never count him out. Republicans have targeted him before, they have been optimistic about their candidates to take him on before and Matheson has won every time.

But something funny happened at the Utah Republican Party convention. Saratoga Springs Mayor Mia Love unexpectedly won the nomination, despite trailing in fundraising and polls — and that would be utterly insignificant were Love not a fairly young, good-looking black Mormon woman of Haitian descent with a bang-up life story and a beautiful family.

For a party that seems constantly scrambling for people of color to help foster the image of a “big tent” organization, Love is a dream come true, and she is going to get a lot more national money and attention than the likes of Carl Wimmer or Stephen Sandstrom would have, or that Morgan Philpot did in 2010. Matheson and the DCCC cannot take this race for granted, because what Republicans see here is a potential rising star in a district that, by rights, a conservative Republican should hold anyway. Expect a full-court press to take down Matheson this year.

One potential weakness for the Republicans this cycle is that most of the battleground districts, including a plurality of the broadly defined Tossups, look favorable for them right now, yet remain in play. There are 14 Tossup/Tilt R districts, and both parties are likely to play hard in all of them.

CA-10 — Rep. Jeff Denham (R)
CA-21 — no incumbent
CA-52 — Rep. Brian Bilbray (R)
CO-06 — Rep. Mike Coffman (R)
IA-03 — Reps. Leonard Boswell (D) and Tom Latham (R)
IA-04 — Rep. Steve King (R)
MT-AL — no incumbent, retirement of Rep. Denny Rehberg (R)
ND-AL — no incumbent, retirement of Rep. Rick Berg (R)
NJ-03 — Rep. Jon Runyan (R)
OH-06 — Rep. Bill Johnson (R)
PA-08 — Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R)
PA-12 — Rep. Mark Critz (D)
WI-07 — Rep. Sean Duffy (R)

I was feeling more bullish on Democrats’ chances in the three California districts in this category, but the decided Republican bent of CA-10, vocal Republican optimism in CA-21 and lackluster Democratic fundraising in CA-52 prompted me to reevaluate those race ratings over the past month. That being said, Democrats still have some remarkable candidates here, especially ex-astronaut Jose Hernandez in CA-10.

The options in CA-21, often cited as a “recruiting fail” by pessimistic Democrats, are a bit less appealing — Fresno City Councilman Blong Xiong, who lives outside the district, and Central California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce CEO John Hernandez, who has raised practically no money and has barely campaigned — but there is cause for some optimism in Xiong’s strong fundraising, though there is a significant caveat: much of it has come from Hmong American communities outside of the district.

In CA-52, a quintessential swing district, ex-Assemblywoman Lori Saldaña leads San Diego Port Commissioner Scott Peters in opinion polls. But Saldaña’s fundraising has trailed Peters’s, and both Democrats badly lag incumbent Rep. Brian Bilbray in cash on hand. The DCCC will almost certainly need to step in here to prop up the Saldaña campaign — or the Peters campaign, if the port commissioner defies expectations by advancing to the general election — as while money can’t buy Saldaña love, it sure does come in handy.

Other changes here are in IA-03, again moved because the Republican, Rep. Tom Latham, significantly outraised Democratic opponent Rep. Leonard Boswell; MT-AL, where polls show likely Democratic nominee state Sen. Kim Gillan locked in a close race with unsuccessful 2008 lieutenant gubernatorial nominee Steve Daines, the likely Republican standard-bearer in this at-large district; ND-AL, where ex-state representative and former Senate staffer Pam Gulleson nearly lapped the field in fundraising and the Democratic-NPL Party seems remarkably enthusiastic; PA-12, where Rep. Mark Critz upset Rep. Jason Altmire in the Democratic primary, leaving Democrats with a candidate more in tune with powerful unions but less experienced at holding down a very Republican district; and WI-07, where former state senator and likely Democratic nominee Pat Kreitlow turned in decent enough fundraising numbers to put his race against Rep. Sean Duffy, a former reality television star, on the map.

The remainder of the races in the Tossup column are rated Tossup/Tilt D, and there are 12 of them. These races remain highly competitive as well, and Republicans will work just as hard to negate the slight Democratic advantages here as Democrats will to win the Tossup/Tilt R races listed above.

AZ-01 — no incumbent
CA-07 — Rep. Dan Lungren (R)
CA-26 — no incumbent, retirement of Rep. Elton Gallegly (R)
CA-31 — Rep. Gary Miller (R)
IL-12 — no incumbent, retirement of Rep. Jerry Costello (D)
IL-17 — Rep. Bobby Schilling (R)
MA-06 — Rep. John Tierney (D)
NH-02 — Rep. Charlie Bass (R)
NV-03 — Rep. Joe Heck (R)
NY-18 — Rep. Nan Hayworth (R)
TX-23 — Rep. Francisco Canseco (R)
WA-01 — no incumbent, resignation of ex-Rep. Jay Inslee (D)

Not a lot of changes to this list. Last month, I listed IL-17 as a pure Tossup race between Republican Rep. Bobby Schilling and Democratic businesswoman Cheri Bustos. But in an inverse situation to CA-10, I reevaluated the rating after taking into account just how Democratic the district is. Republicans really dropped the hammer on Democrats in redistricting in some states, like North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania, but the Democratic gerrymander of Illinois is just wicked. Schilling can still win, but Bustos is a solid recruit and both parties seem to be telegraphing greater interest in races like IL-13.

I also had NH-02 as a Lean D district last month. But the conventional wisdom has shifted somewhat regarding this expected rematch between Rep. Charlie Bass and 2010 Democratic nominee Ann McLane Kuster, and the race is now predicted to be more competitive. Polls show it very close, but I give the edge to Kuster because of Bass’s apparent lack of “fire in the belly.” He barely won in 2010, the district has not changed much and on balance, I think it tilts Kuster’s direction this year, even if Mitt Romney wins New Hampshire in the Electoral College.

By forcing the Tilt R districts into the Republican column and the Tilt D districts into the Democratic column, as I did last time, we get a result of 194-225, or 194-229 if the Kansas districts are assumed to go Republican again. That means that if Democrats want to capture the House, they will need to sweep the Tossups, including Tossup/Tilt R races, while holding onto every district in which they currently hold an edge.

I will not go into too much detail about the other battleground races, but I have identified 41 more, 26 of which are Lean R:

CA-45 — Rep. John Campbell (R)
CO-03 — Rep. Scott Tipton (R)
CO-04 — Rep. Cory Gardner (R)
FL-02 — Rep. Steve Southerland (R)
FL-10 — Rep. Daniel Webster (R)
FL-13 — Rep. Bill Young (R)
FL-16 — Rep. Vern Buchanan (R)
IN-08 — Rep. Larry Bucshon (R)
MI-03 — Rep. Justin Amash (R)
MI-07 — Rep. Tim Walberg (R)
MO-04 — Rep. Vicki Hartzler (R)
NC-07 — Rep. Mike McIntyre (D)
NC-08 — Rep. Larry Kissell (D)
NE-02 — Rep. Lee Terry (R)
NY-19 — Rep. Chris Gibson (R)
NY-23 — Rep. Tom Reed (R)
NY-27 — Rep. Kathy Hochul (D)
OH-07 — Rep. Bob Gibbs (R)
OK-02 — no incumbent, retirement of Rep. Dan Boren (D)
PA-06 — Rep. Jim Gerlach (R)
PA-07 — Rep. Pat Meehan (R)
SC-07 — no incumbent
TX-14 — no incumbent, retirement of Rep. Ron Paul (R)
VA-02 — Rep. Scott Rigell (R)
WI-01 — Rep. Paul Ryan (R)

Most of the races in this column look fairly competitive because of the massive Republican overperformance in 2010. With the red tide now washing back out to sea, some of these Republican freshmen might be left high and dry. Strong Democratic recruits in districts like CA-45, CO-03, CO-04, MO-04, NC-08, NY-27, OK-02, SC-07 and TX-14 make some of these races look a lot closer than they ordinarily would.

The races on this list that are held by a Democrat running for reelection, including the aforementioned NC-08 and NY-27, are the product of redistricting that was less than kind to Democratic incumbents. North Carolina adopted a Republican gerrymander, while New York used a court-drawn map after Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo appeared to sabotage his own party’s efforts to work with Republicans on a bipartisan congressional map.

If Kansas adopts a congressional map similar to the current one and Democrats find a decent recruit to take on freshman Rep. Kevin Yoder in KS-03, a district that was based in Kansas City and Overland Park throughout the previous decade, that race will likely also start out as Lean R. A particularly strong challenge to Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo in KS-04, assuming redistricting does not shore him up significantly, could also receive an initial rating of Lean R. However, for this time, neither race is projected beyond being assumed to favor their Republican incumbents.

