Nationally, many pundits and bloggers didn’t take Nevada’s 2nd district too seriously in 2006. It was too safe a Republican district to be even slightly competitive, so the argument went.
Well, we all know that Dean Heller in the end won his election against Democrat Jill Derby. Against expectations though, his result wasn’t very convincing. The man who was elected Secretary of State of Nevada three times, barely won more than 50% of the vote in a district that doesn’t include Democratic Las Vegas. So today, I ventured out in search of Republicans who won their districts in 2006 and did worse than him. Turns out that there weren’t that many.
Only 11 Republicans were elected with a worse result than Heller. Among them: Rep. Sali of Idaho, Rep. Cubin of Wyoming, Rep. Musgrave of Colorado and Rep. Doolittle of California. All these districts were presumed to be safely in Republican hands. There was no way they would become competitive and yet they were.
Again, there is talk of Heller being safe, of other Republican districts more important than Nevada’s 2nd. This is reminder for all of these folks that Heller is among the vulnerable dozen Republicans currently serving in Congress:
* 50.37% Heller
* 50.24% Pryce (OH-15)
* 50.21% Wilson (NM-01)
* 50.14% Hayes (NC-08)
* 50.08% Buchanan (FL-13)
* 50.05% Bachmann (MN-06)
* 49.95% Sali (ID-01)
* 49.53% Ferguson (NJ-07)
* 49.26% Doolittle (CA-04)
* 48.46% Porter (NV-03)
* 48.33% Cubin (WY-01)
* 45.91% Musgrave (CO-04)
Results were taken from NPR.
PS: Please note that I only looked at how many people were willing to vote for the Republican, not how well the opponent did. This is not a diary on close margins. Feel free to comment on that below.
Cross posted from Helluva Heller, where Nevada bloggers have united to take down Heller in 2008.