Campaign Diaries

On February 11, 2008, Rep. John Shadegg announced he would not seek re-election to the House. His Republican colleagues and conservative activists immediately started pleading with him to reconsider, which led to the rare spectacle of a congressman un-retiring within just a couple of days: on February 21st, Shadegg retracted his retirement. And good thing too for Republicans: While AZ-03 is a red district, Democrats won many open seats in more hostile territory in 2008. (In AZ-01, for instance, which gave Barack Obama just 4% more, the Democratic candidate won the open seat in a landslide.) Had Shadegg stuck with his retirement, it could have been a tricky hold for the GOP.

Fast-forward to two years, and Shadegg has yet again announced his retirement. This time, however, the political environment will make it much tougher for Democrats to contest a district that gave George W. Bush a 17% victory in 2004. (McCain won by 15%, but it’s tough to use the 2008 presidential results since this was his home state.) This does not mean that Shadegg’s retirement is a minor story.

First, the Arizona Republican is the third straight congressman to announce his retirement; gone are the days in which a Democrat was calling it quits every few days. Sure, Shadegg was an obvious person to watch in terms of potential retirement (he has been on my watch list since the cycle began), but it’s tough to talk about a stampede of retiring Democrats or to over-analyze the reasons that might have pushed Gordon/Tanner/Moore/Baird to leave (are they scared of 2010? are they angry at Pelosi? are they just getting old?) when there are now nearly as many Republicans as Democrats who are leaving the House without running for higher office (3 against 4).

Of course, the GOP has the upper-hand in the open seat landscape, especially since Jim Gerlach dropping his gubernatorial bid deprived Democrats of one of only three certain open seat opportunities; Republicans, on the other hand, have 8 such opportunities (yes, I am including HI-01 because of the special election’s rules). But the GOP has more open seats overall (14 to 10), so this discrepancy is less a matter of a favorable environment than of Democrats having already picked-up most of the low-hanging fruits. Note that there was speculation in Florida papers that GOP Rep. Bill Young might announce his retirement on January 11th; that date has obviously passed without any word from the 79-year old lawmaker; his plans are one of the biggest shoes that have yet to drop in the 2010 House cycle.

Second, Shadegg’s departure is in and of itself a story because he is one of the leaders of House Republicans’ conservative wing. In 2009, he drew most attention when he led an effort to get Republicans to vote against the Stupak amendment, not because he opposed its content but because he thought that Nancy Pelosi would have a tough time passing the entire bill if the GOP joined the majority of Democrats in defeating the amendment. Shadegg got nowhere, but my point simply is that he’s the type of congressman willing to go after the leadership if he perceives them to be too accommodating. He also raised eyebrows for his extremist rhetoric on health-care reform (he said it would implement “Soviet-style gulag health care”) and the administration’s decision to organize the trial of 9/11 suspects in New York (he asked Bloomberg: “Well mayor, how are you going to feel when it is your daughter that is kidnapped at school by a terrorist?”).

In short, his retirement is a loss for the hard-right and a probable opportunity for Democrats and moderate Republicans to move the House a tiny bit leftward; even if the district elects as staunchly conservative a representative as Shadegg, it will take time before he can make himself as much of a presence on the Hill.

Third, the open seat race isn’t quite safe for Republicans. As I noted above, AZ-3’s presidential history does show it clearly leans to the right, even when we account for the fact that McCain’s performance might overstate the district’s attraction to the GOP. Furthermore, the district’s local officials are predominantly Republicans, which means that Democrats don’t have much of a bench from which to pick a solid contender. while there are plenty of interested Republicans: state Rep. Sam Crump, state Rep. Jim Weiers, state Senator Pamela Gorman, state Senator Jim Waring and even Treasurer Dean Martin, who just announced this week he would run for Governor. Once we add those factors to the national environment, it’s tough to think the NRCC might have lost much sleep last night over Shadegg’s retirement.

Yet, considering that open seat races are often a party’s best chance to contest a district, Democrats would be ill-advised to give up on AZ-03: George W. Bush won this district by a much smaller margin than he won Radanovich’s CA-19 and Brown’s SC-01 and by the same margin that he won Putnam’s FL-12. Furthermore, Arizona might be more hospitable to Democrats next year than other states like Pennsylvania or even South Carolina: indeed, the fact that the state’s Governor is a highly unpopular Republican who has struggled to deal with the economic crisis could mean voters are less committed to punishing Democrats than they would have been otherwise. (This would especially be the case if Brewer made it to the general election, where she’d be an underdog.)

Contesting the seat obviously requires fielding a candidate, and it appears that Democrats might stick with the candidate they already had in the race: attorney Jon Hulburd was discounted as a minor-league candidate in the initial hours following Shadegg’s retirement, but he is being treated as a serious contender ever since he reported having raised more than $300,000 in the fourth quarter. While that’s undoubtedly a large sum for a House challenger, this is as depressingly transparent as the link between fundraising strength and overall credibility as you’ll see. To be fair, Hulburd does seem to also be politically connected, as Democrats’ 2008 nominee Bob Lord (who came within 10% of Shadegg) was already advising him.

The only other name that is constantly popping up on the Democratic side is Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, who apparently briefly considered taking on Shadegg earlier this race. I see that he won his two mayoral races with more than 70% of the vote, which suggests he is popular enough that he could be competitive but I’m also reading that he is so clearly to the right of the Democratic mainstream that he would have trouble winning the primary. I don’t know much about Gordon, so I’ll wait to see if he actually gets in before analyzing his chances any more.

Another open seat, another mayor Democrats were hoping to recruit - and failed: Kansas Democrats have an awful record at fielding any candidate in any race this cycle, and that could be particularly problematic in KS-03, which they are defending and where they’ve had trouble recruiting someone for now. Yesterday, former Kansas City Mayor Carol Marinovich announced she would not run for Rep. Moore’s seat, which leaves her party searching. Yet, Democrats’ top choice has yet to make up his mind: Kansas City’s current Mayor Joe Reardon.