That leaves 15 Lean D districts, rounding out the battlegrounds of the 2012 House elections:

AZ-02 — no incumbent, resignation of ex-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D)
AZ-09 — no incumbent
CA-09 — Rep. Jerry McNerney (D)
CA-24 — Rep. Lois Capps (D)
CA-41 — no incumbent
CA-47 — no incumbent
IL-10 — Rep. Bob Dold (R)
IL-11 — Rep. Judy Biggert (R)
KY-06 – Rep. Ben Chandler (D)
MD-06 — Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R)
NH-01 – Rep. Frank Guinta (R)
NJ-06 — Rep. Frank Pallone (D)
NY-01 — Rep. Timothy Bishop (D)
NY-21 — Rep. Bill Owens (D)
NY-24 — Rep. Ann-Marie Buerkle (R)
NY-25 — Rep. Louise Slaughter (D)

Virtually all of these races appear competitive because of redistricting, which created four open districts between Arizona and California that look to favor Democrats. One of those districts, AZ-02, will have an incumbent in either Democratic former House staffer Ron Barber or Republican 2010 candidate Jesse Kelly by the time November rolls around, and the race rating will likely change if Kelly wins. Right now, I consider that special election to be Tossup/Tilt D due to Barber’s more centrist profile and association with former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who resigned her seat early this year to focus on her recovery from an assassination attempt last January.

Rep. Bill Owens’s race would be a Tossup, but his likely opponent, Republican Matt Doheny, has faced some serious heat over photographs showing him kissing and groping women who are not his wife. Since that scandal broke, this race has fallen a bit down the ladder, and despite a recent mini-scandal in which Owens was forced to reimburse the cost of a lobbyist-arranged junket to the Republic of China (Taiwan), I think he is favored enough to merit the rating.

Reps. Ann-Marie Buerkle and Louise Slaughter occupy districts that should be uncompetitive for the Democrats, but Buerkle has polled surprisingly well — albeit in a Republican poll — in her Syracuse-based district that she barely won in 2010 over then-Rep. Dan Maffei, who is poised to face Buerkle again in yet another rematch; and Slaughter, an octogenarian struggling with a recent leg injury, has drawn a strong opponent in Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks, a Republican who is quite popular in the blue county and has great district-wide name recognition heading into the race. Maffei and Slaughter should win their races on Nov. 6, but they will not do so without a fight. Both races were Likely D last month, but no longer.

Senate

While the House picture has improved somewhat for Republicans, their odds of winning back the Senate have dimmed at the same time. I regret being unable to create a color-coded map of House races, but here is a nice map of the 2012 Senate races with states shaded by color.

State of Senate races as of May 12, 2012. Yellow indicates Tossup, Tossup/Tilt Democratic, Tossup/Tilt Republican and Tossup/Tilt Independent states. Light blue, red and green indicates Lean Democratic, Lean Republican and Lean Independent respectively. Medium blue, red and green indicates Likely Democratic, Likely Republican and Likely Independent respectively. Dark blue, red and green indicates Safe Democratic, Safe Republican and Safe Independent respectively. (Graphic by Mark Miller.)

As the map suggests, Republicans still have a road to winning back the Senate, just as Democrats do the House. But inside the margins, fully half of the eight yellow Tossup states are rated Tossup/Tilt D and Democrats are narrowly favored to win their Senate seats this year.

The remaining four are as follows:

Indiana — no incumbent, nomination denied to Sen. Richard Lugar (R)
Missouri — Sen. Claire McCaskill (D)
Montana — Sen. Jon Tester (D)
Nevada — Sen. Dean Heller (R)

A political shocker in Indiana this past week vaulted the seat held by 36-year incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar from being a Likely R hold to being near the top of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s target list. Treasurer Richard Mourdock, the Republican nominee, is well to Lugar’s right and has staunchly refused to embrace the concept of bipartisanship for which Lugar has long been respected. Indiana voted for then-Sen. Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, but it is leaning Mitt Romney’s direction this year, and although it has some solid recruits this year, the Indiana Democratic Party is not renowned for its organization. But Rep. Joe Donnelly, a Blue Dog Democrat with a lot of political savvy, is probably closer to Indiana’s ideological median than is Mourdock, and the few polls that have been made public from this robopoll-banning state show a very competitive contest.

In Missouri, Sen. Claire McCaskill would probably look in a bit worse shape if not for the weak slate of candidates the Republicans have fielded. Right now, Treasurer Sarah Steelman and Rep. Todd Akin look like the frontrunners to take on McCaskill in November, and although a credible poll has not been conducted on the race since Public Policy Polling took its temperature in January, just about everyone agrees this race will be very close. That PPP poll early this year actually found McCaskill tied with Steelman, Akin and Republican third-wheel businessman John Brunner. You cannot get much closer than that.

PPP found good numbers for Sen. Jon Tester in Montana last week, but both parties are treating this matchup between Tester and longtime Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg as a marquee matchup, and with no other recent polls of this race by any firm other than unreliable Republican narrative pollster Rasmussen Reports, I am reluctant to describe the race as Tilt D. Obama almost won Montana in 2008, but it is a generally red state, and while Democrats have a strong brand locally, the freshman Tester certainly could not have drawn a stronger Republican challenger and this race is likely to remain very close through Election Day.

Most polls have actually given Sen. Dean Heller a small lead over Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley in Nevada, but as I explained in the presidential update earlier this week, I feel Democrats have an edge in the Silver State because of their tendency to outperform public polls there. That leaves us with something looking more akin to a tied race, and from the efforts of the respective parties on the ground here, it’s not hard to believe it.

The other four races in yellow-shaded states are rated Tossup/Tilt D for one reason or another.

Massachusetts — Sen. Scott Brown (R)
North Dakota — no incumbent, retirement of Sen. Kent Conrad (D)
Virginia — no incumbent, retirement of Sen. Jim Webb (D)
Wisconsin — no incumbent, retirement of Sen. Herb Kohl (D)

A slew of Democratic retirements this cycle has resulted in a few more competitive races than the DSCC must feel comfortable defending. But in Massachusetts, where Republican Sen. Scott Brown is fighting for election to a full term against Democratic consumer protection advocate and Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, the DSCC has a strong candidate with gangbusters fundraising. Polls show a tight race, but Warren has energized her liberal base and shows a natural talent for campaigning. Some issues have recently nagged at Warren, including what appears to be a largely manufactured “scandal” over her occasional identification as a “minority” at Harvard Law School and the University of Pennsylvania due to a claimed but unconfirmed Cherokee ancestor, as well as Boston Mayor Tom Menino’s public reticence to endorse his fellow Democrat in the race. But recent polls have not shown much damage to Warren, who looks like the slight favorite to take this seat back for the Democratic Party.

A few months ago, the seat of retiring Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., looked like a lost cause for the Democratic-NPLers. But former state Atty. Gen. Heidi Heitkamp has demonstrated some unexpected strength against freshman Rep. Rick Berg, the likely Republican nominee. Like Indiana, North Dakota prohibits robopolling, but some rare recent polls (including an unanswered Democratic internal) have given Heitkamp a single-digit but significant lead. Heitkamp now appears to be marginally favored to keep this seat blue.

While most polls show a tight race between ex-Gov. Tim Kaine and ex-Sen. George Allen in Virginia, the Republican Allen has seen hardly any leads outside of Republican polls. Kaine is not as personally popular as his predecessor and would-be Senate colleague, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., but he is better liked than Allen, according to most surveys. With Obama looking favored to win Virginia’s 11 electoral votes once again in November, Kaine should look forward to the president’s coattails easing him to victory — because ultimately, it is not easy to imagine many Obama/Allen voters exist in Virginia.

Rep. Tammy Baldwin, the Democratic candidate in Wisconsin, must be watching the Republican food fight for the Senate nomination with great interest and more than a little trepidation. Polls consistently show ex-Gov. Tommy Thompson, who served four terms at the helm of the Badger State and ran a long-shot bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, matching or even topping Baldwin in a head-to-head contest. But despite facing a fractured conservative opposition, Thompson has yet to break away from the pack in primary polling. His latest archrival for the nomination appears to be Eric Hovde, a millionaire businessman who is spending some of his personal fortune on the race. If Thompson is the nominee, this race could move to pure Tossup or even Tossup/Tilt R, depending on the polling. But if Hovde or ex-Rep. Mark Neumann is the Republican nominee, Baldwin might even pull out to a Lean D advantage.

There are five other Senate races that are expected to be competitive, albeit less so than the above eight. Of them, only one is Lean R:

Arizona — no incumbent, retirement of Sen. Jon Kyl (R)

This race is borderline Tossup/Tilt R, as Democrat Richard Carmona, the former U.S. surgeon general, has actually run ahead of Obama in some polls. But unlike Obama, Carmona has yet to lead in any publicly released survey, and while Obama for America has remained tight-lipped about its Arizona internals, the Carmona campaign recently released an internal showing the Democrat down by just four points — a result corroborated by Republican pollster Magellan Strategies just days later. Another poll like that and I will probably move this race, but for now, I think Republican Rep. Jeff Flake has enough of an advantage for it to be a second-tier pickup opportunity for the Democrats.

