Gallup: Only 5 Republican states [Daily Kos]

N.C.’s shifting electoral map [Salisbury Post (N.C.)]

Michigan’s Blueprint for America [National Review Online]

The 2010 Census: New Demographics, New Approach [Ad Age]

Republican 2012 Convention Short List: Tampa, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Houston [The Electoral Map]

Justice Stevens Renews Criticism of Gerrymandering [Wall Street Journal]

Reforming Anti-Urban Bias in Transportation Spending [New Geography]

Gallup: Only 5 Republican states [Daily Kos]

N.C.’s shifting electoral map [Salisbury Post (N.C.)]

Michigan’s Blueprint for America [National Review Online]

The 2010 Census: New Demographics, New Approach [Ad Age]

Republican 2012 Convention Short List: Tampa, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Houston [The Electoral Map]

Justice Stevens Renews Criticism of Gerrymandering [Wall Street Journal]

Reforming Anti-Urban Bias in Transportation Spending [New Geography]

Louisiana - 79.5%

Michigan – 75.7%

Pennsylvania – 75.5%

Ohio – 75.0%

Iowa – 72.5%

These are the states with the fewest native-born residents:

Nevada – 22.7%

Florida – 33.6%

Arizona – 35.4%

Alaska – 38.9%

New Hampshire – 42.0%

Bill the Butcher, the Navite

“If New Mexico taxpayers thoughts they had seen the worst of Glenn Nye’s fiscal recklessness, today’s White House budget proposal makes it clear that the word could be yet to come.”

How do you even get southeastern Virginia and New Mexico mixed up?

But that wasn’t the first time. The Hartford Courant’s Daniela Altimari, who covers Connecticut politics, reported last week that the NRCC sent her a release criticizing Rep. Scott Murphy of upstate New York:

“After a year of punishing middle-class families with mountains of debt fueled by partisan government giveaways, New York families deserve to know: Would Scott Murphy vote for the ’stimulus’ today if he had the chance?”

The NRCC mixed up New York’s Scott Murphy with Connecticut’s Chris Murphy.

Time for some geography lessons at the NRCC.

(h/t Aaron Blake for the Nye link)

With those criteria in mind, what are they strengths and weaknesses of these cities?

Tampa

Politically, this is the best choice.  It’s the anchor of the swing area in the swing state.  A major convention could go a long way to rallying those pivotal I-4 corridor voters.   But RNC leaders are reportedly concerned about holding a convention in hurricane alley in the middle of hurricane season.  Their 2008 Minnesota convention was beleaguered by a storm bearing down on the Gulf Coast.

Florida and the greater southeast have plenty of Republican activists and volunteers who could work the event.  Tampa has also been considered three times and was the runner-up in 2008, according to St. Pete’s Times political columnist Adam Smith.  “Maybe the third time is the charm,” he recently blogged.

Phoenix

Arizona is one of those states that Democrats have been hoping will turn blue for about a decade, but one where realities have lagged behind expectations.  Barack Obama surely would have made it competitive if homeboy John McCain wasn’t on the ballot, but the Grand Canyon State has still not purpled as quickly as neighboring New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada in downballot races.

Phoenix could easily hold the tens of thousands of visitors – its tourism and housing industries are struggling and space is readily available.  It would soak up visitors. Two burning questions: What role does McCain play?  And how much “rising from the ashes” rhetoric would we hear about the GOP?

Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City is the most conservative and most Republican of the three sites, even if it does have Democratic county and city mayors.  It certainly wouldn’t be chosen to reach swing voters in a swing state, although it is in a swing region.  Utah has some of the lowest unemployment in the nation, which is a theme that the GOP will surely play up and would provide a nice backdrop for the convention.

The state also proved through the 2002 Olympics that it can successfully handle a major event.  But on a similar note, “We all know there’s somebody who’s tied to Utah that may be in the race in 2012,” Jeffrey Hartley, a member of the committee to recruit the convention, hinted to the Deseret News about Mitt Romney.  “That may help or it may hurt Utah’s chances.”

The wild card: Despite Utah’s strong family structure, low divorce rates and low abortion rates, how would the Pat Robertsons feel in the land of LDS?

Houston

Reid Wilson reports that Houston is also in the mix.  Good: Strong economy; conservative, pro-business and pro-family culture; able to handle large influxes of people.  Bad: The Bushes; swampy climate; reinforces cowboy Republicanism of Bush era.

