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2005: An Eventful Year
By Rhodes Cook
Editor, The Rhodes Cook Letter
As originally published in the "The Rhodes Cook Letter".
But 2005 was hardly a year for reflection, as volatile events exploded one after another across the political landscape – from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to the ongoing war in Iraq, from high gasoline prices to ethical questions about the Republican leadership in Washington, from the splintering of the AFL-CIO to a pair of openings on the Supreme Court.
All in all, it was an eventful year, one that clearly slowed the GOP momentum coming out of the 2004 election.
But the Democrats are not without their problems. Party registration totals from around the country this fall show a continued decline in the Democrats’ advantage over the Republicans. Social issues, such as gay marriage, remain nettlesome as they continue to appear on state ballots. And the defeat of redistricting reform measures in California and Ohio this November put the brake on any national movement for the creation of more competitive congressional districts that would presumably aid the Democrats in their bid to reclaim the House of Representatives.
Republican Problems Writ Large
Yet clearly, President George W. Bush and his Republican colleagues were the most visible losers in 2005. The president’s job approval rating, 55% in the Gallup Poll last Thanksgiving, had dropped to 37% (the lowest level of his presidency) by Thanksgiving this year. It is the first sub-40% score for any second-term president since Richard Nixon, And it marks a drop of roughly one-third in Bush’s approval rating over the last year, with signs of fraying even in his Republican base.
Bush’s flagging fortunes were felt by Republican candidates at the polls, as the GOP absorbed high-profile losses in gubernatorial races this month in New Jersey and Virginia, while in California, GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suffered defeat on all four ballot measures that he put forward to refashion state government.
In the elections of 2002 and 2004, Bush was an asset to Republican candidates. But that was not the case this year. During the closing weeks of the campaign in Virginia, GOP gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore first avoided, then embraced the president and lost. In New Jersey, Democratic Sen. Jon Corzine, the party’s gubernatorial candidate, repeatedly tied his Republican opponent to Bush and won. The highest profile Republican to win this November was New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who governs Gotham as the liberal Democrat that he once was.
To be sure, many of the results in 2005 were predictable in light of the “red state, blue state” continuum in vogue these days. Democrats won the governorship in “blue state” New Jersey. Republicans won the lieutenant governorship and held the state Legislature in “red state” Virginia. In “blue state” Maine, voters gave a thumbs up to gay rights by rejecting a ballot measure that would have repealed a state anti-discrimination statute. In “red state” Texas, voters gave a thumbs down to gay marriage.
‘Red State’ Defeat
More noteworthy, though, were the results in 2005 that defied the prevailing political geography, foremost of which was the gubernatorial victory of Democrat Tim Kaine in Virginia. As the Old Dominion’s lieutenant governor, Kaine was the prime beneficiary of political coattails in 2005, as he tied himself closely to the state’s popular outgoing Democratic Gov. Mark Warner and matched the 52% vote share that Warner won four years earlier.
Victory, though, was hardly automatic for Kaine in a state that has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1964. Kilgore sought to paint his Democratic opponent as an “out of the Virginia mainstream” liberal by attacking Kaine’s opposition to the state’s death penalty. But Kaine deftly parried the assault by placing his opposition to capital punishment within the context of his Catholic faith, while emphasizing that he would uphold state law and enforce the death penalty if elected.
Kaine was clearly a different type of candidate than Warner, and not only in his faith --- Kaine is Virginia’s first Catholic governor. Warner was a wealthy Northern Virginia entrepreneur with no track record in public office when he was elected governor in 2001. Kaine is a former mayor of the majority-black city of Richmond with the look of a dedicated policy wonk. Warner presented himself as the “NASCAR” candidate, sensitive to the rights of gun owners, as he successfully bid for rural support. Kaine took a different route to victory, making a special effort to win support in Virginia’s normally Republican outer suburbs (commonly known as “exurbs”), where he stressed the connection between transportation and land use.
His emphasis on the exurbs in particular and the suburbs in general paid off in historic fashion, illustrated by the results in populous Northern Virginia. For years, the region has featured three layers of political archaeology. The urban-oriented inner suburbs of Arlington and Alexandria closest to the nation’s capital have been fiercely Democratic. The second layer, Fairfax County, home to roughly 15% of Virginia voters, is the most populous jurisdiction in the state. For years it has been politically marginal. The fast-growing outer suburbs of Loudoun and Prince William counties have been reliably Republican.
