Campaign Whispers: Keeping the CD 8 Seat

Congressional District 8 is a majority Republican district. We Democrats tend to forget this essential fact. It is a fairly narrow majority, less than 20K voters, amid a sea of independentents and unregistered voters who can swamp any party advantage. Really, CD 8 is the only Arizona District that is truly competitive, there only being about a 5% difference in party registration, but the lessons of history are there to be read, nonetheless.

Consider that in 1982 McNulty won as a liberal democrat in a similar demographic situation against Jim Kolbe. McNulty voted like a liberal Democrat and Democrats loved him for it. But 2 years later, Kolbe, who essentially never stopped running, used McNulty’s record and a bag of dirty campaigning tricks to oust McNulty and hold the seat for the GOP over the next 22 years.

I was talking with Jonathan Paton, State Representative for LD 30, the other night at Drinking Liberally (no, he’s not a liberal, but we practice political ecumenism in the best liberal tradition at DL), and the subject of the CD 8 race came up. Obviously, anything said by a Republican about the race needs be taken with a pillar of salt, but Jon did make an interesting point worth discussing.

Paton and Gabby and a few other local politicos have basically been chums and known each other since grade school. So, Paton thinks he has a pretty good handle on Gabby’s essential political philosphy. He points out that Gabby has been very good in casting votes with her caucus while in the lege, but she was a Republican at one time for a reason, and he thinks that she is essentially centrist in her views. He says that should Gabby be nominated she will certainly tack hard for the center in the general, and will vote a lot like Kolbe if elected.

He reasonably points out that Democrats should consider this a good thing in terms of holding the seat in the long-run. With Gabby, the Democratic caucus will get a key vote in a pinch and seat to add to a majority, but probably not a progressive rabble-rouser like Grijalva. However, we would also not stand in danger of losing the seat after one term, like happened to McNulty, and then have to suffer another generation with an entrenched Republican in the seat. In the end, the nation is so closely divided that maybe a centrist Democrat is preferable to a centrist Republican, even if they voted alike on many issues.

Paton thinks that Weiss and Latas are both genuinely very liberal and will tend to vote the way they are campaigning in the primary. Weiss even brought in Jim McNulty’s former campaign chairman to chair her own campaign, how’s that for history repeating itself? (Though Jim McNulty himself is listed as endorsing Giffords) In Paton’s view, the result of a Weiss or Latas win will be Huffman or Graf coming back at them in two years, beating them up with their records, and with Bush no longer lighting a fire under the Democrats, possibly turfing either incumbent out. With the political hurricane of the past 6 years at our backs, it would be truly surprising if a yellow dog couldn’t win CD 8 this cycle, but the more imporant question is can a Democrat hold it when the winds die down?

Gabby, on the other hand, Jon argues, with her centrist DLC credentials and philosophy, will be much harder to dislodge once she settles into the seat, and would likely be able to hold the seat as long as she likes, regardless of the political climate.

It might all be an amusing psy-op on Jon’s part, he is an army intelligence officer after all (and has volunteered to take an intel billet in Iraq for which he is leaving at the end of the month – please wish him godspeed and a safe return regardless of your political views), but it is an interesting view of the race from the perspective of someone who knows Gabby well, served with her in the lege, and is an intelligent and only comparatively moderate Republican (even though some idiots in his own party consider the man a RINO).

What Paton’s conundrum boils down to is this: do you want a solid Democrat who often votes like a moderate Republican but who can hold the seat indefinitely, or do you want a fire-breathing liberal Democrat who stands a good chance of getting turfed out by a Republican in a few years?

Discuss. And please, not in the face…