The Verdict

In 2008, Democrats chose Denver for geographic reasons.  It both signaled their commitment to putting the Mountain West into play and also helped fire up 80,000 supporters in a swing state through a rousing night at Invesco Field.  In 2004, Republicans chose to focus on imagery rather than electoral geography by choosing New York City.  It reinforced their message of security by invoking images of 9/11.

Republicans could take a similar approach in 2012 and choose Salt Lake City.  It’s the best-managed of the three cities and has a strong economy in a time when the economy is everything.  Of course, Utah isn’t a swing state, but then again, the GOP has never held a convention in the Mountain West and they’re sliding in the region.  It’s also a state that projects a pro-business, pro-family image (besides a few bad apples), and the weather there is much better mid-summer than sweltering Phoenix or swampy Tampa.

Tampa and Phoenix are economic basket cases and the poster children for the 2005-07 era of Sun Belt fictitious housing wealth – “stucco ghettos of the 21st century,” as AP columnist Todd Lewin put it.  Florida and Arizona are also states with contentious and bitter GOP primaries right now that could divide activists for the next couple of years.

Salt Lake is their best choice.  Ultimately the question comes down to what aspect of the state weighs heavier in their decision: The strength of Utah’s economy, or the uneasiness many conservatives have with its religious culture.  Perhaps that’s a bigger question that party needs to answer.

Salt Lake City

Therefore, Hawaii’s prospects at statehood were tied to Alaska’s, which many thought would be more Democratic.  They would only be admitted as a package deal – a modern day Missouri Compromise of sorts. As Hawaii Free Press reporter Ryan Yasukawa explained in a 2009 article, “The state of Hawaii being the 50th state and not the 49th is no coincidence.”

“With a Republican President Eisenhower and Democratic majority in Congress, Democrats first sent an Alaska bill to the president to see if he would sign the bill admitting a state which at the time was expected to elect two Democrat senators.  If Eisenhower signed the Alaska bill, a Hawaii bill would be sent up thereafter.”

Hawaii Statehood

It was an unjust reality for the island territory.  Hawaii had 499,000 people in 1950 (more than Wyoming’s 290,000 or Nevada’s 160,000) while Alaska had only 128,000.  “Hawaii also had a competent private sector economy (tourism) while Alaska’s economy was government-dependent,” Michael Barone told me an email. “Nevertheless, Hawaii subordinated its case to Alaska.”

With fervent opposition from leading Democrats such as Sens. William Fulbright (Ark.), Albert Gore Sr. (Tenn.), Sam Ervin (N.C.) and Richard Russell (Ga.), it’s understandable that Hawaii favored Republicans.  But Barone explained that southern Democratic segregationalists were not the only reason why Hawaii was traditionally Republican.

Another reason was that New England Yankee missionaries founded the ruling Anglo culture there.   Vermonter Hiram Bingham brought the Good Book to the islands in 1820 and translated it into Hawaiian.  His grandson, Hiram Bingham III, was born and raised in Hawaii, although he went to Phillips Andover and Yale, and later became U.S. senator from and governor of Connecticut (he also discovered Machu Picchu).

The island was officially annexed by the United States in 1898 by Ohio Republican William McKinley.  Over the ensuing decades, a sugar cartel known as the Big Five seized control of all the islands’ economies and propped up a series of white Republican governors and congressional delegates.

It wasn’t until 1954 that Democrats had success there.  Labor leader John Burns and longshoreman Harry Bridges teamed up with Japanese American World War II veterans to support Democrats.  Honolulu Advertiser reporter Michael Tsai related a story from the book “The Island Edge of America” in a 2009 article about how Hawaii vets used their service as leverage for statehood.

“Chuck Mau, a staunch statehood proponent and delegate to the 1948 Democratic National Convention, talked his way into a meeting of the platform committee and, once there, ingratiated himself to Texas Gov. Lyndon Johnson by retelling the story of how 442nd soldiers had rescued the ‘Lost Battalion’ of the Texas National Guardsmen.”

Hawaii ultimately gained statehood in 1959.  “John Kennedy carried it in 1960 by just 115 votes,” notes the Almanac of American Politics.  “But from 1962 to 2002, its politics was dominated by a Democratic machine that had its beginning in the 1950s.”  Democrats such as Sen. Daniel Inouye became the voice of the islands.

