Photograph by Matt Rourke/AP Photo

Rep. Allyson Schwartz in Philadelphia.

Republicans don’t have much of a chance at winning the Philadelphia-area congressional district that Democratic Rep. Allyson Schwartz plans to give up to run for governor next year.

And that’s just fine by Republicans.

That’s because Republicans who redrew district lines before the 2012 elections packed Democrats in Schwartz’s 13^th district, taking in parts of Philadelphia and inner suburban Montgomery County, as part of a strategy to draw and concede a few overwhelmingly Democratic districts as a small price to pay for helping Republicans win more districts by smaller but consistent margins.

The plan worked. Republicans won 13 of 18 Pennsylvania districts even as they lost the statewide House vote by 2.8 million to 2.7 million votes. Republicans won their districts with an average of 59 percent of the vote compared with 76 percent for the five Democrats. In the presidential balloting, the districts also broke 13 to 5 in favor of Republican Mitt Romney even as he lost Pennsylvania by more than 5 points and 309,000 votes to President Barack Obama.

In Montgomery, Republican line-drawers gave almost all of the strongly Democratic areas to Schwartz and Democrat Chaka Fattah while shifting competitive and Republican-leaning precincts to the districts of the three Republicans who represent part of the county. Obama won 63 percent of the vote in the Montgomery precincts in Schwartz’s district, compared with 57 percent countywide.

An analysis of the precinct-by-precinct vote in Montgomery underscores how Democratic voters are more heavily clustered than Republican voters who are spread out more efficiently.

Obama won at least 75 percent of the vote in 48 Montgomery County precincts, of which 38 are in Schwartz’s district and seven in Fattah’s Philadelphia-centered district. Romney didn’t win 75 percent in any Montgomery precinct that cast more than 20 votes. Of the 113 precincts that Romney did win, usually with less than 60 percent of the vote, 90 are in districts represented by Republicans.

Original post is Why Republicans OK Conceding Schwartz’s Pennsylvania District by Political Capital.

House Speaker William J. Howell, a Republican, ruled that the Senate redistricting plan was “not germane” because it made sweeping amendments to a House bill that made minor technical amendments to state House districts.

“This vast rewrite” by the Senate went “well beyond the original purpose” of the underlying House bill, Howell said during a state legislative session.

Senate Republicans sought to substitute their map for the one that Democrats enacted in 2011, when they held the majority. The Senate now is tied at 20-20. It passed the redistricting plan on a 20-19 vote on Jan. 21, when one Democratic senator was out of town to attend President Barack Obama’s inaugural ceremony.

The unexpected move made some Republicans uneasy, including Gov. Bob McDonnell, who’s trying to get a rewrite of transportation laws through the legislature.

The attempt to redraw district boundaries underscored how political line-drawing can be. Aided by sophisticated computer mapping software and precinct-level election results, partisan legislators reshape districts to give their side a political advantage.

Original post is Virginia Senate Redistricting Plan Axed by Political Capital.

Photograph by Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo

California Citizens Redistricting Commission member Vincent Barabba, left, watches as Secretary of State Debra Bowen certifies one of the new legislative and congressional maps in Sacramento, Calif., in this file photo.

The California congressional district map used for the Nov. 6 election was the first crafted by an independent redistricting commission. The idea was to draw more compact and competitive districts than the map it is superseding, a document drawn by partisan state legislators to protect incumbents in both parties.

So how did the commission-drawn map perform?

It certainly helped produce unusually large turnover in the delegation. The 53-member House contingent taking office next month includes 14 freshmen. The members departing through retirement or defeat together have more than 200 years of service.

Democrats won 38 of 53 seats, a net increase of four, and President Barack Obama carried 41 districts to 12 for Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Obama beat Romney by 60 percent to 37 percent statewide.

California is “a very blue state, and it becomes more so as the electorate becomes more minority,” Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at The University of California at San Diego, said in an interview.

Democrats probably will target the three Republicans in 2014 who won on Nov. 6 in districts Obama also carried.

Democrats didn’t even have a candidate in the San Bernardino-based 31st District because Rep. Gary Miller and another Republican won the two general election berths in the “top-two” primary in June. Miller’s district gave 57 percent to Obama.

Democrats probably will target Rep.-elect David Valadao, who won with 58 percent in a Central Valley-based district where 55 percent voted Obama. Democratic candidate recruitment faltered there.

Freshman Jeff Denham took 53 percent in a Modesto-area district that went to Obama with 51 percent.