There are four Lean D races, as follows:

Florida — Sen. Bill Nelson (D)
Maine* — no incumbent, retirement of Sen. Olympia Snowe (R)
New Mexico — no incumbent, retirement of Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D)
Ohio — Sen. Sherrod Brown (D)

In Florida, Republicans were overjoyed when their dream candidate, Rep. Connie Mack IV, changed his mind after previously declining to run and jumped into the race against Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson. But since his entry, much of the sheen has come off of Mack — or should I say, Mack has come to resemble troubled actor Charlie Sheen in some respects. Mack’s foibles, including a history of getting into fistfights, have provided fodder for ex-Sen. George LeMieux, who has desperately tried to scrub his past personal connection to Republican-turned-independent ex-Gov. Charlie Crist in an effort to rehabilitate himself as a conservative steady hand on the wheel. But the choice between Mack and LeMieux now appears unpalatable enough to Republicans that they are publicly fishing around for a new candidate to salvage this ever-dimming potential pickup opportunity.

Maine has a big fat asterisk next to it, because ex-Gov. Angus King is very likely to win the race. What is less clear is whether a King victory will count as a Democratic pickup. Although King’s personal politics are much closer to the Democratic mainstream than any contemporary Republican ideology, and Republican strategists are openly pessimistic about the prospects of getting King to caucus with them, King has in fact said he may not caucus with either party at all. With King refusing to commit, I have to leave it to my personal assessment that he will probably suck it up and caucus with Senate Democrats, but I am less confident about him doing so than I am about him winning this Senate seat.

Ex-Rep. Heather Wilson has proven a better candidate for the Republicans than I originally believed she would be. While I still expect Rep. Martin Heinrich, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, to win this seat, Wilson’s polling and fundraising indicates she cannot be counted out. I expect Heinrich to pull away in horse-race polling as more New Mexican voters make up their minds, but for now, Wilson’s competitiveness here merits the rating.

Like Wilson, Treasurer Josh Mandel has proven to be a formidable recruit for the Republicans. But in Mandel’s case, it comes down less to any sort of personal charm or political acumen, and more of his deep ties to major Republican bundlers that have pumped millions of dollars so far into the effort to unseat Sen. Sherrod Brown, the labor-friendly Democratic incumbent who is ideologically well to the left of the swing state of Ohio’s political median. Brown is nonetheless fairly popular, if not a brand name, in his state. And like Carmona in Arizona, Mandel has yet to see a lead in any credible poll conducted recently. But like Carmona, Mandel keeps inching closer, and this race could move into the Tossup/Tilt D column with time.

But if we assume Democrats and Republicans win every race in which they currently hold an advantage, and if we assume a hypothetical Sen. Angus King agrees to support Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., we get a chamber controlled by Democrats even before the pure Tossups are decided.

State of Senate races as of May 12, 2012, with Tossup/Tilt Democratic states added to the light blue Lean Democratic pile, Tossup/Tilt Republican states added to the light red Lean Republican pile and Independent states added to either the Democratic pile or the Republican pile. (Graphic by Mark Miller.)

Due to the length of this update and constraints on my time, I have decided to hold off on gubernatorial race ratings for a few days. Expect to see a (much shorter) post on that early next week.

Election, Uncategorized 2012 election, Arizona, Congress, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, race ratings, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, Wisconsin

The race for the White House, as of early May

8 May 2012 Mark Miller No comments

Since the first series of race ratings were published last month, not a lot has changed. We remain months away from general elections — a political eternity — but it is instructive to look at polling data that consistently shows public opinion has already hardened. There is a large proportion of the American electorate that has resolved to oppose President Barack Obama and the Democrats, as well as a similarly sized proportion resolved to support him while opposing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and the Republicans.

While the media is eager to seize on any data or analysis that posits the presidential race as a close battle, the occupant of the White House from Jan. 20, 2013, to Jan. 20, 2017, will be decided by the Electoral College, not by the nationwide popular vote. And with state-by-state polling giving the incumbent a clear edge, even in some states he won in 2008 that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Vice President Al Gore lost (Virginia and Colorado, namely), it is hard to argue looking at the data and the dynamics of the race that Obama is not at least somewhat favored.

The media is right about one thing, though: the country is deeply polarized. The electoral map is not likely to look dramatically different than it did in 2008 because Obama simply cannot win over enough of the voters who hate him to significantly expand the map, and Romney cannot win over enough of the voters who hate him to have more than a very narrow path to victory.

Obama could still claim a landslide victory and win more states this year than he did in 2008, but his opportunities to play offense are largely the same as they were when he was first elected over Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Meanwhile, Romney could rebound in the polls and capture enough battleground states to edge Obama, but it is extremely difficult to envision him winning more than 290 electoral votes under the best-case scenario. (Obama won 365 electoral votes in 2008. To win, 270 votes are needed of 538 available.)

Last month’s race ratings stuck to analyzing the House and Senate races this year. Those remain on the radar, but aside from some campaign news and a few surprising results in infrequently polled races moving a few ratings around, there have been no dramatic changes. The congressional state of play will be explored later on this week.

For now, let us look at the presidential election, state by state.

State of the presidential race as of May 8, 2012. Yellow indicates Tossup, Tossup/Tilt Democratic and Tossup/Tilt Republican states and districts. Light blue and red indicates Lean Democratic and Lean Republican respectively. Medium blue and red indicates Likely Democratic and Likely Republican respectively. Dark blue and red indicates Safe Democratic and Safe Republican respectively. (Graphic by Mark Miller.)

My shading represents the confidence I have in the prediction, not how large I expect the margin of victory to be. It is far too early to be predicting that, and in my judgment, a win is a win.

That being said, this is obviously an effort to categorize a spectrum. For example, I have shaded both Nevada and New Jersey in medium blue, indicating I believe they are Likely Democratic states for Obama in November. However, credible polls in Nevada have been markedly closer than credible polls in New Jersey, and the Obama and Romney campaigns have treated Nevada as being more of a battleground in this election cycle than New Jersey seems to be.

While I do have greater confidence that Nevada will ultimately vote for Obama than, say, Colorado or Iowa, I have less confidence that it will than New Jersey. There is no real way to represent that on the map without going crazy with gradients of blue, but I figured I should note that caveat.

Other examples of this: Indiana and Montana are both light red for Lean Republican, but I would expect Obama to win Indiana (as he did in 2008) before Montana (as he almost did in 2008). Oregon will probably vote for Obama under any circumstances, but it represents a somewhat better opportunity for Romney than neighboring Washington and California, considering Gore barely won it in 2000 and Kerry’s performance there in 2004 was far from commanding. The states colored in yellow are those I consider Tossups, but they also include Tossup/Tilt Democratic and Tossup/Tilt Republican states, which I will lay out in more detail.

Tossups

The only state I consider a true Tossup is, fittingly enough, Florida. The Sunshine State denied Gore victory in the disputed 2000 election, shifted further toward President George W. Bush in 2004, and then flipped blue for Obama in 2008. Polls have shown its fickle electorate to be closely divided between Obama and Romney, neither of whom is smashingly popular there.

Romney is going hard after the traditionally Democratic Jewish vote, exploiting Obama’s strained relationship with conservative Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and has courted the Republican-leaning Cuban vote and the heavily Democratic Puerto Rican vote by allying himself with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Gov. Luis Fortuño, R-P.R., respectively.

However, polls have shown that Rubio — considered a far likelier running mate for Romney than the lesser-known but more experienced Fortuño — does little to give Romney an edge over Obama in Florida. They have also shown Jewish and Puerto Rican voters remain largely behind Obama.

Florida is likely to remain very competitive until the endgame of this election campaign, and as such, it should be considered a complete Tossup.

Of the remaining yellow electoral votes, 12 are currently considered Tilt Republican.

Nebraska, which splits its electoral votes by congressional district, awarded the single electoral vote of Omaha-based NE-02 to Obama in 2008. He remains competitive in that district, with a campaign office operating in Omaha and television advertising in the Omaha media market (which also extends into the swing state of Iowa), but Romney is probably a slight favorite there for now.

Arizona is also in the Tossup/Tilt Republican category for now. Recent polls have shown the state very tight, and Obama even leads there according to some surveys. While the Obama for America campaign seems to be treating Arizona as a potential pickup opportunity this time, unencumbered by the home-state advantage McCain had in 2008, and has announced a three-month voter registration drive to determine whether it is winnable for Obama in November, the state was not included among nine where ad time was purchased over the weekend. Most polls have still shown Obama well below the 50-percent mark.

The rest of the lot — New Hampshire, Ohio and North Carolina — are Tossup/Tilt Democratic.

Romney has yet to lead in a Public Policy Polling survey of North Carolina, which Obama barely won in a modest surprise in 2008 and where the usually reliable polling outfit is headquartered. Polling has been similarly unfriendly in Ohio. Nevertheless, no credible surveys have given Obama a particularly wide lead in either state, and Romney has polled within the margin of error in nearly all of them.