Ronald Reagan won it 1984.  Dick Cheney visited in 2004 when polls showed the state in the single-digits in late October, joking to a crowd, “I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d drop by and say ‘Aloha.’”  But in 2008, native Barack Obama made it the bluest state with 72% of the vote.  Republicans are optimistic about retaining the governors seat in 2010, but this state is likely going to be as blue as Waimea Bay for the long run.

Brown’s winning coalition included:

– Stables & Suburbia, “centering on Cape Ann and Essex County”
– Post-Industria, “which takes in the Merrimack Valley and eastern Middlesex County”
– Ponkapoag, “which includes most of Norfolk County,”
– Cranberry Country, “taking in most of the South Shore and Cape Cod.”
– The Offramps, “which follows Route 495 to form the middle part of the Big C.”

As you might know from my previous post, these were all areas that he was predicted to well in. He also won MidMass, an area where Deval Patrick actually won in 2006.

For her part, Coakley won the Berkshires, Pioneer Valley and Boston core.  In Sullivan’s model, these areas are in the Left Field and Bigger Boston areas, respectively (why didn’t Sullivan name Bigger Boston The Hub instead?)  She also won what he calls Shopper’s World, “which includes the suburbs just to the west of Boston and is the most affluent and well-educated of the state’s regions.”

Here’s an electoral map from Boston.com:

Massachusetts Brown-Coakley Electoral Map

Most people — even most Bay Staters — often think that Massachusetts is a blue across the board.  But the truth is that the Bay State has many different shades of blue and purple.

The Almanac of American Politics‘ explains:

“In recent elections, the most heavily Democratic parts of the state have not been the blue-collar wards of Boston (they’re mostly either gentrified or heavily African-American or immigrant), but the university towns such as Cambridge, the Berkshires, and the college-rich Pioneer Valley in the west, and the variously fashionable resort areas such as Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and Provincetown.

“The most heavily Republican (or less Democratic) areas are what political scientist Robert David Sullivan called the ‘Offramps’ — towns near the Interstate 495 ring road and ‘cranberry country’ in Plymouth County and Cape Cod; working-class Worcester County in the center of the state; and high-income Essex County in the northeast.”

Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman took it a step further today and explained to the Weekly Standard which areas we should watch:

1) Western Mass – Coakley needs a huge margin out of what I call the “Rachel Maddow Belt” – the Berkshires, where she has roots, and the Pioneer Valley. She probably needs a 5,000 vote lead out of Amherst and high turnout in places like Springfield, Pittsfield, and Northampton.

2) The I-495 Ring – This is Brown’s bread and butter, and he needs to rack up big leads in towns like Haverhill, Dracut, Marlborough, and his home area near Wrentham and Foxborough. These are the places where Mitt Romney broke through to win the governorship in 2002.

3) The Cape and Southeastern Mass – The Kennedy belt. Barnstable and Plymouth Counties are presumably the places where Kennedy’s memory ought to rescue Coakley in the eleventh hour. Brown will probably narrowly win the TOWNS of Plymouth and Barnstable, which are usually bellwethers. If Coakley carries either, she will probably be on her way to winning statewide. If Brown wins both with more than 55%, watch out.

4) The 8th CD – The heart of liberal Massachusetts needs to come out in a big way for Coakley if she is to have a shot. Cambridge should turn out dependably, but will the Boston machine crank out votes at the same rate as other places in the state? Will Capuano’s voters be as enthusiastic about this race after they didn’t get their man?

5) The Catholic south shore – Will working class Democrats stick with their party or defect to Brown? This is the key area to watch in that respect. Brown will probably win Braintree and Weymouth, but the town to watch is Quincy. If Coakley can’t hold onto Quincy, she will probably lose.

6) The ethnic cities – Does Coakley get at least half of Obama’s votes in each of Worcester, Fall River, New Bedford, Lowell, and Lawrence? These are places that will vote Democratic 2-to-1 or more, but where voters need lots of engagement to mobilize.

