Posted on 05/07/2014 9:45:49 PM PDT by Red Steel
CHARLESTON, W.Va. – The U.S. House seat Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) has held since 1977 is now considered one of the most “vulnerable” in the country during the November general election.
“In the past, Rahall boasted one of the best local brands in politics, effectively keeping enough distance between himself and a national party that’s increasingly unpopular in West Virginia,” according to a Tuesday article in Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper.
But Shira Center, who contributed to that Roll Call report, said times are changing and so is the political climate in West Virginia, especially in Rahall’s 3rd District. “So many of the blue dog Democrats that represented the South for years and years and years, they’re all gone now. There are very few left, in any, in the southern states,” she said.
In the report, Roll Call said the following: “Every name on this list has a 50 percent chance, or more, of not returning to Congress next year. To compose this regular feature, Roll Call’s Politics Team examines every aspect of a member’s re-election prospects: district composition, campaign operation, fundraising, quality of opponent and recent performance.”
Last November, Rahall was not on the list. But, Center said, the race between Rahall and Sen. Evan Jenkins (R-Cabell, 5), both the likely nominees, is now considered a tossup. “It’s so clear to us that he (Rahall) is, without a doubt, one of the most vulnerable members up for reelection in 2014,” she said.
In 2012, during his last reelection campaign, Rahall won by 12 points, even though Mitt Romney beat President Barack Obama, who was at the top of the Democratic ticket, by 32 points in the 3rd District.
This time, Roll Call notes Rahall is putting up a “fierce” fight against Jenkins who is getting financial support from national Republican organizations. “If Rahall loses in the 3rd District, it will say more about the political climate in West Virginia than about his political acumen,” said the Roll Call report.
“‘The Rahall brand’ in itself, as long as there isn’t a ‘D’ next to it, is still very strong, very powerful in the District. So, if he can really rely on that, then that is how he wins,” Center said on Tuesday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”
In addition to Rahall, the other U.S. House members Roll Call considers “vulnerable” are Reps. Ron Barber (D-Ariz.), Kerry Bentivolio (R-Mich.), Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.), Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.), Michael Honda (D-Calif.), Ralph Hall (R-Tx.), Scott Peters (D-Calif.) and Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.).
Is “Dem Cong” anything like Viet Cong?
Good one!
No difference. ;-)
who is the conservative that can win next TUES in WV-2 ?
in WV-3, Jenkins calls himself a fiscal conservative. what else is he?
http://evanjenkins.com/issue/fiscal-conservative/
Party switching state Senator Evan Jenkins is the ONLY Republican running in WV-3 so.......
http://evanjenkins.com/evan-on-the-issues/page/2/
There is where he says he’s a social conservative, easy miss because it’s on “page 2”.
I’d be more concerned he’s not really a fiscal conservative than social.
This is Rahall’s first real race since 1990 (well he only got 54% last year) of all years, when won by only 4 points over one Marianne Brewster. Maybe FMDJ knows something about that race, in ‘88 she was also the nominee and got only 39%.
For WV-2 the candidate getting the most attention is former Maryland State Senator and GOP Chair Alex Mooney who has lots of big name conservative support and some criticism for carpetbagging.
Another prominent candidate is Charlotte Lane, they say she’s a RINO but “they” are a pro-Mooney blog post that attacks all his opponents as RINOs. Her webiste says she’s pro-life and pro-gun.
I would love to see 4 other upsets: CT-4, CT-5 (could), ME-2 and VT-at large. And 2 others: CT-1 and CT-3. (CT-1 is represented by someone who is bipolar, he talks conservative in the district, but votes Marxist in DC. CT-3 is represented by a Marxist.)
I guess our choices hafta be Lane and Mooney over Reed. We aren’t in a position to force conservatives to decide on one. They could lead to a Reed victory.
no polling that I see that indicates who leads the race.
http://wvforlife.org/political-helps/
WV for Life is neither endorsing nor commenting on #2. Just releasing survey results. Retards.
Nick Rahall’s close call in the now-defunct WV-4 (now WV-3) in 1990 was due to the fact he had some serious personal problems in the mid-to-late ‘80s. He racked up $60,000 in gambling debts in Las Vegas and was openly sued for recovery and in 1988 he was hit with drunk-driving charges on a visit to California. Add to that, his district was in open decline economically. Ex-Congressman and sitting Secretary of State Ken Hechler (his predecessor, and then only a sprightly 76 — he turns 100 this year) decided Rahall was a fiasco waiting to happen and held him to an unimpressive 57-43% margin after running hard on the issue of ethics and moral standards.
Republican Marianne Brewster should’ve had a potential upset in the making, but the Republicans didn’t give her a dime and she was outspent by Rahall by nearly 10-to-1. I think the GOP justified writing her off because this was the strongest Dem district in the state (and in a state which at the time had zero Republicans federally). Dukakis won here by a wide 58-42% over GHW Bush in 1988. Add to that, with the state due to shed that 4th seat for 1992, she would’ve likely served the one term before being redistricted in with a safe Dem incumbent from an adjacent seat. Curiously, about 66,000 people participated in the heated Democrat primary (where Rahall got under 38,000 votes), but in the general election, most of the Rahall voters clearly either sat it out or voted for Brewster, because Rahall just under 40,000 votes (Brewster got 37,000). She had actually received 50,000 two years earlier while Rahall lost half from that year (almost 80,000 votes).