All 38 Democrats who won Nov. 6 will represent districts Obama carried, though some of them will be pressed for re-election in 2014.

They include Reps.-elect Ami Bera of the Sacramento-area 7^th District, Scott Peters of the San Diego-area 52^nd District and Raul Ruiz of the 36^th District in and around Palm Springs. All three unseated Republican incumbents in districts that Obama won with 51 or 52 percent.

“There are going to be some more competitive races coming up,” Jacobson said. “Democrats won’t have the president on the top of the ticket coming up in 2014, and turnout is likely to be lower among Democratic constituencies.”

Seven Democrats and two Republicans won their House seats with less than 55 percent of the vote. The total includes Democrat Eric Swalwell, who unseated 20-term Democrat Pete Stark, and 19-term Democrat Henry Waxman, who fended off a challenge from a wealthy independent.

The winning presidential nominee’s margin of victory was fewer than 10 points in seven of 53 districts, including those won by Denham, Bera, Ruiz and Peters. Veteran Republican incumbents Buck McKeon, Ed Royce and Darrell Issa represent the other three districts, which all voted for Romney.

McKeon’s district, which includes parts of Los Angeles and Ventura Counties in southern California, was the closest in the state in the presidential balloting, backing Romney by 50 percent to 48 percent.

Original post is Grading California’s Congressional Map by Political Capital.

Photograph by Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo

Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, left, talks with Rep. Tom Latham, R-Iowa, during a Statehouse rally in Des Moines, Iowa.

Updated: 5:15 p.m.

The Troubled Asset Relief Program is a campaign issue in a race between two Iowa U.S. House members who took opposite positions on the $700 billion Wall Street financial bailout.

Democrat Leonard Boswell “voted for the TARP Wall Street bailout,” a narrator says in an ad for Republican Tom Latham that first aired in Des Moines last night, according to Kantar Media’s CMAG.

Boswell voted for TARP in October 2008 along with 171 other Democrats and 91 Republicans, including Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee; John Boehner of Ohio, who’s now the House Speaker; and Eric Cantor of Virginia, who’s now the Majority Leader. Latham is a close political ally of Boehner.

At the time of the vote, Boswell said the House ”voted for the good of the country” and that it was a recognition that “what happens on Wall Street affects Main Street.”

Latham’s ad also attacks Boswell for backing the 2010 health-care overhaul, which didn’t receive any Republican backing, and for opposing trade agreements with Panama and South Korea that Latham’s ad said would have helped Iowa’s farmers and economy.

Boswell said he couldn’t vote for trade agreements “that only benefit big corporations at the expense of our working class.”

Latham’s ad also refers to his Nov. 6 opponent as “longtime congressman Leonard Boswell,” even though Latham was first elected to Congress in 1994, two years before Boswell. It’s a sign that even veteran members of Congress may distance themselves from an institution that has approval ratings near historic lows.

Boswell and Latham are seeking Iowa’s 3rd District in and around Des Moines following changes made in redistricting last year. Iowa’s House delegation is shrinking by one seat, to four overall, after slow population growth in the past decade.

Boswell currently represents more of the reconfigured district, while Latham is better-funded, with $2.1 million in campaign funds to Boswell’s $474,000 as of June 30.

Original post is Wall Street Bailout Issue in Race Between Two Iowa Congressmen by Political Capital.

Photograph by Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg

The U.S. Capitol in Washington.

That’s the approval rating for the U.S. Congress less than two months before the Nov. 6 election, according to a Gallup survey conducted Sept. 6-9.

It’s the lowest rating that Gallup has measured this late in an election year, and barely above the record-low 10 percent approval rating measured in February and August, the polling organization said Sept. 14.

Turnover in congressional seats tends to be higher in years of low approval ratings, and a redrawing of congressional lines before the election is forcing House incumbents to seek new terms in unfamiliar terrain.

Yet the public’s anti-Congress sentiment may not translate into substantial incumbent losses in the Nov. 6 election, following so-called ‘`wave” elections in pro-Democratic 2006 and 2008 and in pro-Republican 2010. While the 13 House members unseated in primary elections this year is the most since 1992, eight of them lost to other members after redistricting.

Control of Congress is divided between the two parties. Republicans have a 240-190 advantage in the House, which has five vacancies. Democrats have a 53-47 edge in the Senate and are defending 23 of the 33 seats on general election ballots in November.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 13% by Political Capital.

Photograph by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Representative Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat from Ohio, greets delegates at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Charlotte.

