Walter Shapiro, writing in Salon, uses the Murphy-Johnson race in the 5th District as a stepping off point for a discussion of the Dems' chances in the midterm election.
Since the days of Pericles, every politician campaigning for office has been guilty of hyperbole like "My election will decide the fate of civilization." But House candidate Chris Murphy had a point Saturday afternoon when he told a family of friendly Democrats at a local strawberry festival, "This race is going to be looked at nationally. This is one of the handful of races that will decide who controls Congress."
Fresh off a plane from San Francisco, where he attended a win-back-the-House fundraiser sponsored by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the 32-year-old Murphy, who gave up a state Senate seat to run for Congress, is emblematic of Democratic hopes this year in the Northeast. Running against 12-term Republican Nancy Johnson, 71, who has been in the House since he was in grade school, Murphy said, "We're going to be unapologetic in saying to people, 'Listen, this is your chance to stand up and say, Enough is enough. This isn't personal about Nancy Johnson. This is about a Congress which on every issue you care about has gone in the wrong direction.'"
A picnic table in front of a white clapboard Methodist church in small-town Connecticut is an odd venue to try to answer the vexing question, Can the Democrats win a congressional beachhead in November? But the earnest Murphy, dressed in suit pants, a white shirt and a blue tie, with a mop of brown hair falling over his eyes, is the type of challenger who must knock off an entrenched GOP incumbent if the Democrats are to pick up the 15 seats they need to take control of the House for the first time since 1994.
Even though he has raised more than $750,000, a strong early figure for a Democratic contender, Murphy faces a daunting challenge. Johnson, who has always cultivated a centrist reputation, was thought to be imperiled in 2002 when redistricting forced her to run against a Democratic House incumbent in Connecticut's recast 5th District. Instead, having raised almost $4 million for a district outside the hyper-expensive New York City media market, she won by a comfortable 23,000-vote margin. Even with John Kerry narrowly carrying the district in 2004, Johnson romped home against an underfunded Democrat challenger by more than 60,000 votes.
Johnson's seat is in play for only one reason: George W. Bush is less popular in Connecticut than an infestation of tent caterpillars. In fact, with three of its five House seats held by vulnerable GOP incumbents, Connecticut may be the state where Democrats finally get their revenge against Sunbelt conservatives. Triangulate all they want, last-gasp moderate Republicans like Chris Shays in affluent Fairfield County and Johnson herself find themselves trapped between their president and their congressional leadership on one hand and their Democratic-leaning constituents on the other.
Johnson's biggest structural advantages are incumbency and enough money (thanks to her seniority on the Ways and Means Committee, a mecca for lobbyists) to saturate the airwaves on the Hartford and New Haven TV stations that adjoin the district. When the left-wing independent Democratic group MoveOn.org ran ads lambasting Johnson over the Medicare prescription-drug bill and gasoline prices, the incumbent responded with a TV blitz tarring Murphy. "Chris Murphy's special-interests are at it again" was the snide way one of the Johnson spots began. "We basically introduced Murphy to the voters," boasted Johnson's campaign manager Dave Boomer. "And the reason we did this was that MoveOn was attacking us and we had to respond."
The Johnson race illustrates why handicapping House and Senate races is so difficult. You can put the relevant factors on the table: Bush's abysmal poll numbers; Democratic aggressiveness; a dispirited Republican base; the political history of individual states and districts; the GOP's fundraising advantage in most, but not all, races; the scorched-earth tactics that both parties will use in the ad wars; and the Republican's proven record in getting out their vote in the 2002 and 2004 elections. But it is virtually impossible to know how to weigh them nearly five months before the elections.
There are few reliable public polls for individual House campaigns, and even Senate-race surveys should not be considered definitive this far from an election. (All partisan polls should be viewed with skepticism, since only the ones with good-news results are generally leaked to the press.) But the statistic that matters the most politically is Bush's job-approval rating. New York's Chuck Schumer, who heads the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, said at a press briefing last week, "I think 75 percent of this election is going to be a referendum on Bush."
That is pretty much what Chris Murphy is banking on in Connecticut. As he explained, "When I talk about the Republican Congress and George Bush, I get the same reactions. People in this district are savvy enough to know that it isn't only about the president, but it's also about what Congress does." Whether that theory trumps money and incumbency is the great imponderable as the Democrats try for the sixth time since the Gingrich revolution to make the House a home.
That last point about polls is interesting. Anyone up for doing a do-it-yourself poll of the 5th? For how-to information, visit here and here.
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