Romney has led in some New Hampshire polls, but the latest numbers there show his lead evaporating. New Hampshire is the most Republican-friendly state in New England, but with how reliably Democratic the region has become over the past half-century, that does not say much. However, Romney practically lives in New Hampshire, the southern part of which is largely comprised of suburbs of his native Boston. He has to be considered a threat to carry its four electoral votes.

Lean Democratic states

Of the states I consider Lean Democratic, shaded in light blue, I think Pennsylvania is probably the most competitive. I vacillated between coloring it in yellow for Tossup/Tilt Democratic and coloring it light blue for Lean Democratic, but ultimately, the state’s proclivity to break late (after the conventions) toward the Democrats and its history of voting Democratic even in 2000 and 2004, as the Republican Bush won, swayed me toward the latter. Still, polls have shown the state to be close, and Romney’s profile is probably better suited for the swingy suburbs of Philadelphia in southeastern Pennsylvania than the “maverick conservative” profile of the McCain presidential ticket or the “conservative cowboy” profile Bush presented. Obama has the advantage, and the state is likelier than not to move toward him in the polls come September, but Romney is still targeting it and he is not wrong to do so.

Virginia and Colorado are considered “new” swing states, breaking heavily toward Obama in 2008 after years of being solid Republican territory. The bevy of poll results showing that 2008 was not a fluke cannot thrill Romney. Obama led by 13 points in one recent PPP survey of Colorado. He has led by high single digits in most credible polls of Virginia. It will not be easy for Romney to win without either Colorado or Virginia, and for now, he appears to be going hard after Virginia with repeated campaign appearances. Virginia’s popular governor, Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, is considered a potential running mate for Romney. He likely will not flip the state if Obama’s substantial polling lead there holds, but he could grease the skids for Romney in the Old Dominion.

While veteran pollster Ann Selzer found Romney leading a trial heat when she surveyed her home state of Iowa earlier this year, PPP found Obama back up in the Hawkeye State just this week. Romney’s white-collar profile is not as well suited to the largely rural, traditionally populist state as erstwhile rivals like former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, and while both campaigns are treating Iowa as a swing state, I give Obama the edge here. Iowa was never really in play in 2008, despite voting for Bush ~~two times~~ in 2004 and very nearly in 2000, and I think a lot of the investment in the state has at least as much to do with NE-02 as it does with Iowa.

Lean Republican states

The light red Lean Republican states have not seen much investment by either campaign, with some notable exceptions. Obama for America has three field offices in Indiana, which Obama won by the skin of his teeth in 2008, and another just across the river in Louisville, Ky. Obama has made a couple of recent visits to Georgia, including one to a military base late last month, and the campaign has suggested it could build on its 2008 efforts to register voters there as well as demographic shifts that have seen the state’s minority population rise.

Missouri and Montana have not gotten much attention yet, but Obama nearly won both states in 2008, and polls have shown a race in the mid-single digits in both states, though Romney has led every trial heat in a credible poll.

Likely Democratic states

States shaded medium blue and medium red are considered Likely Democratic and Likely Republican, respectively. Some pundits consider Wisconsin a swing state, and some consider New Mexico one as well. But Obama won both in a big way in 2008, and polls have shown his 2008 margins shrinking little (and actually growing in New Mexico, according to some recent results). Neither state was included in OFA’s recent nine-state ad buy.

One caveat for Wisconsin, though, is that both parties are heavily invested in the outcome of a gubernatorial recall election next month that could see unpopular Republican Gov. Scott Walker turfed out of office amidst ethics probes and policy controversies. If Walker survives the recall, Republicans will likely feel energized about their chances in Wisconsin and may put more money into making the state competitive for Romney in November. But if Walker loses, I suspect Wisconsin will fall off the radar completely for the Republican Party.

New Jersey and Michigan are states where Romney would probably like to play a lot more than he realistically can. Still, some polls have shown Romney close in Michigan, though the samples of the EPIC-MRA surveys in question have been heavily Republican and likely unreflective of the general electorate this year. His father, George Romney, was governor of Michigan back in the 1960s, but Mitt Romney’s opposition to the successful automaker rescue has been widely panned in this state that relies so much on the automobile industry.

As for New Jersey, polls have shown Obama not exactly running away with the state, but like Pennsylvania, it tends to break late toward the Democrats. No Republican has carried it in a presidential election since Vice President George H.W. Bush routed then-Gov. Michael Dukakis, D-Mass., in 1988. Like Virginia, it has a potential Romney running mate in the form of colorful Gov. Chris Christie. If Romney is forced to concede states like Colorado, Virginia and Iowa to Obama as November approaches, Christie might make a good addition to the ticket in an effort by the Republican candidate to open up a pathway to victory through Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It just seems like a real long shot, even if Romney is a pretty good fit for the moderate, wealthy suburbanites in South Jersey who keep reelecting the likes of Republican Reps. Frank LoBiondo and Chris Smith.

Maine splits its electoral votes by congressional district, just like Nebraska. The upstate district, ME-02, is more rural than the Portland-based ME-01, and is also less solidly Democratic. While the likes of The New York Times consider Maine a potential swing state, polls have given Obama a huge lead there — large enough that Romney’s chances of poaching an electoral vote seem pretty poor. But Republicans always try for ME-02, and as Romney is from the Northeast, he might have a better shot at it than Southerners Bush and McCain did. No worse than Likely Democratic for Obama, though.

My thoughts about Nevada were partially addressed earlier. The Silver State tends to vote more strongly for Democrats than public polls suggest, perhaps because most polls do not survey cell phone-only voters and many do not offer respondents a Spanish-language option. Many Nevada households lack landlines, and many Nevadans speak Spanish but not English fluently. New Mexico exhibits a similar polling effect, as does Hawaii.

Nevada also has the third-highest proportion of Mormons by total population of the 50 states. Mormons tend to vote Republican, Mormon communities are typically very organized and politically active, and the Mormon Romney is likely to enjoy even more enthusiasm among Mormon voters than the typical Republican candidate gets.

Nevada is being targeted extensively by the Obama campaign, even though I think it is Likely Democratic due to Obama’s strong polling performance, the awesome political organization of the Nevada Democratic Party and the tendency of polls to badly underestimate Democratic performance in the state. But the real reason for that may not be overconfidence in polls or worries about the Mormon vote, but the great amount of wealth in Las Vegas, the home base for many political money bundlers — quite a few of whom have donated generously to Democrats and Republicans alike in previous elections. Obama may not have much fear of losing Nevada this year, but he sure could use some financial backing from casino moguls and other business magnates in the Silver State.

Likely Republican states

The Likely Republican states are mostly based on my personal hunches. Obama mentioned Louisville, Kentucky’s largest city, alongside Orlando, Fla., and Charlotte, N.C., when naming cities where one of his administration’s programs had helped jobseekers during his State of the Union address in January. Campaign emails from OFA have mentioned Kentucky alongside Ohio and Florida among states where Republicans scored “Tea Party victories” in 2010 that Democrats want to roll back. Kentucky is doubtless very conservative territory, but Gore and Kerry did quite well in rural eastern Kentucky while Obama turned in a surprisingly strong performance in urban Jefferson and Fayette counties. If Obama can match Gore and Kerry’s strength in coal country while improving on his 2008 showing in the rapidly growing cities, taking advantage of Romney’s white-collar, patrician image, he actually could get reasonably close in the Bluegrass State. The bottom would really have to fall out over at the Romney campaign for that to happen, though.

Obama actually led by two points in a poll of South Carolina back in December. We have not seen public numbers from the state since then, though, and the campaigns’ lack of attention there suggests it is not actually a swing state this year. South Carolina has been slower to exhibit the same demographic trends that pushed Virginia and North Carolina into Obama’s column in 2008 and are contributing to Georgia’s increasing competitiveness. But OFA does have two field offices in the state, and the Democratic National Convention will be held in Charlotte, the media market of which covers part of South Carolina as well as much of eastern North Carolina.

If there has been any Alaska presidential polling, I have not seen it. The Last Frontier tends to get polled infrequently, and those polls are often unreliable, dramatically overestimating Democratic strength in Senate races in 2008 and 2010. But before then-Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska, was tapped as McCain’s running mate in 2008, Obama was polling well in the state, and there were whispers over the summer that he might campaign there. Once Palin joined the ticket, that talk ceased, and Obama lost Alaska badly. But the state’s electorate is similar to Montana’s, where PPP showed Obama just four points down last week, and in the absence of polling, I consider it Likely Republican just because it might be interesting.

Conclusion

So, even if the Tossup/Tilt Democratic and Tossup/Tilt Republican electoral votes were left unallocated, Obama would still win with 281 electoral votes. In other words, Romney could sweep all of the yellow states (plus NE-02) and still lose. He needs to make some of the light blue states competitive in order to beat Obama.

If the tilting states are forced into a camp, the map becomes a decisive victory for Obama, though not a 2008-level blowout.