Thirteen members of the U.S. House have been defeated for re-election in primaries before the Nov. 6 general election, the most in two decades.

It’s not a harbinger of an anti-incumbent vote in eight weeks, even as public approval of Congress hovers near an all-time low. Eight of the 13 lost to other House members after changes made in post-Census redistricting.

Those eight were Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, Donald Manzullo of Illinois, Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania, Steve Rothman of New Jersey, Russ Carnahan of Missouri, Hansen Clarke of Michigan, Sandy Adams of Florida and Ben Quayle of Arizona.

The five House members who lost to outside challengers were Jean Schmidt of Ohio, Tim Holden of Pennsylvania, Silvestre Reyes of Texas, John Sullivan of Oklahoma and Cliff Stearns of Florida.

Nineteen House members were unseated in the primaries in 1992, when election defeats rose for reasons related to redistricting and a House bank scandal involving members who overdrew their congressional checking accounts.

The 13 who lost this year exceeds the total of 12 House members who were denied renomination in the previous four elections combined.

This year’s tally doesn’t include Louisiana, which features a first-round matchup on Nov. 6 between Republican Reps. Charles Boustany and Jeff Landry, who are sharing a ballot with three lesser-known candidates. Louisiana is the only state to hold its primary on the national Election Day; if no candidate wins a majority of the vote in the all-candidate, single-ballot race, a runoff election between the top two vote-getters follows in December.

In California, which held a June primary similar in format to Louisiana’s system, House Democrats are pitted against one another in two districts on Nov. 6. In Iowa and Ohio, a House Democrat will run against a House Republican after redistricting.

Indiana Republican Richard Lugar was the only senator denied renomination this election cycle. He lost to state Treasurer Richard Mourdock.

The primaries yesterday in New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware were the last before Nov. 6.

Original post is Congressional Primaries End With Most House Defeats Since 1992 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo

Rep. Ben Quayle, with wife Tiffany, at an evening gathering of supporters as he concedes his Republican primary loss to Rep. David Schweikert on Aug. 28, 2012, in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Ben Quayle’s loss in a Republican primary yesterday in Arizona made him an unlucky 13^th House member to be defeated for re-election in the primaries.

Quayle, the son of former Vice President Dan Quayle, was unseated by another Republican congressman, David Schweikert, by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent. The two freshmen sought the same metropolitan Phoenix district after a commission redrew Arizona’s district lines.

The Quayle-Schweikert race was the eighth of 13 matchups between two House incumbents, and the last to be decided before the Nov. 6 election. Five other House members were unseated by challengers.

Quayle was the third House member elected 22 months ago to be beaten for re-election in the primary, joining Florida Republican Sandy Adams and Michigan Democrat Hansen Clarke, who lost to more senior House members.

Fifty-two House members, including 28 Democrats and 24 Republicans, aren’t returning to the chamber next year.

Original post is Quayle’s Arizona Loss Adds to List of Lame-Duck Legislators by Political Capital.

Photograph by Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

Chairman John Mica, R-Fla., conducts the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee markup hearing of "The American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act" on Feb. 2, 2012.

Florida U.S. Representative John Mica’s television ad attacking Representative Sandy Adams’s votes on budget and spending bills could include dozens of their Republican colleagues in its sweep.

“Sandy Adams talks about reducing the deficit. Given the chance, she failed us,” a narrator in a Mica commercial says of Adams, a freshman who’s seeking the same east-central Florida district in the Aug. 14 Republican primary after changes in redistricting.

The Mica ad, which first began running yesterday in Orlando, criticizes six of Adams’ “no” votes in 2011, including one on a fiscal 2012 budget blueprint that sought to slash spending and another five on amendments to appropriations bills that would have mandated across-the-board spending cuts.

“The difference is clear,” the narrator concludes. “John Mica is a conservative who takes action. Sandy Adams just talks.”

Yet Adams wasn’t alone among Republicans in opposing Mica’s positions. She sided with a majority of Republicans on three of the six votes, including one in which she sided with 195 other Republicans against 38 others including Mica.

On the budget vote, House Republicans were split down the middle, with 119 supporting and 120 opposing a proposal by the Republican Study Committee that would have mandated deeper spending cuts than other budget alternatives.

Among those siding with Adams on that vote were Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, the second-ranking House Republican, and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of California, the third-ranking House Republican. Cantor sided with Adams on all four of the six votes for which he was present.

