Special elections sometimes produce results that are unsustainable. A candidate can win a low-turnout special election for his or her party in territory (a House district or state) not generally too friendly to that political party, but be unable to hold the seat next time around. Both Scott Brown and Bob Turner are familiar with this concept. In two upcoming special elections, in South Carolina and Massachusetts, there is an opportunity for the “wrong” candidate (based on district or state fundamentals) to get it right.
Even if Stephen Colbert was not related to one of the candidates, South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District special election on May 7 would still be getting a lot of attention on the Comedy Central channel. The race to succeed Tim Scott as 1st District representative, following Scott’s appointment to the U.S. Senate by Governor Nikki Haley to replace Jim DeMint, is very close. A few recent private polls conducted for the Democrats show a small lead (within the margin of error) for Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the Democrat nominee, over former governor Mark Sanford. The latest publicly released poll from PPP, a left-leaning automated pollster with a very good track record in 2012, has Sanford ahead by 1%, 47-46 .
A poll taken April 19-21 by the same organization showed Colbert Busch ahead by a healthy 9 point margin. That poll was taken soon after it was revealed that Sanford was being taken to court by his ex-wife for allegedly trespassing at her home on Super Bowl Sunday. Sanford claims he went to the house to watch the game with a few of the couple’s children and provide them some company that day. In any case, the fallout from the trespassing story led the National Republican Congressional Committee to decide not to spend any money to defend the seat. The PPP poll indicated that many Republicans were planning to stay home and not participate in the special election. Some Republicans at the national level seemed to be OK with not having Sanford around as a distraction in Congress, and assumed a stronger candidate could regain the seat for the GOP in the 2014 midterms from Colbert Busch.
Democrats, on the other hand, sensing an excellent opportunity to win a heavily GOP district (Romney beat Obama by 18% in the 1st District last November), are advertising heavily and focusing on Sanford’s marital issues as governor. They are directly addressing Sanford’s adultery and his fabricated tale of hiking the Appalachian Trail when he was off to Argentina to visit with his girlfriend and now fiancée Maria Belen Chapur. In the only debate between the candidates, Colbert Busch challenged Sanford about the incident.
Despite the horrible publicity, and regularly serving as fodder for the late-night comedians, Sanford seems to have recovered a bit since the trespassing story broke. Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball has moved the race back to a tossup after having Colbert Busch the favorite .
Sanford was at one time considered a rising GOP star, a possible vice presidential candidate in 2008 and even a possible presidential contender for 2012 before the embarrassing South American journey derailed all that. Libertarian groups such as the Cato Institute strongly approved of Sanford’s resistance to state and federal spending. In the last few weeks, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, South Carolina Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, and Governor Nikki Haley have all endorsed Sanford in the special election. So has Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, perhaps looking for an unusual post-election interview, or just happy to endorse the “anything goes” philosophy of life.
What is apparent is that the election will be decided primarily by how voters feel about Sanford and not so much by how they feel about Colbert Busch, who to some extent is a placeholder for those Republicans who are unhappy with Sanford and unwilling to cover their eyes and vote for him. This group is likely to be disproportionately female.
This is South Carolina we are talking about, and there is some history of aggressive push polling (e.g., the Bush-McCain presidential primary in 2000). There are stories surfacing from left-wing groups that some push polling is already going on, directed at muddying up Colbert Busch. Of course, these stories may be as reliable as some of the stories of attacks on college campuses supposedly directed against women or minorities that turned out to have been created by the alleged victims.
Sanford’s campaign is also attempting to tie Colbert Busch to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and the agenda of liberals in the U.S. House, neither particularly popular in the district.
In Massachusetts, one of the bluest of blue states, the race to succeed John Kerry as senator is also surprisingly close at this point, though the election is over seven weeks away (June 25th). Former Republican Senator Scott Brown elected not to compete for the open seat. A victory in the special election would have given the seat to Brown only until 2014, and that would have meant four Senate races in four years for Brown, a bit too much presumably. Brown is reportedly looking instead at challenging Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire in 2014, a state where Republicans do about 15 points better than they do in Massachusetts.
With Brown out of the race, the prevailing political opinion was that the Democratic primary would determine the state’s next senator. Two congressmen squared off in the primary and Congressman Ed Markey defeated Steve Lynch to win the Democratic Party nomination. Markey, a career politician if there ever was one (his first race for the state House came at age 26), now will face off against Republican nominee Gabriel Gomez, a first-time candidate for public office. Gomez, the son of Colombian immigrants, is a graduate of the Naval Academy and a former Navy SEAL officer. He later attended the Harvard Business School and worked for an investment company.
In a year when public approval for members of Congress is near an all-time low, Markey, a Congressional “lifer,” will now face off against a first-time candidate, an Hispanic opponent with an impressive track record in both the military and business world. Two early polls show a surprisingly close race. The latest, by PPP, has Markey up 4 points, and an Emerson College poll has Markey up by 6.
Markey is, of course, far better known than Gomez, and it is a certainty that Democrat groups, anxious to avoid another upset special-election Senate defeat in the Bay State, will try to fill in the blanks and damage Gomez before he can get his own story out to voters. The opportunity for Gomez is, in part, due to Markey’s reflexive liberalism — one of the most partisan voting records among all the members of Congress. Even in Massachusetts he stands out.
Gomez, on the other hand, seems to understand the Scott Brown lesson — that Republicans can not win statewide in Massachusetts by moving too far from the center. In 2012, Scott Brown would likely have defeated Elizabeth Warren, except for the fact that many voters in the state were concerned that a Brown win might give the GOP control of the Senate. Given that the special election will not determine control of the Senate, that issue is off the table in this race.
Hispanics are now 10% of the population in Massachusetts, and while normally a very reliable Democrat voting group in the state, they might give Gomez a hearing. Gomez’s heritage could also limit, to some extent, the negativity of the Markey campaign and its backers, since the typical attacks launched on Republican candidates might not play so well when directed against an Hispanic with a distinguished military career.
There is one additional factor: the recent Boston Marathon bombing might make a candidate with Gomez’s background more appealing than a standard-bearer for conventional liberal political correctness.
At the moment, Democrats are favored to win both contests. If the GOP earns a split, Massachusetts is the victory they want.
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