Lastly, Swing State Project crunches the numbers and shows us what a tie would look like.  For this to happen, Brown would have to win Essex, Hampden, Norfolk and Worcester counties, and take Barnstable and Plymouth by double-digits.  Coakley would have to win Berkshire, Dukes, Franklin, Hampshire, and Suffolk counties by huge margins, and would have to carry Bristol, Middlesex and Nantucket:

Swing State Project: Massachusetts Senate Electoral Map Hypothetical Tie

Massachusetts has 6.6 million people and gave Barack Obama 62% of the vote in 2008.  Alabama has 4.7 million people and gave John McCain 61%.

Mass is  liberals, lobster, and Kennedys. Alabama is conservatives, cotton, and Talladega.   Culturally and politically, they are opposites.

So if Scott Brown (R) wins today in Massachusetts, a good comparison would be if a Democrat won a special Senate election in Alabama.

And to give it some more perspective, it’d be as if a Democrat won in 2003 when Republicans were at their electoral pinnacle.

This would be the biggest comeback since the Red Sox beat the Yankees in the 2003 ALCS.

Beacon Hill

Talladega

Democrats’ sorrows in Appalachia aren’t new. But the party’s decline in Buchanan County, Va., which is tucked into the corner where the commonwealth bumps into West Virginia and Kentucky, is a prime illustration of how Democratic fortunes in the region have fallen off a cliff since the 2008 election.

The hills in Buchanan (pronounced BUCK-an-an) are forbidding and seemingly random, unlike the endless spines of Virginia’s Blue Ridge. Viewed from above, the topography looks like crumpled paper. “It’s not easy to get into or out of Buchanan,” says Tommy Morris, Virginia’s Education secretary and a native of Galax, a town about 100 miles to the southeast. “There are only three major roads going in and out, and it’s not the kind of county where you could drive around it in a circle. You’d have to leave and come back another way.” The fog that cloaks every hill and hollow only adds to the sense of isolation.

Buchanan’s livelihood has always been coal. In 1990, at the peak of coal production in Virginia, Buchanan produced 45 percent of the state’s total, tens of thousands of tons. At that time, the United Mine Workers of America had an iron grip on the county — its culture, its lifestyle, its economy, and especially its politics. The UMWA, the de facto regional Democratic machine, helped Bill Clinton take 63 percent of Buchanan’s vote in the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections, even though he didn’t win the state either time.

As coal production has declined in Buchanan and the rest of the region, however, so has the Democrats’ success. The Democratic presidential nominee carried Buchanan in every election but one between 1932, when the UMWA start unionizing the region, and 2004. “We’re pretty conservative ‘Blue Dog’ Democrats,” county Democratic Chairman Vern Presley explains. In 2008, however, Barack Obama lost Buchanan to Republican John McCain, 47 percent to 52 percent, while carrying the state with 53 percent of the vote.

Obama’s shortfall in Buchanan didn’t prepare dismayed Democrats for today’s tectonic mood-shift. In just one year’s time, discomfort with Obama has given way to an open, full-scale revolt against the majority party’s agenda, particularly on coal. In the 2005 battle for attorney general of Virginia, rural-rooted Democrat Creigh Deeds beat Republican Bob McDonnell 61 percent to 39 percent in Buchanan. When the two faced off in the 2009 gubernatorial contest, Deeds’s share of the Buchanan vote plummeted 24 points while falling just 9 points statewide.

Down the ballot, Buchanan’s Democratic delegate to the General Assembly, Dan Bowling, fell victim to the 2009 GOP landslide. Bowling, who used the song “Working in a Coal Mine” on his state legislative website and had been re-elected without GOP opposition in 2007, lost by 14 points to 25-year-old Republican newcomer Will Morefield. “It was all cap-and-trade,” says Buchanan’s GOP chairman, Jerry Lester, referring to congressional Democrats’ energy bill, which is intended to reduce the nation’s greenhouse-gas emissions. “I’ve never seen a depth of anger like this. People feel like stuff has been forced down their throat.”

Die-hard Democrat Ralph Kinder, 76, has worked the polls in Bowling’s delegate district for more than 40 years and notes that 32 of the 34 campaigns for which he has volunteered succeeded. But Bowling’s loss “took me by surprise,” Kinder says. “They were trying to send the president and Congress a message. It wasn’t Dan personally.”

Democratic Rep. Rick Boucher, who has represented the southwest Virginia-based 9th District since 1983 and whose faded campaign stickers can be seen on old Jeep Cherokees across coal country, agrees that “voters were sending the administration a message.” Boucher says they were upset with Democrats for a slew of reasons, especially the Obama administration’s coal policy.