But this fall, virtually the whole suburban terrain from the Potomac River west to the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains voted for Kaine. He carried both Arlington and Alexandria with more than 70% of the vote, Fairfax County with 60%, Loudoun County with 52%, and Prince William County with 50%. Kaine’s advantage in these five jurisdictions alone was 110,000 votes, roughly equal to his margin of victory statewide.
Shifting Issues
Equally ominous for the Republicans is their loss of control of the issue agenda in 2005. At the beginning of the year, President Bush made the privatization of Social Security his prime issue. But he was unable to sell it. And as the year ends, Iraq and illegal immigration are at the center of debate, both issues which tend to work against the GOP.
The potency of the war issue was evident in the August special congressional election in Ohio, where Democrat Paul Hackett, a Marine reservist who had recently returned from duty in Iraq, sharply criticized President Bush over the war’s conduct. Not only did his brazenness not seem to hurt him. But in the overwhelming Republican district near Cincinnati, he nearly won.
The power of the illegal immigration issue was evident in the October special congressional election in Southern California, where Jim Gilchrist, a leader in organizing volunteer patrols along the Mexican border, finished third with 15% of the vote. What made his vote particularly noteworthy is that he ran not as a Democrat or Republican, but on the ballot line of the American Independent Party, a nearly dormant remnant of George Wallace’s 1968 third-party presidential campaign. His vote denied the Republican front-runner an outright majority, forcing a Dec. 6 runoff in which Gilchrest will again be on the ballot.
It is an open question whether the illegal immigration issue has the power to affect races in all parts of the country. In Virginia, Republican Kilgore sought to make his opposition to the use of public funds for the creation of a center for day laborers in Fairfax County a major issue in his gubernatorial campaign. Kaine responded with a direct appeal for the region’s growing Hispanic vote by airing ads in Spanish.
Yet the issue of illegal immigration has shown particular power in the Southwest, where it has roiled Republican politics for the past year. In the summer of 2004, several GOP House members in Arizona and Utah drew primary opposition from challengers who based their campaigns on the charge that the incumbents were soft on illegal immigration. All of the incumbents prevailed, although in some cases they lost upwards of 40% of the Republican primary vote.
Nor did Republicans get much mileage in 2005 from their traditional support for tax cuts and lower government spending, a vital part of the GOP mantra. In Colorado Nov. 1, voters approved a temporary suspension of the state spending cap, enabling the state to retain billions of dollars in tax revenue over the next five years rather than refund it to taxpayers as required by the Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights (TABOR), a part of the state constitution passed by Colorado voters more than a decade ago.
The suspension of the tax refund split Republicans, with Colorado’s GOP governor, Bill Owens, in favor of the change and anti-tax advocates viscerally opposed. Ultimately, Colorado voters approved the suspension by 4 percentage points, due in large part to overwhelming support in the liberal Democratic strongholds of Denver, Boulder and the ski resorts of Colorado’s “granola belt.” But the measure also passed narrowly in the politically marginal suburbs of Arapahoe and Jefferson counties outside Denver.
California Rebuff
Meanwhile, a week later in California, voters rejected another ballot measure designed to curb government spending. Proposed by Gov. Schwarzenegger, it would have tied state spending to revenue intake while allowing the governor to make spending cuts when revenue fell below the total that was forecast. It was one of four ballot measures sponsored by Schwarzenegger that voters defeated this month and the one that lost by the widest margin, almost 25 percentage points.
His bid to require state public employee unions to gain the written permission of their members to spend dues for political purposes lost by more than 5 points. His proposal to require public school teachers to work five years before gaining tenure lost by 10 points. And his plan to turn over congressional and legislative redistricting from the state legislature to a panel of retired judges lost by almost 20 points. Two years after sending Schwarzenegger to Sacramento, California voters offered its governor an across the board rebuff - voting no, no, no, no on his propositions to reorder the state in a manner more to his liking.
A favorable sign for the Democrats was that organized labor, divided nationally with the exodus from the AFL-CIO this year of several heavyweight unions – including the Teamsters, the Service Employees International Union, and the United Food and Commercial Workers – was seemingly united in California against Schwarzenegger’s initiatives.
Some Democratic Concerns
While the GOP setbacks this year were writ large, the Democrats are not free of their own concerns.
At the top of the list is the party’s declining advantage in voter registration. One of the lasting legacies of the Democrats’ dominance during the New Deal era has been a decided edge over the Republicans in registered voters. But that advantage has been steadily declining over the last few decades and the downward trend continued in 2005.
