Campaign Diaries

There are scandals that can hurt a candidate by putting him on the defensive (for instance Norm Coleman’s suits) and then there are scandals whose suggestion alone is enough to end a politician’s career. And it seems that Florida’s 16th congressional district has a certain je ne sais quoi that attracts the latter kind of scandal.

In 2006, late September revelations about Rep. Mark Foley’s improper flirtations with House pages plunged the House GOP into a month-long nightmare and transformed a relatively safe Republican seat into a Democratic pick-up. Now, Foley’s replacement Tim Mahoney is caught in his own sex-related controversy (broken by ABC News) that threatens to flip the seat back to Republicans.

It is not just that Mahoney had an affair - plenty of politicians recover from that. It’s that Mahoney is reported to have paid her off when she threatened to sue, promised her a two-year job and allegedly threatened to terminate her work if she ended their affair. Mahoney is said to have told her, “You work at my pleasure.” That ABC reports that Mahoney had already started the affair during his 2006 run in which he promised a “more moral” world will certainly not help his cause.

Mahoney was already in a very tough race that is rated a toss-up in my current ratings. Mahoney has been a poor campaigner, an unlikely representative and he has attracted unwanted attention for a number of statements he made since his election two years ago. He would have been prime target for House Republicans even without this scandal, but this certainly gives an opening for Republicans to strengthen their hold on at least one Democratic-held seat. The DCCC has already spent nearly half-a-million dollars on the seat, but it is unlikely they will now continue to help Mahoney win re-election; in fact, the House leadership is already doing its best to distance itself from the incumbent.

This serves as confirmation that 2008 will almost certainly not be 2006, when the GOP failed to pick-up a single Democratic district. In fact, Republicans are likely to knock off a few Democratic seats (LA-06, PA-11 and TX-22 are currently all rated lean take-over, though Cazayoux’s position appears to be improving in Louisiana), and that should certainly enter our calculations of changes in the House make-up.

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But even though Republicans might have received some good news at the micro level, the national picture continues to be very troubling. Not only are the fundamentals shifting towards Democrats but the GOP is in a bigger financial hole than it was in 2006, as is evidenced by the fact that the NRCC has only gone up on air in 6 districts for now, versus more than 40 for the DCCC.

Faced with a deluge of attack ads, Republican candidates who have been left to fend for themselves are bound to have a difficult time staying competitive. Two cases deserve special attention. First, the North Carolina Senate race: the DSCC has been pouring in millions in the state since August, and Dole’s numbers have collapsed. Now, Dole has tapped into her personal fortune to finance her race. For Republicans, this is at the same time good news (the money could be very useful in helping Dole survive) and a very worrisome development, as it underscores just how large their financial woes are; if even a big name like Dole cannot adequately fund her campaign, what must the situation be for other Republicans?

Part of that answer can be found in MN-03, a GOP-held open seat which has stayed very competitive until now. But that could soon change, as not only has the Democratic candidate Ashwin Madia reported having raised $900,000 in the third quarter (a very impressive total for a non-incumbent House candidate) but the NRCC is retreating from the district, using some of the resources planned to help MN-03 candidate Erik Paulsen into neighboring district (and supposedly safer Republican seat) MN-06. Meanwhile, the DCCC has already spent nearly $1 million in the race over the past month: can Paulsen stay afloat?

Now, Politico is reporting that the RNC is considering tapping into a $5 million credit line to run to the rescue of endangered incumbents and build a firewall, much as it tried to do (and largely failed) in 2006. The national party commitees typically stay out of congressional races in presidential years, and a large scale investment on the part of the RNC could certainly help the NRSC and NRCC close some of the gap with their Democratic counterparts - though it could also signify that the GOP is losing trust in the McCain campaign’s ability to regain much momentum. It is difficult to know exactly what would be done with this money and which races it would be allocated to, but building a firewall in their second and third-tier races seems highly necessary for Republicans to not collapse on Election Night.