It’s No Fun In Romney’s Shadow

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Christine Fein at City asks Maggie a good question and gets a bob and weave:

Brooks also hasn’t yet addressed the social issues, like contraception, that are getting so much attention in the excruciating Republican presidential primaries. In our conversation, Brooks said she will be “fully vetted” on those issues, but they’re not what she’s running on. But Brooks and her competitor, incumbent representative Louise Slaughter, are two women running for Congress in a year when women’s issues are getting star billing. People will want to know and deserve to know where Brooks stands. If she’s the last vote standing between President Mitt Romney and the elimination of Planned Parenthood, what would she do?

“I want to establish a campaign that shows people what my priorities will be and what I think is important,” she said, in response to the Romney question. “And I want to hear from them what they think is important. All the other stuff needs to be answered, certainly. But it shouldn’t be a distraction right out of the gate.”

If we take that metaphor literally, apparently Maggie would prefer to have her distraction in the home stretch. The way you know when a politician doesn’t have a good answer to a question is when they call it a “distraction”.

Issue One: Slaughter’s Age

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When a 57 year-old challenger takes on an 82 year-old incumbent, one of the issues is the health, vitality and intellect of the incumbent. So, let’s rip the band-aid off of this one right away and ask whether Louise Slaughter is still on her game.

I’ve been looking for video of Slaughter at an unscripted event where she’s under some stress, and this was the best I could find. It’s a news conference in Buffalo in September, 2011. She’s quick on the draw, doesn’t reach for words, responds to a wide variety of questions with a fair amount of humor, and doesn’t get snippy. If Slaughter demonstrates this level of energy and ability in September, 2012, I doubt that age will be an issue in this race.

Why This Time?

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Steve Zodiac at Mustard Street makes this observation:

Maggie Brooks will run for Congress because there’s no reason for her not to.

Run and she has a decent shot at winning.   Lose and she’s exactly where she’d be, and no worse off, than if she didn’t run:  finishing out her term as Monroe County Executive.

Term limits make this term her last.   So a loss in a congressional race can’t tarnish chances for re-election, since there isn’t going to be a re-election.

This is all true, but my question is why she chose a Presidential year to challenge an 82 year-old incumbent. Maggie’s term is up at the end of 2015. If she ran in 2014, Slaughter’s age would be even more of an issue, or, more likely, she will have retired, and a lot fewer Democrats would be heading to the polls because Democratic turnout is lower in non-Presidential elections.

Give Me Land, Lots of Land and a Sunny Sky Above

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Maggie Brooks doesn’t want to be “pinned down” on issues quite yet.

“To me, that’s always been the same: jobs and the economy,” she continued. “You know, the social things don’t get people back to work, the social issues don’t lower taxes, don’t relieve regulation from business. Those are the things I want to focus on initially, and we’ll take our time with the other things.

“We’ll be fully vetted on those, you better believe it.”

Brooks was asked specifically about whether she would vote to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, known to critics as Obamacare, and her views on the federal mandate for health insurance coverage of contraceptives.

The notion that she’ll be fully vetted mainly on non-social issues, and concentrating on those, is a fond wish that won’t come true. Brooks is running to join a House caucus that spends a good deal of its time on social issues. Repealing Obamacare, to name one example, is vitally important to a lot of Republicans, and her supporters will want to know how she stands on that. On the Democratic side, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is prepping reporters with 10 questions, three of which are about women’s health care, and those questions are all fair ones. That’s just a taste of what’s to come from the media and her opponent.

Finally–and this will be a theme repeated for the rest of this campaign–Maggie’s not the top of the ticket in 2012. That honor probably belongs to Mitt Romney, who instructs women to “vote for the other guy” if women want “free stuff” like contraception. That quote is one of many reasons that Romney’s likely nomination is a double-edged sword for Brooks. He’s theoretically a Northeastern moderate Republican, which is what Brooks will run as in a Democratic district. But he’s also an example of how moderation in today’s Republican party isn’t durable. As recently as 2002, Mitt supported Medicaid-funded abortions. Romneycare funds contraception, now Mitt’s against it.