State of play of the presidential race as of May 8, 2012, with Tossup/Tilt Democratic states and districts added to the light blue Lean Democratic pile and Tossup/Tilt Republican states and districts added to the light red Lean Republican pile. (Graphic by Mark Miller.)

Next time, the congressional races will be revisited. We will take a look at the gubernatorial elections as well, including the fast-approaching Wisconsin recall race.

Syria ceasefire may not be positive step for uprising

14 April 2012 Mark Miller No comments

On Thursday, the violent conflict in Syria that has now spanned more than a year ground to, if not a halt, then perhaps a pause.

The Syrian government has spent the past several months ruthlessly bombarding villages and cities, deliberately targeting journalists, shooting into crowds of peaceful demonstrators, finding creative new ways to torture detainees and sliming regime opponents as “armed terrorists” (as opposed, of course, to the judo-chopping, krav maga-trained “unarmed terrorists” that have plagued so many other countries).

Now, two days after a deadline set by United Nations special envoy and former secretary-general Kofi Annan was originally set to expire, the regime has apparently decided that it is in its best interests to put the brakes on an onslaught that would make the late Saddam Hussein’s toes curl. While activists are still being shot and army tanks remain in place inside city centers, in defiance of the UN-brokered ceasefire, the full-scale massacres and nationwide onslaught is apparently on hold.

Earlier today, the United Nations Security Council unanimously agreed to a resolution calling upon Syria’s feckless ruler, President Bashar al-Assad, to allow UN peacekeepers into the country to monitor the ceasefire. This resolution came in spite of some grumbling from Russia, one of Syria’s staunchest allies.

So why, after months of pounding unarmed protesters and scattered groups of army defectors alike, has the Syrian government suddenly decided that it needs to obey the infamously toothless UN and its distinguished but decidedly unaccomplished envoy?

The answer may lie in one crucial aspect of how Annan and the Security Council have approached the Syrian situation — the bestowal of legitimacy on the tyrannical regime in Damascus.

Since last summer, Security Council states like the United States, the United Kingdom and France have been decrying Assad as having “lost his legitimacy.” The French government suggested he and his cronies be referred to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has vociferously, if impotently, condemned Assad and blamed the violence on the Syrian government.

But now, Annan is meeting with Syrian ministers and conferring with Assad directly. Instead of issuing ultimatums, Annan’s tone has bordered on pleading. The tide has clearly turned in favor of the regime, which just months ago appeared in danger of an imminent collapse and now appears to have the upper hand over anti-government rebels and dissidents.

Even the text of the Security Council resolution is a testament to Assad’s resurgent strength at the bargaining table. Rather than demanding the Syrian regime end its bloody reprisals against its own people or insisting that it permits UN peacekeepers into the country, it simply requests that both sides keep the peace and asks Assad’s permission for the peacekeepers to come in. Previous draft resolutions from earlier in the conflict, defeated by a double veto from Russia and the People’s Republic of China, were far more strident in their tone.

Assad now has the international deference he wants. But the question of what he is hoping to get out of the ceasefire has an even more sour answer.

By now turning around and “graciously” ordering a halt to the bloodbath he has unleashed against his own people, Assad is clearly hoping to earn plaudits for his magnanimity. Now that he has killed close to 10,000 Syrians who opposed his regime, Assad may hope to return to business as usual, demanding the lifting of international sanctions and an end to his country’s diplomatic isolation as the price for continuing to hold his army and the shabiha thugs who have shot, beaten, abducted, tortured and executed protesters throughout the uprising in check.

Assad hopes to stifle the uprising through intimidation. By ignoring Annan’s request for the regime to withdraw its troops and armored vehicles from city centers, insisting their presence is necessary to protect civilians from those nasty “armed terrorist groups,” he has sent a clear signal both to the UN and to his restive people that he retains the power to resume the crackdown at full strength on a whim.

Friday protests yesterday were not met with the same indiscriminate brutality that has claimed hundreds of lives on previous Fridays, but activists reported they dispersed fairly quickly and there was no sign of the Free Syrian Army, the loose affiliation of army defectors and militants that has assumed responsibility for protecting demonstrators. The overall impression was of an opposition movement determined to show its dissent, but nervous about Assad suddenly changing his mind about not slaughtering his people in the thousands.

And if the Free Syrian Army does show up at a rally supervised by UN peacekeepers, renowned for their effectiveness at standing by and watching such massacres as Srebrenica and Rwanda, Assad will be able to claim that while he entered into the ceasefire agreement in good faith, those pesky armed terrorist groups are still threatening the Syrian populace. The UN will once again have to scramble to appease him before he calls the whole thing off and starts blowing up Sunni and Christian neighborhoods again.

The result of his arrangement is that Assad is now sitting in the catbird’s seat. Under the text of the Security Council resolution and the terms of the ceasefire, the onus is on the Free Syrian Army as much as it is on him to keep the peace. Meanwhile, Assad’s security forces can shoot up a protest or two every day, or fail to “restrain” the shabiha from running amok and raping Homsi women while burning down Sunni-owned homes and shops for a few hours every so often, while Assad claims they were acting independently and he is still committed to the ceasefire.

It is folly to underestimate the courage of Syrians — but this ceasefire agreement does not lift Assad’s jackboot from the uprising’s throat, it keeps it firmly pressed down. Assad may not have license to kill with impunity anymore, but now he has the international community by the nose, and with the help of the UN and its blue-helmeted watchmen, he has more insulation than ever before against any attempt to overthrow his government.

Opinion Arab Spring, Ban Ki-moon, Bashar al-Assad, crimes against humanity, Damascus, foreign policy, Homs, International Criminal Court, Islam, Kofi Annan, revolution, Saddam Hussein, Syria, United Nations, United Nations Security Council

Republicans look to narrowly keep House, Democrats to narrowly hold Senate in first round of 2012 congressional race ratings

7 April 2012 Mark Miller No comments

Well, I have finally gotten around to doing race ratings for the 2012 cycle. I have a nice big spreadsheet up on my computer, but since the vast majority of races are not competitive, I will share some of the more competitive races right now as I see them.

As an obligatory note, all of these ratings are highly subject to change. There are still seven months to Election Day, after all.

House

I project Republicans will hold the House with 222 seats. I project Democrats will win 196 seats. I do consider 16 races as pure Tossups at this time and I will not project victors there one way or the other.

The 16 pure Tossups are:

CA-10 – Rep. Jeff Denham (R)
CA-21 – no incumbent
CA-52 – Rep. Brian Bilbray (R)
FL-09 – no incumbent
FL-18 – Rep. Allen West (R)
GA-12 – Rep. John Barrow (D)
IA-03 – Reps. Tom Latham (R) and Leonard Boswell (D)
IL-13 – no incumbent; retirement of Rep. Tim Johnson (R)
IL-17 – Rep. Bobby Schilling (R)
IN-02 – no incumbent; retirement of Rep. Joe Donnelly (D)
MI-01 – Rep. Dan Benishek (R)
NC-07 – Rep. Mike McIntyre (D)
NY-11 – Rep. Michael Grimm (R)
OH-16 – Reps. Jim Renacci (R) and Betty Sutton (D)
PA-12 – Reps. Mark Critz (D) and Jason Altmire (D)
RI-01 – Rep. David Cicilline (D)

I count 12 Tossup/Tilt D races at this time:

AZ-01 – no incumbent
CA-07 – Rep. Dan Lungren (R)
CA-26 – no incumbent; retirement of Rep. Elton Gallegly (R)
CA-31 – Rep. Gary Miller (R)
IL-12 – no incumbent; retirement of Rep. Jerry Costello (D)
MA-06 – Rep. John Tierney (D)
MN-08 – Rep. Chip Cravaack (R)
NV-03 – Rep. Joe Heck (R)
NY-18 – Rep. Nan Hayworth (R)
TX-23 – Rep. Francisco Canseco (R)
UT-04 – Rep. Jim Matheson
WA-01 – no incumbent; resignation of Rep. Jay Inslee (D)

I also count 7 Tossup/Tilt R races right now:

CO-06 – Rep. Mike Coffman (R)
FL-13 – Rep. Bill Young (R)
IA-04 – Rep. Steve King (R)
NE-02 – Rep. Lee Terry (R)
NJ-03 – Rep. Jon Runyan (R)
OH-06 – Rep. Bob Johnson (R)
PA-08 – Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R)

The only races not yet rated are Kansas, because the state has not completed its redistricting process. I expect all to be Republican-favoring and I have included them in my expected Republican total.

A number of these races are subject to dramatic change with certain nominees. For instead, Democrats nominating Gwen Howard in NE-02 would likely lead me to move the race to Lean R. If Democrat Suzan DelBene advances to the November ballot in WA-01 instead of Darcy Burner, I will probably move the race to Lean D or even to Likely D. If Alan Grayson is not the Democratic nominee in FL-09, I think that race is at least Lean D, as it probably is if Osceola County Commission President John Quiñones is not the Republican nominee there. If Ilario Pantano is not the Republican nominee in NC-07, that race probably moves to Tossup/Tilt R or Lean R. If Cicilline is not renominated in RI-01, the race probably becomes Likely D.