Adams is fighting back. Mica is “desperately scrambling to rebrand himself as a conservative,” her campaign spokeswoman Lisa Boothe said in a statement today.

Mica and Adams are seeking the Republican-leaning 7th District, which includes most of Seminole County and parts of Orange and Volusia Counties. Adams currently represents about 51 percent of the people in the district, compared to 42 percent for Mica.

The Mica-Adams race is one of a record 13 House contests in which one Representative is challenging another. In 11 of them, the contestants are of the same party.

Original post is In Florida Republican Matchup, Mica Ad Says Adams ‘Failed Us’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Representative Charlie Rangel celebrates his 82nd birthday with friends and colleagues at a party held for him in Washington on June 20, 2012.

It’s not just a story of a younger politician edging out a senior one who’s served his time.

When New Yorkers in Upper Manhattan and part of the Bronx choose today between incumbent Representative Charlie Rangel and insurgent Adriano Espaillat, they’ll be battling for the new face of New York City. Gentrification and rising real estate values helped diminish the district’s African-American majority, and a court-ordered redistricting plan gave the seat in a reconfigured 13th District a Hispanic majority for the first time.

The 82-year old Rangel, a 21-term Harlem congressman, became the most powerful African-American in Congress when he served as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee from 2007 to 2010.

The 57-year old Espaillat hopes to become the first Dominican-American elected to Congress.

The district is nearly 80 percent Democratic, so today’s winner will likely go to Washington.

With Rangel reeling from health setbacks and a 2010 House censure over ethical and financial lapses, Espaillat says it’s time for a change. In a debate, he called Rangel a “poster-child” for dysfunction in Washington.

Rangel responded that none of his four challengers – there are three other African-Americans in the race – seemed to disagree with him on any substantive issue. “It looks as though they’re applying for my job,” he quipped.

With Democrats in the minority in the U.S. House, none of the candidates is likely to be bringing home much bacon any time soon, and given the lack of substantive differences the contest is likely to come down to whose supporters come out in greater force. Espaillat is trying to energize his ethnic base, tirelessly campaigning in Spanish-speaking neighborhoods, while the aging and ailing Rangel has been collecting endorsements from local players including Governor Andrew Cuomo.

With about 260,000 registered Democrats in the new district, and only 51,000 ballots cast in the 2010 primary, the job could remain Rangel’s.

“There’s always been Black-Hispanic tension in New York,” says Hank Sheinkopf, a long-time New York political consultant who is not working for anyone in the race.

Voter turnout holds the key, says Sheinkopf, noting that Hispanics have a historically low propensity to vote in New York. Add to that a June election date, as New York’s primaries are traditionally held in September, which tilts the scales heavily in Rangel’s favor.

“The voter most likely to turn out in New York is a 55-year old plus Black woman,” Sheinkopf said. “And there are a lot of them still in Harlem.”

Original post is Rangel Pins Future on his Past Base by Political Capital.

Photograph by Keith Srakocic/AP Photo

Rep. Jason Altmire through a window as he votes in the Pennsylvania primary on April 24, 2012 in McCandless, Pa.

The losses of Democratic Representatives Tim Holden and Jason Altmire in Pennsylvania primary elections yesterday will thin the ranks of Democrats who sometimes buck their party leadership on issues including fiscal policy and health care.

Here’s just one way of measuring how the Democratic center has shrunk: no more than eight of the 34 House Democrats who voted against President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul just 25 months ago will return to Congress next year.

In this group, Altmire and Holden were the first to be defeated for re-election in the primaries. Both lost after Republican legislators substantially revised their districts. Three other Democrats who opposed the health measure aren’t seeking re-election this year.

Half of the 34 Democrats lost re-election in November 2010, when the Republican upswing was so strong it swept out even those Democrats who brandished their ‘no’ vote as a sign of their political independence. Two others didn’t seek re-election in 2010 and another two lost races for other offices.

That leaves eight House Democrats who opposed the health law and are seeking re-election. Four are targets of Republicans in redistricting: John Barrow of Georgia, Larry Kissell and Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, and Jim Matheson of Utah.

Ben Chandler of Kentucky, who was re-elected last year by 647 votes out of about 239,000 cast, was strengthened by redistricting and is slightly favored to win a new term. Collin Peterson of Minnesota is more politically secure, even in a mostly rural and Republican-leaning district. Dan Lipinski of Illinois and Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts represent strongly Democratic districts.

Original post is Can the (Democratic) Center Hold? by Political Capital.