If the 2012 standard-bearer can change his positions that radically, it’s fair to ask how Representative Maggie will differ from County Executive Maggie, once she’s under pressure to be a loyal vote for her party in Washington. Whatever phrase you choose–“pinned down”, “fenced in”, or “held accountable”–Maggie’s positions on the social issues that are dominating the Presidential race are going to be fully vetted before this election is over.

I’ll Bet Curt a Nickel

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Curt Smith, who’s a retired Bush I speechwriter, has been all over the media with folksy quotes about the NY-25 race.  Here’s what he told Rachel Barnhart:

 “Anyone who bet a nickel at this point should be basically assigned to an asylum.”

A lot of political coverage relies on home truths delivered by supposedly savvy observers, but the fact is that there’s a lot of data about the performance of Maggie and Louise in prior elections, as well as data that can be used to project performance by either candidate in the 2012 race.  One tool used by forecasters is the Partisan Voting Index (PVI), which uses the performance of the Presidential candidates in the last two elections to project whether a given district leans towards Republicans or Democrats.

At some point I’ll calculate the real PVI of this district, but for now I’ve put together a spreadsheet of the performance of President Obama in the new NY-25. Obama won the 25th by 18% (D+18 in PVI notation). Since Obama is running again, and since inner-city Rochester’s African-American population is in the district, it’s likely that we’ll see similar enthusiasm and turnout in 2012.  In other words, even though the real PVI for this district might not be as high as D+18, there are reasons to think that 2008 will be like 2012 in terms of Democratic turnout and enthusiasm

Democrat Eric Massa beat incumbent Randy Kuhl in the current NY-29 in 2008 when that district was R+7, and that was considered a major upset.  Republican Ann-Marie Buerkle beat Democrat Dan Maffei in the current NY-25 which is a D+3 district.  I’m sure upsets in D+18 or R+18 districts have happened, but I’d like Curt to point to one that resembles Rochester.

Analysts have also mentioned that Brooks can win Monroe County.  That’s true, but let’s keep in mind what election Maggie won.  In 2008, about 350,000 people voted in the towns of the new NY-25.  In the 2011 County Executive race, Maggie took the majority of 138,000 votes in Monroe County.  All the aw-shucks, gee-whiz down-home wisdom in the world won’t change the fact that the 2012 race will be completely unlike the races Maggie is used to winning.

So, I’ll take that bet, Curt, and if you want to call me insane, try throwing down some facts, rather than pithy aphorisms, to explain why.

Slaughter Starts Fundraising

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Joe Spector at the D&C has Louise’s first fundraising appeal. Here’s her first take on Maggie Brooks:

Republican Maggie Brooks has made it clear – that she won’t stand up for what counts in Western New York instead she’ll be more of the same refusing to break ties from the same Washington Republicans who have tried to shut down the government, trample on women’s rights and end Medicare as we know it.

Louise had $362K on hand as of the end of last year, which is the last reporting period posted by the FEC.  That’s not much for a sitting Member of Congress, mainly because this district hasn’t had a contested election in recent memory. Brooks said she has to raise $2 million, which I think is a reasonable guess at what a modern Congressional campaign costs.

Slaughter’s Response

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Representing your neighbors in Congress is a great honor and it is a responsibility that must be taken seriously. I am running for Congress because there’s more work to do on behalf of Monroe County. Our fight is not yet over to end insider trading in Congress and demand more accountability in our political system, to make our food supply safe for American families, and fix the trade policies that have left our local manufacturers competing on an unlevel playing field.

Here’s the whole thing via Rachel Barnhart.

Brooks Announces

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Maggie Brooks has officially announced her candidacy for Congress. Rachel Barnhart has the story at 13-WHAM, and here’s the D&C coverage, from Joe Spector, where Brooks says:

Brooks refused to criticize Slaughter, the liberal Democrat, saying “I’m not running against someone or something; I’m running for something.”

And she added, “This is about me. This is about what I have to offer.”

This is standard announcement fare that can’t be taken too seriously. As a challenger, Brooks is implicitly arguing that the current seat holder isn’t doing a good job. The question is when and how she’ll make that explicit.