Similarly, there are races that are not listed as Tossups of any kind now that would probably move to that category with an unexpected nominee. If Republicans reject Matt Doheny in NY-21, that race may become a Tossup or Tossup/Tilt D. If a strong Democrat like Joe Garcia enters the race in FL-26, that race likely moves to Tossup/Tilt D. If Ron Barber is not the Democratic nominee in AZ-02, that race may move to Tossup/Tilt D.

Senate

However, I do expect Democrats to retain the Senate. I have projected 51 seats for them, including the Maine seat vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, which I project as safe for independent Angus King and thus as Lean D based on my assessment of his political preferences and my current assessment of Democrats’ likelihood to hold at least 50 Senate seats as well as the White House, to 47 projected for Republicans after this cycle, with 2 pure Tossups.

The 2 pure Tossup races are:

Nevada – Sen. Dean Heller (R)
Virginia – no incumbent; retirement of Sen. Jim Webb (D)

I have 3 Tossup/Tilt D races listed:

Massachusetts – Sen. Scott Brown (R)
Missouri – Sen. Claire McCaskill (D)
Wisconsin – no incumbent; retirement of Sen. Herb Kohl (D)

I also have 2 Tossup/Tilt R races:

Montana – Sen. Jon Tester (D)
North Dakota – no incumbent; retirement of Sen. Kent Conrad (D)

As with the House ratings, these are subject to change not just due to shifting dynamics, but because the nominees are known for certain in just a few of them. And in primaries that are contested as anything but a formality, it could make a big difference; Indiana would probably become Tossup/Tilt R or even Tossup if Sen. Richard Lugar loses the Republican primary. If Tommy Thompson is not the Republican nominee in Wisconsin, the race probably shifts to Lean D.

Election 2012 election, race ratings, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate

Human achievement is not celebrated by an hour

4 April 2012 Mark Miller No comments

Last weekend, millions of eco-conscious citizens of the world saved the planet from going the way of Alderaan, and it only took an hour.

I refer, of course, to “Earth Hour,” a worldwide event in which participating individuals, households and businesses power down for 60 minutes, turning off lights and unplugging energy-sucking appliances. Earth Hour has been celebrated annually since 2007, and it must be working, because so far the Earth is intact.

Like the vast majority of people, I did not observe Earth Hour. I slept in on Saturday, though, which had roughly the same effect.

I also did not partake in a rival event boosters called “Human Achievement Hour.” The point of Human Achievement Hour, which organizers intend to make into an annual practice as well, is to show how awesome the human race is by turning on as many gizmos and gadgets as are readily available, sucking up as much energy as possible and generating the maximum amount of pollution — seemingly, mostly because we can.

Do not get me wrong — I am a big fan of human achievement. And we are having a very impressive year in the field of science and technology.

Last month saw the first successful solo manned expedition to the deepest point on Earth, the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, 35,756 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean.

The month before, researchers at MIT announced the development of a new battery technology with 10 times the life expectancy of current top-shelf models.

Researchers are moving ahead with plans to clone a woolly mammoth from preserved DNA. If successful, it will be the first project to produce a specimen of a previously extinct species, and it could inject fresh hope into struggling conservation efforts fighting a losing battle against poachers, deforestation and climate change in many parts of the world.

Medical science has boomed in the early months of 2012 as well, with potential breakthroughs in fighting off HIV/AIDS, mental ailments and even certain types of cancer all being recorded in rapid succession.

And just today, Google unveiled a prototype of its new “smart” glasses, which function like a personal heads-up display while reading eye movements, recognizing the wearer’s voice and responding to both optical and audio commands. The best part is that they don’t even look incredibly dorky.

Maybe 2012 in human achievement lacks the drama and panache of, say, the lunar colony-state proposed by Republican presidential also-ran Newt Gingrich. But a potential cure for cancer — or a computer you wear on your face, for that matter — is nothing to sneeze at.

The thing is, I have my doubts the researchers, inventors and entrepreneurs behind all of these amazing advancements in science and technology intend for their efforts to be portrayed in opposition to the cause, trite and cursory though it may be in the medium of a hour-long annual lights-dimming tradition, of environmental awareness.

Call me crazy, but I am a skeptic that the types of people who celebrated Human Achievement Hour this year really did so out of genuine admiration for human achievement.

The thing is, the less savory (and horrendously convenient) aspects of human achievement do appear to be driving our climate to a tipping point, wiping out natural habits, upsetting fragile ecosystems, acidifying our oceans and waterways, altering the composition of the atmosphere and degrading the very ground in which our crops are planted and on which our cities are built. And while I would not describe myself as a hardcore environmentalist, I might venture to say that probably is a bad thing.

Human Achievement Hour and the reactionary, self-satisfied ideology that promotes it has it all wrong. In many cases, to paraphrase The Six Million Dollar Man, we have the technology. We can make things better than they are. And it is not scientists or engineers standing in the way — it’s politicians, business executives and lobbyists.

Take, for instance, the ongoing controversy over the nominally meat-based substance known to its advocates as “lean, finely textured beef” and to its detractors as “pink slime.” This material, created from mechanically separating refuse from beef carcasses during meat processing, dousing it with poisonous ammonia fumes to disinfect it, and packaging it in bricks for use as filler in commercial ground beef, was considered unfit for human consumption and used primarily in dog food until 2001.

Was it necessary to reclassify LFTB, to use the industry-preferred acronym for the dubious additive, as appropriate to sell in food people eat? Probably not. Did it make the production of ground beef cheaper? It surely did.

But the bizarre thing, to me, about this controversy is that while people are outraged to find their hamburger contains a gross-looking, chemically disinfected amalgam of less-than-prime beef trimmings, they are still directing little scrutiny at the meat industry as a whole.

The vast majority of commercially sold meat can now be sourced to a mere handful of factory farms known as CAFOs, or confined area feeding operations. At these enormous sites in the American interior, millions of animals are born, grown, fed and fattened in extremely small spaces, before being slaughtered by a mostly mechanized and far from clean process.

The carcasses are then sent to meat processing facilities, from which “pink slime” is far from the only unappetizing product. Even high-quality cuts of red meat sold in supermarkets are frequently dyed with chemicals to make them look more appealing.

But let us return to the CAFOs. It logically follows that a giant warehouse full of cows, pigs, chickens and other animals packed together like sardines in a can, often wallowing in their own waste, is a breeding ground for infection and disease. But not to fear — the friendly handful of agribusiness mega-conglomerates that own and operate these facilities (along with the vast majority of all other farms in the country, and quite a few outside it) have devised an ingenious solution.

When you go to the doctor and get a prescription for antibiotics, there is a strict limit on refills. You cannot simply get antibiotics prescribed for anything that ails you, and you cannot use them to stay healthy indefinitely. That’s because over time, bacteria and other nasty microorganisms antibiotics are designed to combat can build up a biological tolerance for the medication, creating resistant strains with the potential to cause major health emergencies.

But the likes of Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland have no such compunctions. Liberally dosing animal feed with antibiotics, whether the animals ingesting them are sick or healthy, is routine practice at CAFOs.

Through the power of human achievement, we have this miracle technology that can stop diseases from spreading. And through the power of human achievement, we know how to use it and how not to use it.

Yet colossal corporations that create the food we put in our bodies — as well as generate an eye-watering amount of pollution from these feeding operations, as well as from the gargantuan grain (read: corn and soybean) and vegetable farms they control — are treating human achievement like a Chinese take-out buffet, picking the discovery they can use to decrease their overhead and ignoring the discovery that would seem to make stuffing livestock full of antibiotics an outrageously unethical and irresponsible thing to do.

Human Achievement Hour is just a microcosm of that irresponsibility. For that matter, so is the noisy outrage over pink slime, and the mostly symbolic gesture supermarket chains have taken by refusing to stock ground beef containing it, even while gladly serving as the middle merchant for the rest of the corrupt industry’s product.

We have made great strides in science and technology so far this year, and if I have faith in anything, it is that the progress of human achievement will march on as long as the incredible men and women behind each new discovery continue their work. But it would be a real bummer if the capstone of our long list of impressive human achievements were to be our own extinction.

So if we can stop fooling around with these superfluous things and these unconstructive attitudes and start taking a serious look at how human achievement can save us and repair our planet, that would be great — because I’m sure we can do it, but probably not as long as we see invention as an excuse to run a blender for an hour just to annoy the hippies across the street.

Lousy turnout in Maryland should embarrass all, but especially candidates

3 April 2012 Mark Miller No comments

Four years ago, Maryland held its primary concurrently with the District of Columbia and Virginia in the so-called “Potomac primaries.” Then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., swept all three contests, extending his delegate lead over then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and bringing a jolt of recognition to many watchers that the insurgent Midwesterner would, in fact, be the Democratic nominee.

