Of the three institutions up for grabs this year, the House has always seemed the least likely for Dem success. It’s not because the party isn’t fielding great candidates, or because the GOP has done a bang-up job of running the chamber, but with redistricting schemes having stacked the cards in the Republicans’ favor, it’s been tough to see how Dems could gain the requisite seats.
On the surface, the challenge seems far from insurmountable. Dems would need a net gain of 11 seats to retake the majority. That doesn’t sound that bad. But with redistricting making fewer and fewer districts competitive, going +11 suggests nearly every close race would have to go our way.
Or so I thought.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer makes a fairly compelling case that a “miracle” isn’t out of the question.
Instead of a perfect storm, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer believes Democrats need only “a breeze.” That’s the weather-forecast bite line Hoyer has been spreading all over Boston this week. And he spent an hour with Time editors and correspondents explaining the new math.
Hoyer’s historical benchmark is 1994, the year Newt Gingrich and his band of GOP guerrillas stunned Democrats and captured the House. At the end of June 1994, there were 68 congressional seats around the country considered competitive — open seats contested by first-time Republican and Democratic candidates, or seats in which a vulnerable incumbent faced a strong challenge.
Of those competitive seats, Republicans had to win at least 38 to take the House, which they did. That meant winning one out of every 1.8 competitive races.
How does the 1994 math look ten years later? Democrats see 33 seats across the country as competitive — far less than the 68 in play in 1994, but then the Dems only need a net gain of 11 to win back the House. That means winning one out of every three competitive races — easier, perhaps, than the one out of every 1.8 Gingrich’s Republicans had to win in 1994.
Well, when Hoyer puts it that way, maybe it’s not that crazy.
Even the financial advantage the House GOP has always enjoyed is starting to disappear.
Money is a second indicator encouraging Hoyer’s optimism. Republicans have always raised truckloads more cash than Democrats in past elections. But for April, May and June of this year, House Democrats surged and by June 30, the Democratic campaign organization for the House had $18.5 million on hand compared with $20.2 million in GOP coffers — a far narrower Republican cash-on-hand advantage of than in the past.
And, as Jesse Lee noted earlier this week, the latest Newsweek poll had some unusually encouraging data:
If the election for U.S. Congress were being held today, would you vote for — the Republican Party’s candidate or the Democratic Party’s candidate for Congress in your district? As of today, do you lean more toward the Republican or the Democrat?
Republican 41
Democrat 51
Undecided/Other 8
The odds still aren’t great, particularly after DeLay’s re-redistricting stunt in Texas, but hope is far from lost. And wouldn’t it be great to see Nancy Pelosi as Speaker?