House, Governor Spots at Risk for Republicans

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MELISSA BLOCK, host:

The dissatisfaction with the war and the president has widened the window of opportunity for Democrats this year and not just in Minnesota.

NPR's Senior Washington Editor Ron Elving is with us to talk about other places there are races where there weren't supposed to be races. Hi, Ron.

RON ELVING: Hello, Melissa.

BLOCK: And Ron, what would one example of that be?

ELVING: Let's start with Idaho. It doesn't get any redder than Idaho. Sixty-eight percent of the voters there in both of their two congressional districts voted for Bush in 2004. But now, one of their two congressional districts and their governor's race have closed up. The governor's race is now too close to call, and that shows you how unusual this year has become.

BLOCK: And Idaho would not be an unusual case this time around?

ELVING: It's a special case, but it's not an isolated case. Right next door, in Wyoming, you have a six term incumbent named Barbara Cubin. She's a Republican. She usually wins easily, and suddenly she's in a tough race with a political neophyte, a political unknown.

This is vice president Cheney's own old seat, and he's coming back into the state this weekend to fight to save it. And then next door, in Colorado, where the president is going tomorrow, the governorship has broken wide open for the Democratic candidate there, Bill Ritter, and the Democrats are dominating another open seat race there for a House seat that had been very close, and they're looking at two other seats in Colorado that they think they could pick up now.

BLOCK: What about in Arizona? What's going on there?

ELVING: In Arizona, the Democrats are suddenly putting a lot of money into that race to try to catch up to Jon Kyl, who has been just kind of out on the fringe or at the margin of safe incumbency all year long. He's a Republican, he hasn't looked particularly vulnerable all year, but now in the last days, the Republicans have to worry a little bit about him as the Democrats put millions of dollars into the race.

BLOCK: Now when you have Democrats pumping money now into places that maybe they thought they wouldn't have had a chance before, is that a two way street? In other words, are Republicans doing the same thing, finding some vulnerabilities that maybe they hadn't anticipated among Democrats?

ELVING: Yes, to some degree. They've pounced on the Michigan Senate race, for example. Debbie Stabenow is the Democratic incumbent there, and the Republicans have pumped a couple of million dollars into that particular race late in the going because they suddenly saw an opportunity. And they've moved some resources up into Montana, where Conrad Burns is a three term Republican incumbent. A lot of people had written him off, but now the Republicans think they can bring him back.

So to some degree, the two parties contest these marginal seats, try to spook each other at the end, and it's quicker, really, to put in a lot of TV money and suddenly buy up a lot of ads than it is to go in and try to build up a ground operation suddenly in the last few days.

BLOCK: Some of these place that you've mentioned I imagine would still be considered fairly long shots. Does it make a lot of sense to be throwing a lot of money at this late stage in race that really they don't have a strong chance of winning?

ELVING: It does if you have millions to throw, and both parties do. They've raised hundreds of millions. They've raised more money for these congressional races than they raised in 2004, and they surely do not want to get caught at the end of this process having come up a seat short or two seats short and still having millions in the bank that they didn't go out and invest in some marginal race they might've swung.

BLOCK: Ron, there are a number of governor's races that are now seen as being part of this anticipated Democratic wave next Tuesday. These are races that theoretically shouldn't have a lot to do with Iraq or foreign policy, the main themes that we're hearing in this political year. Why are Democrats seemingly doing so well in these campaigns?

ELVING: Partly it's that Iraq and other national issues will bring Democrats to the polls, and independents who are inclined to vote Democratic, and that helps all the Democrats on the ticket. Plus, there are just a lot of states this year with Republican governors that are on the ballot. Twenty-two of the 28 Republican governorships are at stake this year. So there have been some very big targets out there - the big four states with Republican governors -California, Texas, New York, Florida. Turns out the Democrats will probably only get one of those, New York - they're going to win that one - but elsewhere, the Democrats have been considerably stronger - Massachusetts, Ohio, Arkansas, Minnesota, maybe Maryland, maybe Nevada. As I mentioned a moment ago, maybe Idaho. So the Democrats should take away five governorships for sure and perhaps as many as 10.

BLOCK: Ron, thanks very much.

ELVING: Thank you, Melissa.

BLOCK: That's NPR's senior Washington editor, Ron Elving.

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