Turnout in Maryland was high — record-breaking, in fact. In Maryland’s black-majority 4th congressional district, progressive Donna Edwards ousted then-Rep. Al Wynn in the Democratic primary. On the Republican side, then-Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, the moderate longtime congressman for Maryland’s 1st congressional district, was defeated by conservative Andy Harris.

Edwards would go on to serve in Congress. Harris would fall short in the general election, only to win election on his second try, in 2010.

Four years ago, Maryland politics was wild and wonderful, and it seemed just about everyone was fired up and excited to make history with their votes.

Fast-forward to today. Record low turnout was reported at many polling sites. An election judge at the University of Maryland’s polling place in Stamp Student Union inhaled in dismay at the number of votes that had been cast as of shortly after 1 p.m., at the tail end of the usually bustling lunch period: a whopping 17.

What happened? Why, at the same time turnout boomed in distant Wisconsin, did Marylanders take a look at the gorgeous, sunny weather outside, take a look at the pile of campaign literature on their counter and the cache of robocalls on their answering machines, and utter a collective “meh?”

We need hardly look beyond the Senate race, where the campaign of state Sen. C. Anthony Muse, D-Prince George’s, distributed fliers a week before the primary breaking down United States senators by classifications of White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, American Indian and Jewish.

Muse, who is black, has run his entire campaign against popular Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., who is both white and Jewish (though only included in the count of the latter on Muse’s flier), on the basis of race politics. Rather than highlighting policy differences with the more progressive Cardin (the two differ on the DREAM Act and same-sex marriage rights, both of which Muse opposes), Muse has repeated his line about how the U.S. has no black senators and it is time for Maryland to “make history” by electing one.

Cardin, meanwhile, was perfectly content to ignore Muse altogether. He ran two TV ads, both positive spots narrated by a black child and an oysterman, respectively, in which the speakers called him “my friend, Ben,” and highlighted the senator’s work on behalf of poor children and the oyster industry.

When one of my colleagues at Capital News Service contacted Cardin’s campaign for comment on Muse’s misleading campaign literature, which also included numerous suggestions that President Barack Obama (who endorsed Cardin and campaigned alongside him last month) had in fact endorsed Muse fo Senate, Cardin’s campaign spokeswoman declined to address the controversy.

Cardin won easily today. Muse’s divisive, disingenuous race-based appeals yielded little in support for him. To be honest, the state senator badly underperformed my own expectations; I expected him to scrape up close to 30 percent of the vote by at least turning out his base in Prince George’s and Charles counties, where turnout was reportedly heaviest (a relative term), but at the time of writing, it looks like he will be lucky to crack 15 percent.

We can look elsewhere, though. On the Democratic side, Obama is unopposed for re-nomination in Maryland. With his delegates from Maryland, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia, he is officially the presumptive Democratic nominee as of tonight, as if it were ever in doubt. The lack of a contest at the top of the ticket in heavily Democratic Maryland doubtless impeded turnout.

But on the Republican side, despite a flurry of articles suggesting that “Maryland matters” in the presidential contest, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was never seriously at much risk of losing the Old Line State en route to his expected nomination.

Indeed, despite losing decisively to former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum among voters under the age of 50, according to exit polls, Romney had Maryland called for him within seconds of polls closing by most major news outlets. Nearly half of Maryland Republicans who voted today were recorded by exit polls as making $100,000 or more annually, and unsurprisingly, that bloc of voters broke heavily for the wealthy ex-governor.

So, the presidential contests were foregone conclusions. That doesn’t tend to help turnout. But what of the congressional races, which saw two dramatic upsets of sitting House members in 2008?

The big prize this year is the redrawn 6th congressional district, where Republican Rep. Roscoe Bartlett looked to fight off a challenge from several ambitious Republicans, including state Sen. David Brinkley of New Market and state Del. Kathy Afzali of Middletown, and Democrats had a marquee battle between multimillionaire banker John Delaney of Potomac and state Sen. Rob Garagiola of Germantown, with Air Force reservist Dr. Milad Pooran of Jefferson acting as a potential spoiler.

From the get-go, both contested primaries were incredibly acrimonious.

Initial salvos from Bartlett’s challengers over the congressman’s friendliness with several House Democratic colleagues eventually mutated into 911 calls from Brinkley and his ex-wife recorded amidst the state senator’s messy divorce being released to media.

Garagiola seized upon Delaney’s campaign donation to Harris from 2010 on the Democratic side, only for Delaney to bite back by re-litigating the then-frontrunner’s botched state ethics forms from several years before that did not disclose income Garagiola had earned as a lobbyist. That was just the tip of the iceberg, with the two candidates clobbering each other for several bitter weeks.

Bartlett and Delaney will advance to a November meeting. But internal polls released to the public in the closing days of the campaign showed a massive bloc of undecided voters on both sides, and if the primary’s low turnout is any indication, many of those undecided voters simply stayed home rather than vote for any of the field.

Surely Bartlett and Delaney will be satisfied with their victories. But in order to claw their way to the top, they had to carpet-bomb their opposition, and in the process, a lot of Maryland residents were turned off from the democratic process altogether. They should be embarrassed that in order to win, they had to destroy their opponents by any means necessary — and Afzali, Brinkley and Garagiola should be embarrassed that they tried to win the same way.

If Mitt Romney did something bold

2 April 2012 Mark Miller No comments

Mitt Romney needs to do something serious to break free of the narrative right now. He has a huge message problem, which has hurt him in the nomination fight, which he now appears to be winning by inertia, and is hurting him in his pending general election matchup with President Barack Obama (some would say dooming him, but whither Citizens United?).

Romney seems to basically be a bored rich guy with no apparent core principles who has decided he really wants to be president but he doesn’t particularly know why. If nominated, he will now almost surely be the most unpopular major-party candidate entering a general election in modern U.S. political history.

Like many others, I have been thinking Romney’s risk-averse nature is going to prod him toward making a bland, safe pick as vice president, someone like Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia or Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio.

Then again, everything at this point looks like a transparent calculation for Romney.

If Romney picks a woman, like first-term Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico or freshman Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, she will be compared relentlessly to former Alaska governor and spectacularly disastrous 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Martinez is a particularly dangerous choice because of the comparison it would draw, both women being Western governors of small states in the middle of their first terms when they were scouted out for the vice presidency.

If Romney picks a conservative man of color, like Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana or Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada, he will be criticized for picking a candidate who is not white but with whom only whites identify in meaningful numbers (both lost the minority vote badly in their elections to statewide office). As an additional negative, Sandoval supports abortion rights, a stance that would provoke howls of protest even from mainstream Republicans.

A “diva” pick, someone with a forceful personality and strong presence who is obviously posturing for 2016 (for example, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, or Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, though both have denied having interest in the job), or a “shotgun wedding” pick, choosing a rival or rival’s son (namely Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a diva in his own right) in order to win a potential convention floor fight, would just feed into the narrative that Romney is opportunistic, craven and soulless.

Rubio, Christie and Paul are also in the middle of serving only their first terms in office, like McDonnell, Portman, Martinez, Ayotte and Sandoval. And of these potential picks, only Christie has carved out a record of significant accomplishments since being sworn in. But the New Jersey governor appears the least interested among them in the vice presidency, talking openly of waiting 2012 out and running for the top job in 2016 instead — unhelpful talk for Romney, a man whom Christie has endorsed and campaigned alongside, as it suggests the governor expects there will be no Republican incumbent in the White House in four years’ time.

So, Romney is left with a long list of unappealing options for his running mate. There is not a lot he can do that would really be a “game change” just because the popular perception of him is so cynical. So what if he were to take the ultimate risk and make the ultimate pander — and completely turn this campaign inside out?

Enter Gov. Luis Fortuño of Puerto Rico, who is currently running for reelection and trying to shepherd the Commonwealth toward a vote in favor of statehood this year.

Fortuño endorsed Romney in Florida back in January, and he’s refused to rule out vice presidential speculation. He has strong conservative credentials; somewhat whimsically, conservative commentator George Will floated his name for the top of the Republican national ticket a few years back.

As the island territory’s resident commissioner, or nonvoting representative in the U.S. House of Representatives, Fortuño was known as an ardent opponent of legalized abortion, legal recognition for same-sex couples and government regulation. As governor, Fortuño has pursued pro-business policies heavy on corporate tax cuts, as well as industrial-strength downsizing of the territorial government.

In sum, Fortuño is a conservative guy, comparable to “Tea Party” governors on the mainland like Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio and Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania. He just happens to be Puerto Rican.

Meanwhile, Romney is a vocal supporter of the Puerto Rico statehood movement. (Who knows what that means in terms of what he actually believes, but in other news, the sun will rise tomorrow morning.) There are 5 million Puerto Ricans living in the United States, and about one-fifth of them are in Florida.

Romney argues that he will “restore America’s greatness.” He boasts of turning around the scandal-plagued Salt Lake City Olympics and he talks about, in effect, building a stronger nation out of the economically struggling, bitterly divided United States of today.

