Blue-State Republicans and Red-State Democrats: How to Win With Both

One of the great mysteries that has stumped political strategists for decades is how to predict and, depending on your inclinations in the state, stop or encourage, split-ticket voting.  Every other pundit has a thought on what causes it, from "all politics is local" to "candidates-still-matter" to "I don't trust either party/I'm an Independent" to "who the hell can figure out what goes on in the Dakotas?"

Every time that you think you can figure it out, another race comes in to stump you-while you have New England and the Deep South almost completely realigning, people like Susan Collins and John Barrow seem impenetrable.  This past election cycle saw Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Manchin elected to the Senate in state's with a PVI (the Cook Political Report's PVI, which is the gold standard of grading a district for political nerds and is well-worth reading through even if you aren't a polling junkie) of double digits in favor of the GOP.  Even when in 2004 and 2006, with the Democratic holds on the South and the GOP's holds on New England disappearing, there's still a number of seats that confound conventional wisdom for anyone trying to guess the results of an election, or especially, those trying to change it.

This science of finding how to get people to split their ticket is going to be pivotal going into 2014's electoral races, as both the Democrats (with Senate races) and the Republicans (with Governor's races) are going to have concerns with it.  Judging solely on states Obama and Romney won, the Democrats have seven Senate seats that were in Romney states (the seats of Kay Hagan, Tim Johnson, Jay Rockefeller, Mary Landrieu, Mark Begich, Mark Pryor, and Max Baucus), a daunting number in a sixth year itch election.  Conversely, the Republicans, if you count the governor's races from both 2013 and 2014, have eleven blue state seats they will have to defend (their incumbents are Chris Christie, Bob McDonnell, Terry Branstad, Paul LePage, Scott Walker, Rick Snyder, Rick Scott, Tom Corbett, Susana Martinez, Brian Sandoval, and John Kasich).

Of the two, the Republicans, considering they are the party-out-of-power and with one exception, have all incumbents running, are on better footing.  Amongst the eleven, the only ones that seem truly vulnerable at the moment are Corbett, Snyder, Scott, and McDonnell's open seats.  The rest of the incumbents enjoy strong approval ratings or have not garnered much-in-the-line of quality candidates to make them appear vulnerable.

Part of this I personally find bizarre, and have a difficulty grasping.  It's easy to see that Susana Martinez, Chris Christie, and Brian Sandoval all have the types of personalities that play well with the media-they buck their own party occasionally, they give great interviews, in Christie's case they appear on Saturday Night Live, but their respective voting records are fairly conservative.  None of them are a Connie Morella or Zell Miller style candidate, where they are really just a member of their party in name only-the most moderate (in terms of actual legislation, and not just hyperbole amongst political analysts who misuse the word moderate more often than the general populace misuses the word literally) Republican governor in the country is probably Chris Christie, and he's not what one would consider a moderate under any traditional use of the word.

The Senate Democrats, on the opposite side, all seem to be vulnerable in some sense of the word, though that could change as the races take shape.  It's difficult to see either West Virginia or South Dakota going to the Democrats at this point, so they are extreme underdogs, but candidate recruiting in North Carolina, Alaska, Montana, and Arkansas is still in motion, and in the cases of Montana (where popular Gov. Brian Schweitzer may run and keep this race firmly Democratic) and North Carolina (the bluest of these five states and the state Romney won by the smallest margin), they could theoretically enter a phase where they are no longer competitive, but for now all seem to be battles.  The arguments that these senators are moderates is considerably stronger than the Republican gubernatorial candidates, but with the possible exception of Hagan, they are all to the left of your average voter in their home state.

Oddly enough, neither party has a lot of shoes on the other foot with these elections.  The Republicans will have an incredible amount of defense to play in 2016 with seven blue-state GOP incumbents up for reelection, but this cycle their only Obama-state incumbent is Susan Collins in Maine.  The Democrats have only one as well, the Arkansas gubernatorial race where Mike Beebe is retiring.  Beebe's seat is ripe for the plucking (though the Democrats appear to have a very credible candidate in Rep. Mike Ross), but Collins seat is Lucy and the Football for the Democrats.  Either way though, the offensive/defensive lines for both Senate and Gubernatorial races are decidedly different.

So this gets to the question of how do you somehow win when your state's voters don't like your party label, and how do you, when you're a candidate like Barbara Buono in New Jersey or Gary King in New Mexico, use the D behind your name to your advantage when faced with a popular incumbent?  The question isn't easy (otherwise people like Mary Landrieu and Susan Collins would have never made it to the Senate, much less be completing their third terms), but part of it is taking a look at how these candidates got elected in the first place.

