It doesn’t dramatically alter the 2010 landscape, but it is significant nonetheless: This morning, Rep. George Radanovich (CA-19) became the first Republican to announce an outright retirement.
CA-19 thus becomes the 13th open seat Republicans will have to defend next year (the 12 other districts are being vacated because the incumbent is running for higher-office, and not because they are leaving politics); of these, 4 should be competitive. Democrats are defending 10 open seats, of which 7 should be competitive.
After the wave of Democrats announcing they wouldn’t run for office next year, Radanovich’s decision will help the DCCC insist there is no bizarre retirement virus solely going around Democratic ranks.
Yet, there is no question that this open seat is nowhere near as big of a headache for Republicans than TN-06, TN-08, WA-03 and KS-03 are for Democrats; in fact, the DCCC would gladly agree to defend four CA-19s in exchange of just one TN-06. The district gave George W. Bush a 61% to 38% victory; four years later, Barack Obama significantly closed the gap, but John McCain still prevailed 52% to 46%. In short, and however substantial the continuing blue-ing of California politics, this isn’t the most hospitable of districts for Democrats.
Radanovich prepared his succession before leaving office: He announced state Senator Jeff Denham would run to replace him in the same statement in which he revealed his retirement: “I am pleased to say that I reached out to State Senator Jeff Denham and asked him to consider running for my seat… After consulting with his family, he agreed to be our Republican candidate for the 19th congressional district.” (Interestingly, Denham went through a recall campaign in 2008: Democrats targeted him after he refused to help them pass the state budget, and managed to collect the 50,000 signatures they needed to put a recall on the ballot. But Denham prevailed with 73% of the vote in the ensuing vote.)
Why would Radanovich take such great pain to ensure Denham wastes no time before jumping in the race and gets his name in every story written today about CA-19? Jim Patterson, who served as the Mayor of Fresno from 1993 to 2001, was preparing to challenge Radanovich in the GOP primary; Patterson will almost certainly want to run for the open seat, so that should set up a competitive primary. A Denham-Patterson showdown would have the potential to be very divisive because Patterson used to be a Club for Growth-protege. In 2002, he ran for another House district (CA-21) with the Club’s help; though he lost that year, the Club could certainly guarantee he has enough funds to mount a top-notch campaign this year.
The GOP primary could get still more confusing if another politician whose name is now being floated decides to jump in: former Rep. Richard Pombo, who represented CA-11 until he lost in 2006, partly because he was surrounded by a cloud of controversies involving allegations of corruption and his status as environmental groups’ top target.
Depending on just how divisive the June primary gets - and depending who Republicans end up nominating - Democrats could have a chance at making the general election competitive, though that will require that they field a competitive nominee of their own. It is telling that most speculation at this point is surrounding GOP candidates. The local party could choose to concentrate on picking-up Denham’s state Senate seat, which leans blue: Democrats are hoping to expand their majority in the state legislature to finally be able to break the 2/3rd requirement to pass budgets, and this open seat is one of their most promising opportunities. (Denham was term-limited anyway, so this opening doesn’t come from his running for the House.)
For Democrats, the promise of Radanovich’s retirement might be longer-term than the 2010 cycle: Since CA-19 will be represented by a freshman come 2011, it could give state Democrats more leeway to draw a friendlier district - perhaps by putting in parts of neighboring CA-03, CA-18 and CA-20, which both went for Obama by more than 20%. Sure, they could do so whoever is the congressman, but California Democrats haven’t been willing to push aggressive redistricting in the past.
The Democrats will look at redistricting as a tool to gain CA-19. The Dems are better served to defending 40+ vulnerable or open seats as opposed to throwing money at a 20-1 longshot.
CA-19 has a Cook PVI of R+9, which isn’t insurmontable for Dem, but they would be the decided underdog. Obama did improve substantially over John Kerry, but it doesn’t change the fact that McCain still won the district by a decent margin.
If the Demcorats had strong candidates who could contest this district then it would be competive, however there is no bench in the district, no prominent current or former elected officals who are generally the strongest candidates.
On the face of it, it seems to make sense for the D’s to not seriously contest this district, given the number of seats they have to defend and the potential difficulty of the year.
However, I can’t help but wonder if failing to seriously challenge ANY such districts might be counterproductive. The less they spread the battlefield, the more resources the GOP has to spend to target D incumbents and open seats.
That said, that could very well prove to be wrong. I just can’t help but wonder what it means that the D’s don’t seem to be seriously contesting ANY R districts this year that isn’t an open seat that went for Obama. (with one or two exceptions, most notably Cao’s seat, obviously)
Radanovich is not retiring for political reasons. His wife has cancer and family comes first.