Clearly, Rahall cleaned up his act and got more focused on his district from then on. This time, however, it will be the ideological/party shift that will be impossible for him to overcome, as the state has returned to its heavy GOP voting preferences from 1894-1932.
I see Reed gave one bad abortion answer, and I don’t like his lack of a record. Picking 1 candidate is always the only way to go if your aim is beat a specific candidate.
Okay found out some more about Lane, she USED to be pro-choice (and I guess anti-death penalty and pro-gun control too according to an old newspaper endorsement) but flip flopped (on abortion and guns at least). Don’t trust her.
http://www.newsmax.com/John-Gizzi/WestVirginia-AlexMooney-election/2014/04/02/id/563253/
http://phconservative.blogspot.com/2014/01/how-pro-life-voters-are-gaining-in.html
Reed, Lane and Mooney are the viable choices. Gotta go with Mooney.
Interesting, thanks.
Sad story, made all the sadder with the fact she’d probably have been a 1-termer even if she had won.
” the state has returned to its heavy GOP voting preferences from 1894-1932.”
I hope it starts tricking down to the state offices and the legislature pretty soon.
Barone mentioned at the time that the sitting WV House Speaker (as of 1990) coveted Rahall’s House seat, so presumably had the district not been merged with the 2nd or 3rd (since the 2nd and 3rd were merged instead), he probably would’ve run and won against Brewster in 1992.
I was looking at the polling data for the coming race this year, the Dem polling firm says Rahall is ahead by 12% while the GOP one says Jenkins is ahead by 14%. The primary is next Tuesday, and it will be curious to see how strongly Rahall performs, as he does have a challenger.
I expect the WV House to flip to the GOP for the first time since the 1928 elections (the Dems are ahead just 53-47). Before the 2012 elections, the last time they came close was in 1942 (50D-44R) and 1972 (57D-43R). The post-Watergate/Carter elections were so unbelievably devastating that the GOP dropped from 43 to 9 (!) seats by 1976. The Senate may take longer, but as I cited not so long ago, the Dems are ludicrously overrepresented there, 24D-10R (Jenkins’ switch brought it up from 9). In the 2004 elections, they were at 21D-13R.
This is rather similar to Arkansas, which had a gargantuan Dem Senate majority until recently when the floor finally collapsed (from 2000-2010, the GOP was outnumbered by 27D-8R and in 2 elections the GOP took 13 seats and went to 21R-14D). As with AR, once the GOP gets control of the WV leg, it’s unlikely to relinquish it for a long time to come.
good articles. Mooney it is. He is a must.
New poll from “DFM Research” (who?) has Rahall up by 9.
Interesting that the WV GOP had a better year in ‘42 than ‘46, at least in the state House (in the US House it was 3-3 in ‘42 and 4-2 R in ‘46). Boy ‘42 was a massive gain, from 20 seats to 44.
Some big swings, 1922 was a brief disaster.
Also remember in 1924, the Dem Presidential standard bearer (former Congressman and Wilson’s Solicitor-General John William Davis) hailed from WV. It was the last time a Conservative was on the Dem ticket for President (and the last time two Conservatives faced off on both tickets). The left was hysterical at the time, complaining about not having a choice (of course, we knew that feeling in 2008 and 2012).
1942 was also the last year the GOP was able to win a 6-year Senate race with Chapman Revercomb (he lost in 1948, but made a comeback for a 2-year term in 1956 when a young Cecil Underwood won the Governorship for the first time for the GOP since 1928).
Well they did get a choice when Doc Emmitt Brown, I mean Robert La Follette, ran.
Davis may have been the wrong kind of conservative, pro-segregation, against women’s suffrage (though maybe that WAS a bad idea, haha just kidding ladies). Still better than a commie though. Major fluke, the last one before him was Alton Parker right? Or was he not that conservative?
Yes, Davis wasn’t exactly “Conservative” in a way we’d consider favorable today on some of those issues. He was more of a Bourbon throwback. Of course, segregation was a mainstream plank for the Democrats (and it was, after all, the left-wing Wilson who reimplemented it in DC, doing more than a small number to all those Black Republican government employees who were about as close to being fully assimilated into society as one could get in those days).
As for Judge Alton Parker, he was somewhat harder to pin down (Wikipedia would call him a Conservative, but he seemed a bit of a mix — and the Dems were trying to unite the Bryan left and the Cleveland center-right). I’d call him a moderate, but he did repudiate the nutty free silverites and told the party he’d walk if they forced him to not support the Gold Standard. In that regard, he was clearly closer to the Cleveland Bourbonites.
It’s funny that Theodore Roosevelt was somewhat fearful of Parker’s candidacy, he thought because Parker hadn’t taken a strong stance on the issues of the day, that would have a strong appeal to the electorate. Of course, knowing what I know now about TR, I’d have probably cast a protest vote for Parker (not so in 1924, as I would’ve proudly voted for Coolidge).
I thinking the last rat nominee that wasn’t a commie POS was Al Smith. If I were a voter at the time there is little chance I’d have voted for him but knowing the future, I wish he had beaten Hoover, it couldn’t have turned out any worse.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.