Three More Specials

For those looking for clues to the fall elections, the special congressional contests thus far has proved to be a mixed bag.

Democrats swept all five special House elections held last year, including a pick up in November of a formerly Republican district in upstate New York. But Republicans trumped that with a special Senate victory in Massachusetts in January.

Each seat switch was historic. The Democratic triumph was the first for the party in at least portions of New York’s 23rd District since the 19^th century, while Scott Brown’s come-from-way-behind win was the first for a GOP Senate candidate in Massachusetts since 1972. And for the seat held for more than a half century by John and Ted Kennedy, no less.

Now, there are three more special elections sprinkled across the spring for a trio of Democratic House seats. A special election in the Florida 19^th is set for April 13 and that in the Pennsylvania 12^th for May 18. A contest in the Hawaii 1^st is tentatively scheduled for May 22. (Another House seat will come vacant next week when Republican Rep. Nathan Deal of Georgia resigns to focus on his campaign for governor. But no date has been set as yet for a special election in his heavily Republican district.)

Two of the three seats currently up for grabs should remain in Democratic hands – the south Florida 19^th vacated by Robert Wexler, who left Congress in January to become president of the Center for Middle East Peace, and the Honolulu-based Hawaii 1^st, where Neil Abercrombie resigned yesterday to concentrate on his gubernatorial bid in the Aloha State.

The western Pennsylvania 12^th District is another matter. The seat abruptly came open in early February with the death of John Murtha. Big-name Democrats, including former Lt. Gov. Mark Singel and former state Treasurer Barbara Hafer, are pursuing the seat.

But the Pennsylvania 12^th is highly marginal terrain. It is allegedly the only district in the country which voted for Democrat John Kerry for president in 2004, then switched to Republican John McCain in 2008. And in early 1974, it won a spot in American political lore by being one of a handful of formerly Republican districts that Democrats won in advance of their sweeping post-Watergate success that fall.

Murtha was the special election winner then, and it would be ironic if a Republican regained it in similar fashion this year. Such an outcome would certainly be heralded as a harbinger of Republican success in November.