In 1987, near the close of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, there were 11.5 million more registered Democrats than Republicans in the 27 states that traditionally register voters by party. In late 2000, near the end of the presidency of Bill Clinton, the Democratic advantage was less than 9.5 million. At the time of the 2004 presidential election, the Democrats’ edge was barely 9.1 million. By this November, it had declined further, to less than 8.7 million.
Much of the party’s recent falloff has been in the South. Since the 2004 presidential election, the Democratic advantage over the Republicans in the five Southern states with party registration has dropped by more than 200,000. But it is not just a Dixie problem for the Democrats. Their registration advantage over the Republicans is down more than 100,000 from last fall in California, off more than 30,000 in Pennsylvania, and down by more than 20,000 in West Virginia.
And in 2005, Democrats continued to be bedeviled by the issue of gay marriage. Wherever it has appeared on the ballot, a ban on same-sex marriage has been approved overwhelmingly, albeit by wider margins in “Red America” than “Blue America.” It may not technically be a wedge issue, but it has tended to have a tonal effect on other races with which it has shared the ballot. Last November, a gay marriage ban was put before the voters in 11 states, including Ohio, and arguably played a role in creating a favorable atmosphere for Bush to carry the pivotal Buckeye state. The ban carried in all but one of Ohio’s 88 counties (Athens, home of Ohio University).
This year, the ban on same-sex marriage was on the ballot in Kansas and Texas, prevailing in each state with more than two-thirds of the vote. In Texas, as in Ohio, only one county voted against the ban (Travis, which contains Texas’ most liberal city, Austin). Elsewhere across the Lone Star state, support for the gay marriage ban was overwhelming. It passed by a margin of 4-to-1 in the county (McLennan) that includes the president’s Crawford ranch, by a margin of 5-to-1 in the home base (Fort Bend County) of beleaguered Republican Rep. Tom DeLay, and by a margin of 9-to-1 in the county (Midland) where President Bush was raised.
Nor was there much support for gay marriage in Texas’ Hispanic strongholds. In Starr County, the most Hispanic county in the country (98%) according to the 2000 Census, the ban passed by a margin of greater than 4-to-1.
Meanwhile, the ballot measures this fall that would have been most potentially helpful to the Democrats in their bid to gain control of the House were decisively defeated in California and Ohio. Each would have turned over congressional redistricting to an independent panel, presumably increasing the prospects for electoral competition in House races. In 2004, no House incumbents were beaten in either state, and in Ohio there were also no House winners with less than 55% of the vote. In California, there were just two.
Yet other than Schwarzenegger’s efforts, redistricting reform drew no major support within the political establishment in either state and lost badly in each. In California, only 40% of voters supported the redistricting measure, and it passed in only five of the state’s 58 counties. The measure fared even worse in Ohio, drawing only 30% support and failing in every county in the state.
What’s Next?
One of the big questions peering into 2006 is how high is the level of anti-incumbent sentiment? This year’s elections did not answer that. The high-profile contests upheld the status quo. Democrats will succeed Democrats in the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia. Schwarzenegger’s four ballot measures were beaten in California but so were four others, as voters basically opted for no change.
Yet in Pennsylvania, voters were so incensed by a surreptitious pay raise for state officials approved this summer (and later rescinded) by the state Legislature that they voted out one of the two state Supreme Court justices who were running for a new 10-year term. Over the years, incumbent justices in Pennsylvania have been routinely retained without fanfare. But with no state legislators on the ballot in 2005, the two justices up for retention this year became the target of voter unrest and pilloried as “enablers” of an archaic state government rife with cronyism. The Republican justice, backed by former GOP Gov. Tom Ridge, narrowly won her retention vote with 54%. The Democratic justice received 49% and lost.
Yet while there is no definitive answer as yet to the question of whether 2006 will be a strong anti-incumbent year that could fuel a Democratic comeback on Capitol Hill, the 2005 results did underscore an old political verity – money is the mother’s milk of politics. Corzine reportedly spent more than $40 million from his personal fortune this year to win the New Jersey governorship. Bloomberg reportedly spent more than $70 million of his own money to win another term as mayor of New York City. And in California, all sides on the various ballot measures reportedly spent in the vicinity of a quarter billion dollars, with Schwarzenegger putting up $7 million of his own money in support of his propositions.
Money certainly talked in 2005, and there is no indication that it will be any quieter in 2006.
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Rhodes Cook
rhodescook@aol.com© Rhodes Cook 2005.
