Hoppy Kercheval, the influential radio personality and newspaper columnist in West Virginia, asks a question we’ve been asking at West Virginia Blue for months: will State Sen. John Unger run? We’ve been trying to draft him (after our early effort to Draft ReddHedd (aka Christy Hardin Smith of FireDogLake failed).
The DCCC is also trying to draft him.
And while we’re open to other candidates (see also here, I believe competitive primaries make for better general election candidates and Anne Barth certainly has many fine qualities), Unger has succeeded at winning in red, and ultra important, Berkeley and Jefferson counties.
WHEN state Sen. John Unger, D-Berkeley, answered his cell phone last Tuesday, it was Rahm Emanuel calling.
The Illinois congressman, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Caucus, told Unger: “You’ll win the election.”
Emanuel was talking about the Second District Congressional race in `08, a race Unger has not yet decided to enter, a race for the seat now held by one of the most popular and electable politicians in the state — Republican Shelley Moore Capito.
Unger is getting wooed mightily by state and national Democratic leaders to try to do what other Democrats have tried and failed to do.
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There is, Democratic strategists believe, some planetary alignment for `08, and the sprawling second district. Sen. Jay Rockefeller and Gov. Joe Manchin — two recognizable and easily re-electable Democrats — will lead the state ticket in the next election. Their popularity and get-out-the vote efforts help other Democrats and encourage straight-ticket voting.
Second District voters have elected Capito four times, but it remains Democratic territory. Democrats outnumber Republicans in those 18 counties 60-40. Capito has always had to run uphill.
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In 1998 Unger, then 28, came out of nowhere to upset incumbent state Sen. Harry Dugan in the 16th District. Unger believes a convergence of circumstances brought him to that race, and ultimately to victory.
Other points Kercheval does not raise, but that Clem and I and others have talked about in the past.
- Capito’s fund raising in the first quarter of 2007 is far off from where she was in the same period in 2005.
- The fund raising is especially important because she has to wage an air campaign since she’s awful at retail politics. Unger, meanwhile, a notoriously budget-conscious political campaigner, knows how to make every penny count. He also is renowned for his personal campaigning, with his walking campaign of his entire district. That face-to-face contact is invaluable in West Virginia. Capito so dreads meeting the public that during parades she walks surrounded by campaign staff in the middle of the route so she doesn’t have to make contact or speak with the public. Her last “town hall meeting” was done over the phone.
- While Capito usually receives friendly press-coverage from the area newspapers like the Martinsburg Journal, blogs like West Virginia Blue are growing as alternative sources of information. It usually takes 12 months for a web site to reach its largest audience. This site should be peaking just in time for the 2008 race to be heating up.
- The media, as shown even in the usually Republican friendly Charleston Daily Mail, is becoming more questioning and skeptical of her. The Huntington paper and others have improved of late at catching Capito in saying one thing and doing something else.
- Capito’s Congressional rating is appalling. Even when the Republicans controlled Congress she was in the bottom tier. Now she’s ranked 421 of 485. She’s not a freshman Congresswoman. She’s been at it for years. Yet she remains an ineffectual voice for West Virginia. Much of the time she takes credit for federal grants going to fire stations that would have received the money anyway through the grant application process. Other times, she takes credit for projects when the real credit should go to Senator Byrd and Senator Rockefeller — two of the highest rated members of Congress.
- Rising dissatisfaction within GOP ranks over their own candidates. The West Virginia GOP’s bench is weak otherwise numerous reports of her contemplating a run against Rockefeller for the U.S. Senate in 2008 (Run, Shelley, run!) wouldn’t even be given credence. The top tier Republican candidates are loathed by their own base. Rudy Guiliana, Mitt Romney, and John McCain, have all been hit hard by the rightwing grassroots activists for various reasons. Is the conservative base going to support the formerly gay and abortion rights supporting Romney and Guiliana? Are the independents going to support McCain now that he’s no longer a maverick, but a Bush supporter? Are so-called “values” voters going to come out in numbers for serial adulterer Newt Gingrich? No. A weak Republican presidential ticket in 2008 is not going to help the rest of Capito’s party’s lower tier candidates.
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Defeating Capito in 2008 won’t be easy. But if she were smart, she’d be sweating despite her past success. Whoever the Democratic candidate is, we’ve been working on the Nov. 4, 2008 election since Nov. 8, 2006.