Bowling also points to the House-passed cap-and-trade legislation, on which Boucher was a lead broker, as a driving force behind his own defeat, even though the measure includes what many environmentalists consider too many concessions to the operators of coal-fired power plants. “People felt like they were being attacked,” Bowling says. “Cap-and-trade really had the public in this area confused. Two or three weeks from the election, we knew we were going to lose. I don’t think anyone could have won with a ‘D’ on their name.”

Asked whether he would have voted for the bill, Bowling chuckled. “I would’ve voted like Nick Joe Rahall across the border,” he said, referring to the West Virginian who was one of 44 Democratic defectors.

Democratic Chairman Presley says that the congressional health care debate and the mistrust of Washington also deeply affected Buchanan’s aging electorate, driving down both turnout and support for his party. “I had friends of mine tell me their grandparents had never voted Republican before but really needed to this time.”

Naturally, Bowling’s loss and Deeds’s thrashing in coal country have stoked Democratic worries about whether Boucher will be able to hold on in November’s election. In 1982, when Boucher unseated a GOP incumbent amid high unemployment, he piled up large enough margins in the coal counties to win the district very narrowly. As he has cruised to large double-digit re-election victories since then, he has continued to rack up his highest percentages in coal territory.

Republicans haven’t yet fielded a strong candidate to run against Boucher. If they do, the incumbent’s challenge will be to explain his role in brokering the energy bill. Coal-country voters have “always tolerated Boucher because he’s brought home the bacon,” GOP Chairman Lester contends. But “Boucher will never carry Buchanan County” this year, he predicts. “He’s a beat man if we get the right candidate.”

Boucher and many of his allies believe that Congress will inevitably enact climate-change legislation and that Congress, not Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, should set coal policy. “Boucher, who wants this region to have success, is the best thing they can have for negotiations,” said Joe Puckett, a Democrat who worked on the Bowling campaign. “But trying to explain alternatives to cap-and-trade is not easy.”

Puckett, whose father, state Sen. Phil Puckett, represents Buchanan, argues that “Boucher will have the time and resources” to win a 15th term but will have to clearly differentiate himself from Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. “What surprised me the most [in the polling] was the mistrust of the Pelosi-led Congress,” Puckett says. “Boucher’s success will depend on his ability to separate himself from that Congress.”

Other Democrats are more bullish. “Boucher would have to wring a cat’s head off on YouTube to lose,” says Dave (Mudcat) Saunders, a rural strategist based in Roanoke. And Presley contends that most locals think “Boucher is the hardest-working congressman on the Hill right now.”

But some Democrats are gloomy about Boucher’s prospects. Kinder, the veteran poll worker, estimates that 90 percent of coal-country residents, including him and most other Democrats, oppose cap-and-trade despite Boucher’s role in shaping the bill. “I think cap-and-trade is the wrong way to go. It would be devastating. You never miss a light until it goes out, and coal turns the lights on.” Kinder warns, “Nobody’s done more for southwest Virginia than Rick Boucher, but there’ll be a big percentage that won’t stick with him.”

Adding to the Democrats’ worries is how much the UMWA’s influence has waned. Coal employment in Buchanan is one-third what it was in 1990. But, Boucher says, the “UMWA has an influence in my district that expands beyond its numbers. It’s seen as a cultural force.” He concedes, however, that “the coal industry is really feeling under siege.”

The Democrats’ 2009 crash in southwest Virginia ought to frighten them beyond Buchanan and Boucher’s district, up and down the ridges and valleys of Appalachia, where plenty of congressional Democrats represent hardscrabble territory akin to Buchanan. Throughout the 1990s, President Clinton remained at least somewhat popular with these rural voters. But many veteran Democratic lawmakers have never had to run for re-election when a president of their party was as unpopular with their constituents as Obama is now.

Recent private polling has shown veteran Democratic Reps. Vic Snyder of Arkansas and Alan Mollohan of West Virginia surprisingly weak. Democratic Reps. John Tanner and Bart Gordon of Tennessee are opting to retire rather than run again. Clinton carried all four of their districts in 1992, but Obama didn’t break 45 percent of the vote in any of them.

If the bottom is indeed falling out for Democrats in Appalachian districts, at least several unsuspecting officeholders are likely to find an early lump of coal in their stockings this year.