The first big thing to point out is that most of these governors were part of the landslide GOP victory of 2008 (with the exceptions of McDonnell and Christie).  In most cases, not only were they given the biggest Republican wind since 1994, Democratic gubernatorial recruitment in 2010 was paltry.  Our candidates in Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Michigan, in particular, were extremely weak, with us picking from a second string in states that, at the time, we didn't have much of a bench.  Some of the states we had incumbents that struggled severely (particularly Iowa and New Jersey).  And finally, there were a couple of states where we ran the right candidates, had decent campaigns, but came up just short due to the national environment (Wisconsin, Florida, and Ohio).

So how do we reverse it, particularly against incumbents instead of open seats (always a bigger challenge)?  The first thing is to take a play from St. Sen. Barbara Buono's campaign in New Jersey, who ran a very smart first campaign commercial this past week.  Buono, who has a last name that is slightly hard to pronounce, created a cheeky ad about her last name, pointing out how it's pronounced, but then slipped in a comparison to popular New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and pointed out quite clearly that she is a Democrat (in a subsequent ad, you can seen "Barbara Buono, Democrat" on the bottom of the screen for the full run of the ad).  Running against a governor that is popular like Chris Christie, Buono's best (admittedly long, but definitely best) shot is to appeal almost exclusively to the base in New Jersey.  New Jersey is a blue state, a solid blue state, and one that if all reliable Democratic voters lined up behind Buono, she'd win decisively.  Her opponent is intent on running for President at some point, and while he'll go to the middle on occasion, some issues (women's reproductive rights, gay marriage, taxing the wealthy) he's not going to budge on for fear of a backlash in the 2016 primaries, despite these positions being popular with Garden State voters.  Buono needs to take advantage of this in a blue state, and hammer Christie early to start gaining vital campaign dollars and to close a sizable gap in the polls.

This is true for most of these seats.  While none of the other states (with the possible exception of Maine, which has a strong third party contingent that will hold the Democrats back, making this race very tricky) are as liberal as New Jersey, they all feature up-and-coming politicians, and in the cases of Scott Walker, Susana Martinez, and Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia, candidates that are likely looking at a national race in the future.  Democrats need to finish recruitment (the bench in Wisconsin is particularly troubling considering how terribly the Badger State Democrats bungled the recall of the governor) first, but once we have our candidates, the best thing to do is to get out early and, after a cursory series of introductory ads (showing who you are to the state), start going after the GOP from the left on popular progressive issues in the state.  The reason to do this is that the Republican candidates can't go too far to the middle early on in an election cycle with the looming potential of a Tea Party challenge a possibility in a primary if they don't appear conservative enough.

The opposite is of course true for our Senate Democrats.  All of them are going to have to defend Barack Obama to some degree in their reelections, but they're going to need to make their independent mark in some fashion.  The problem with running against your party is when you try to be misleading.  You are stuck with the D behind your name, even if it might not be the most advantageous thing in the world.  If you voted for Obamacare, point out how many people in your state gained insurance as a result.  If you voted for further gun control, talk about how that will protect communities.  Don't try to have it both ways on an issue-it makes a candidate look weak and like they're trying to feed their state double talk.

For example, Mary Landrieu, who is normally a very savvy politician, recently botched an interview about her views on gay marriage, saying that she supported it personally, but wouldn't vote that way professionally because it didn't reflect the views of Louisianans.  Gay marriage may be unpopular in Louisiana, but considering that she is never going to actually have to vote on it, she probably should have just come out for it, but given one of the watered-down "but religious institutions wouldn't have to do it" sort of answers.  That way she pleased her base without getting too on-the-bad-side of the moderates in her state who don't support gay marriage.  With her current interview, she still gives the Republicans a video of her endorsing gay marriage to run against, but also alienates more liberal voters in the state and, in particular, those in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles who help bankroll Senate campaigns.

If the Democrats running this year want a recent and excellent example to follow, now-Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota is a prime example.  She ran a pitch perfect campaign that she had no business winning-Mitt Romney was winning full-force across the state and her opponent wasn't superb, but he wasn't scandal-plagued by any means.  Heitkamp stood firm in most of her stances, including some Democrats couldn't stand (Keystone Pipeline, gun control) and some potentially unpopular in her state (general support for Obama's health plan, Pro-Choice on abortion).   She ran a direct-to-the-camera set of commercials, and had a spectacular ground-game, going out and meeting as many voters as possible, something that people like Begich, Schweitzer (fingers crossed), and Pryor especially need to do considering the small size of their respective states.  Heitkamp's victory was thin (the thinnest in the country in 2012), but it was a victory, and every red-state Democrat should be studying it as they prep for next November.

So, to sum up an article I've spent a few days writing, I do feel that there's a lot of great game to play in 2014, and despite what a couple of writers at the Washington Post are clamoring about, it's not a done deal.  The DNC is going to need to have a fine balancing act to win both Senate and Governor's seats, and President Obama is going to need to step up to the campaigning plate in a way similar to George W. Bush during his presidency (something Obama has never really done in his six years as a national candidate), but there are definitely spoils to be won next year, provided the candidates can find a balance and run focused campaigns.