By picking Fortuño, Romney nationalizes Puerto Rico. He turns it into a Republican cause célèbre, a microcosm of how his administration will, like Fortuño and his predecessors have built Puerto Rico into a viable candidate for statehood out of being a dirt-poor backwater of the Caribbean, “restore America’s greatness” and forge a better future.

And that is an argument that can be made. Yes, Puerto Rico has a lower per capita income level than any of the 50 states, but the gap has been generally narrowing, and quite significantly. The government remains corrupt, but Fortuño has adopted that quintessential and strangely popular Republican strategy of simply firing as many people as he can (including lawmakers; the territorial legislature is set for a significant downsizing next year, if voters assent) to “solve” that problem. The island has industrialized, and infrastructure projects are ongoing across Puerto Rico — some very popular, others less so. But Puerto Rico is developing.

So, what if Romney eschews what is safe or what is expected? What if he concludes his message problem really is a millstone to which he is bound in adamantine chains? What if he concludes, and probably rightly so, that a dull pick like McDonnell or Portman, or a gimmicky-but-predictable pick like Martinez or Jindal, or an obvious “hail Mary” attempt at bringing some star power to the ticket with Rubio or Paul, will not pry those chains loose? What if Fortuño is the pick?

That would change the game. It would give Romney a cause. And it just might net him Florida, which he needs to win, and repair just a little of the extensive damage the Republican Party has done to its relationship with Latinos.

And if Puerto Rico does become a state on the back of a Romney/Fortuño ticket revitalizing the status question as a priority for national Republicans, as it once was in the halcyon days of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, it might not end up being as blue as Democrats expect.

Time to embrace Tuareg separatists in northern Mali

1 April 2012 Mark Miller No comments

Fighters from the Tuareg ethnic group have now seized virtually all of Azawad, or northern Mali, through force of arms. Now we may see their mettle at the art of politics.

Mali has been thrown into chaos in these beginning months of 2012, first coping with a string of defeats along the international border with Algeria at the hands of Tuareg militants in January. Many of the Tuaregs had returned from fighting on one side or the other in last year’s Libyan civil war loaded for bear, carting off heavy weapons that had either been looted from the late Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi’s armories or spirited into the North African country by the Qatari and Sudanese governments (or non-state arms dealers) and bringing them back to their camps for use in the struggle for an independent homeland.

Late last month, the capital of Bamako was rocked by a sudden army mutiny, with United States-trained army Capt. Amadou Sanogo abruptly deposing democratically elected President Amadou Toumani Toure and declaring martial law over Mali.

Sanogo cited Toure’s failure to defeat the Tuareg rebels as among the army’s chief reasons for launching a coup. But ironically, Sanogo has proven far less competent at handling the crisis than Toure, whose whereabouts are still unknown.

Since the military seized power, government troops have been forced into full retreat by a rebel blitzkrieg in the north. On three consecutive days spanning the end of March and the beginning of April, the eponymous capitals of the Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu regions fell. Azawad is now under the de facto control of rebel groups.

The U.S. supported Toure’s government in its vain efforts to resist the heavily armed rebels. Even since Toure’s ouster, Washington has made noises of concern over the Tuareg advance.

But there is no longer a credible government in Mali. The military junta is extraordinarily weak; its formal suspension of the constitution, declared after Toure apparently fled the capital, lasted less than 10 days after the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, applied pressure on Sanogo to steer Mali back onto a democratic course.

Sanogo himself is a low-ranking officer whose troops in the north have deserted or defected in droves. He lacks the stature to hold the country together.

It is time for the U.S. to quietly change course now.

The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, commonly known by its French acronym MNLA, is a secular group seeking an independent state for the Tuareg people. Like the Kurds of the Middle East, the Tuaregs have had their lands roughly chopped up between multiple states dominated by non-Tuareg ethnic groups and openly anti-Tuareg governments. Their fight for independence, however, has historically been centered on northern Mali.

With Azawad now beyond Bamako’s control, the MNLA now appears well positioned to establish a secular Tuareg homeland. But the MNLA has a problem, and its name is Iyad ag Ghaly.

Ag Ghaly was once a leader of the Tuareg independence movement. He was reportedly no more an Islamist than his compatriots in the movement during the 1980s and 1990s, until undergoing a sudden shift toward religion and beginning to associate with jihadists.

Hitherto, ag Ghaly’s recently formed Ansar Dine movement, an Islamist militant group with the self-declared goal of imposing sharia law not just in Mali’s restive north, but throughout the entire country, has fought alongside the MNLA in an uneasy alliance of convenience. But with the military victory in Azawad all but complete, reports are increasing that depict rising tension between the MNLA and ag Ghaly’s Islamists.

This is hardly surprising. While Ansar Dine and the MNLA share a common enemy in Bamako, their designs on Azawad are quite different. Their goals are incompatible.

At least from their public statements, the secular leaders of the MNLA would be quite happy to leave the rest of Mali in peace as long as the Tuareg homeland’s independence is acknowledged. They have scorned theocracy as alien “to the foundations of our culture and civilization” and indicated their only desire is to carve out Azawad as a free state and then be left in peace by their non-Tuareg neighbors.

But not all of Azawad is under the control of the MNLA alone. On 31 March, the Associated Press quoted Kidal residents as saying Ansar Dine fighters in the city had pulled down the flags of the MNLA meant to represent an independent Azawad. A spokesman for the group has claimed control of Aguelhok, one of the region’s most developed communes, and other towns near the Algerian border.

Even if its control of Azawad is not locked down, the MNLA has the Malian government on the back foot. And with Sanogo trying frantically to dissuade ECOWAS from sealing off the landlocked country’s borders with neighboring states, an act that would wreak havoc on Mali’s economy, Bamako appears far too distracted to launch a meaningful counteroffensive right now.

If the leaders of the MNLA are smart, they will seek to wield ag Ghaly as a cudgel against the junta. The MNLA has expressed no desire to cross the line it has drawn separating its claim of Azawad from Mali’s south. Ag Ghaly, on the other hand, has insisted on sharia law for the entire country of Mali, and he has enough ties to jihadists that rumors of an alliance between Ansar Dine and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb seem all too plausible.

The MNLA, which has publicly excoriated its erstwhile ally ag Ghaly as a “criminal” in recent weeks, surely wants to assert full control over Kidal, where Ansar Dine’s presence appears strongest. But it also wants Azawad’s independence, and it knows that what is of far more concern to not just Bamako, but also to Washington and the governments of neighboring states like Algeria and Niger, is not a Tuareg rebellion but an Islamist jihad in the Sahel. A scenario in which it offers to “deal with” ag Ghaly in exchange for recognition, or at least autonomy, from Bamako is far from inconceivable.

Yet whether the MNLA is politically savvy enough to play ag Ghaly and Sanogo off of one another, it is important for the U.S. to get out in front of this geopolitical groundquake.

For one, the MNLA has fewer than 2,000 fighters, according to most estimates. It is generally considered to be larger than Ansar Dine, and it has consistently outfought the more numerous Malian soldiers and their auxiliaries in the field, but it is not a large fighting force, and Azawad is a vast region approximately the size of Pakistan. It is unclear that even if the MNLA turned on its Islamist comrades-in-arms, it would be capable of stamping ag Ghaly’s movement out unassisted.

The second part is perhaps the most critical for a leader who sees the world as President Barack Obama does. If Azawad becomes independent and self-governing, whether that status is recognized or not by the international community, it will be a country directly in the middle of a region bedeviled by Islamist militant movements. That means it will be a pivotal battleground, and willingness on the part of Tuareg leaders to work with the U.S. will be vital to our interests in West Africa.

The U.S. has already committed troops and resources to fighting many of those groups, including Boko Haram in Nigeria and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in North Africa. Establishing a working relationship with Azawad’s new government, even if it took power by force, should be a priority for the Obama administration, which relies heavily on cooperation with less than savory regimes in places like Pakistan, Yemen and Ethiopia to combat international terrorist groups.

Some might argue that by turning around and recognizing the MNLA’s territorial claims, the U.S. would be throwing Mali under the bus. But last month’s coup has obviated Mali’s claim to being a democracy, and despite Sanogo’s U.S. training, he is hardly Obama’s man in Bamako. The junta is weak, Washington owes it no loyalty or friendship, and now American overtures to the MNLA would be seen (correctly) by most observers as a rational, realpolitik reaction to avoid the further disintegration of Mali, rather than as the betrayal of an ally.

The events of the past two weeks in Mali may have been dramatic and unexpected, but they have yielded a sudden reality that Washington and other invested parties must deal with.

Meanwhile, the longer it takes the U.S. to abandon the fantasy of a united Mali and begin endeavoring to cooperate with the separatists rather than opposing them, the longer Ansar Dine and other Islamist groups will likely have to set down roots in Azawad.

Opinion Amadou Sanogo, Amadou Toumani Toure, Ansar Dine, Azawad, Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, foreign policy, Iyad ag Ghaly, Libya, Mali, MNLA, National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, North Africa, Tuareg, West Africa, White House

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Mark D. Miller II

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