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CT, PA: GOP Plowing Huge Sums Into Northeast Races
House GOP strategists are dumping huge sums of cash into the Northeast, in an effort to stave off electoral disaster in the region.
Republican incumbents in the Philadelphia area -- Reps. Jim Gerlach, Curt Weldon and Mike Fitzpatrick -- as well as Connecticut Reps. Rob Simmons and Nancy Johnson are slated to get roughly $10 million combined in party advertising.
Oddly, Connecticut Rep. Chris Shays is not on the list -- even though Ned Lamont's victory is putting the pro-war Shays in serious jeopardy.
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Shays appears to be dead. The RNCC is doing triage, and they never liked the guy anyway. Unlike Simmons, who actually has a bluer district, Shays is openly and aggressively anti-Bush on a lot of issues. They are throwing him overboard, just trying to hang on to a majority by focusing on a few races. If I were them, I'd do the same thing.
August 16, 2006 12:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't live in CT anymore. Is there polling that shows that Shays is "dead" or is that mere conjecture?
He will have trouble yes, but all long-term incumbent Congressmen have a base of support in their own districts from personal favors and handouts given over the years and it is never easy to unseat them, no matter what happens nationally.
Local politics to some extent insulates Congressmen from these problems. It's not an insurrmounable wall, but it IS a very high one. Very few incumbents get tossed if they run a decent campaign.
Thus, I think this will be a very competitive race and Shays might still eake out a win.
I think the last analysis I saw of this race rated it a "tossup".
August 16, 2006 1:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that Shays is in a tossup, not leaning-Dem, but I also think CODemocrat's "triage" metaphor is prety apt. They'd much rather spend a little money to get a youngish conservative like Jeff Lamberti in under the radar than dump a ton of money into defending an obvious thorn in their side.
Clearly both sides have done a lot more polling than what they've actually released, and Republicans have released something like four polls, one of which was of OH-18 and showed Ney behind. We don't know what the NRCC knows about Shays' race, but we do know that they'll be spending for value, not just incumbent preservation.
Maybe that's why they're backing off on Geoff Davis in KY-4; they figure it won't be hard to pick it up after Lucas retires, whereas if they lose PA-6 now they're never getting it back. Ditto Chris Chocola - his seat is far more likely to swing back in a few cycles than these suburban northeastern seats.
August 21, 2006 1:08 AM | Reply | Permalink