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ID-1: Walt Minnick is Toast.

by: juliana

Sun Aug 02, 2009 at 3:45 PM EDT


Walt Minnick, the conservative Blue Dog Congressman from Idaho's 1st district, is in deep doo-doo with voters back home.

 Even conservative Republicans (who, let's be honest, make up this district's entire electorate) who applaud Minnick for standing up to vote no on Nancy Pelosi's agenda, will NOT vote for him next year.

An average voter here is Don Griesel.  "As we all know, Congress is controlled by the numbers game," Griesel said. "That's who gets to be speaker of the House and Senate majority leader. So, if he doesn't change his party, there is no way I can vote Democrat, because right now, they control the House, and that is what is killing America." 

The good news is that Walt Minnick might as well be a Republican anyway.  He votes so often with the Republican leadership that if he changed parties today it would not change the voting at all.

If I was Minnick, I'd stop campaigning, stop fundraising, and compile a strong progressive voting record.  It would be only so fair as the citizens of Idaho will probably not get another progressive vote in Congress for another fifty years.

 So I can say this right now: based on these projections, Walt Minnick will NOT return to the House in 2011.  So the DCCC better give that money to more worthy members.
juliana :: ID-1: Walt Minnick is Toast.
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ID-1: Walt Minnick is Toast. | 28 comments
This is completely anecdotal
Let me know when you have real polling data pointing to Minnick's defeat and BTW there is a common pattern that emerges with Democrats who win in difficult districts like ID-01 that over time they become more amenable. Examples abound like Chet Edwards, Sanford Bishop, Peter DeFazio so while you may have some problems with Minnick have some patience and recognize he has replaced an extremely conservative Republican who was despised by progressives across the country.

I'll take a Democrat like Minnick any day over another Bill Sali. Please calm down on the rhetoric. We don't need to be preached at here at SSP; we like to play it cool and pragmatic. I understand your frustration but understand our goal is more Democrats in districts like these and better Democrats in districts where that is a possibility, hopefully one day that will include ID-01 but not today.

DeFazio, Bishop
DeFazio's district is actually quite moderate, unless it was much more conservative when he was elected and was just changed in past redistrictings. And Bishop's district has a 40% plus African American electorate, if i recall. And this is also an area of Georgia, and indeed the south, where theres a long history of racial tolerance towards blacks.  
[ Parent ]
Err
Instead of saying 'indeed the south' (as that implies this is an entire area of the country) i just meant its one of the few places in the south where theres a long history of racial tolerance.
[ Parent ]
Sure but Defazio is very liberal
Which I like but that doesn't seem justified just looking at the presidential numbers. Overall even though there are reasons why these people succeed as being more left than their districts allow it doesn't mean their couldn't be a reason for Minnick to shift left-ward and I just don't feel like it is fair to already damn him when in 3 years he may be a fairly progressive Dem especially considering the alternative (a Sali-like conservative ideologically yet someone smart enough not to sound like it).
[ Parent ]
The alternative to Minnick is frightening
Absolutely.  
[ Parent ]
Exactly
And maybe voting for Minnick will help these people pull the trigger for more progressive Democrats in the Idaho 1st with the growing Boise area chock full of CA transplants it's not so unbelievable to think they could become cultured to voting for more Democrats in the future if Minnick makes their reflexive GOP tendencies weaker.
[ Parent ]
And Idaho isnt exactly anti-civil liberties
Regarding things like the Patriot Act. A Republican with far right views on that could be in trouble against someone with views similar to their own.
[ Parent ]
Edwards
And I'll definitely give you Edwards. Him continuously elected here is just unreal. And hes not even a Blue Dog.

[ Parent ]
Minnick may or may not be toast
But a quote from one dude who probably did not vote for Minnick last time does not prove it at all. (If he's smart enough to realize that Congress is a numbers game, I'm guessing he wasn't silly enough to vote for a Democrat in 2008.) This diary is disappointing.
The day he won I thought he's toast in 2010......
Minnick BARELY won 51-49 against an absolute whack job who makes the average wingnut look like a thoughtful intellectual in comparison.

And that same district ELECTED that same whack job in a heavily Democratic year in the first place.

Minnick has as much chance of surviving as Anh Cao.

43, male, Indian-American, Democrat, VA-10

Better chance, I'd say
Minnick won in the face of a Presidential headwind. Yes, it was a Democratic year, but he had to convince many thousands of conservative McCain voters to vote for him. Cao never faced the same challenge due to the unique time line of his election.
[ Parent ]
I would be interested in a poll
but as others have said, anecdotes tell us nothing.
we can do without Minnick
He never votes with the party anyway. Money is better spend electing democrats who will vote with the party.
Just watched the Video
It reminds me a lot of the situation we had in TX-22 with Lampson. Everyone who worked like crazy for him in 2006 lost interest with him due to his conservative voting record (heck, I did, but I did vote for him anyways). I would have expected Idaho to be more like East Texas and not be as straight ticket, but it seems I may be wrong on this.

I would like to have had a statement from "John" on if he voted for Sali or Minnick in 2008 for better context.

I dunno how Minnick pulls it off, he's gonna need Sali as an opponent in 2010 like how Lampson needed Sekula-Gibbs in 2008 (and didn't get her).

Straight ticket voting, it kills us in Texas suburbs, it seems like it's killing us in what I recently heard was called the Mormon corridor (Idaho/Utah/Wyoming). I suppose the Georgia suburbs is the only other place where it really kills us.

26, Male, Democrat, TX-26

Straight ticket voting
It definitely happens here in the Texas burbs, at least in the Houston ones which i am more familiar with. I bet even many young voters do it. And there are alot of young conservatives here. Many not necessarily evangelicals or even diehard social cons. Oh and how any TX Republican small officeholder can brag about a general election victory is beyond me. If its in a conservative area. They won because of who their party is. Most of the people who vote for them havent even heard of them. I would assume, anyway. They can brag if they won a competitive GOP primary but thats it.  
[ Parent ]
To be fair
So many progressive districts think the same way: That their vote should be decided based on party ID because 'its a numbers game'. I guess its a better reason for them to dislike Minnick than, 'he must be one of those anti gun, pro-abortion Marxist commies'  
And
Not accusing that district's Republicans of thinking Minnick is an anti-gun, pro-abortion Marxist commie. Or even a socialist or liberal.
[ Parent ]
Speaking of social issues, where is Minnick on abortion, teh gheys, etc?

[ Parent ]
But
progressives give their votes away to third parties that dont have a shot in hell of winning.  I was pretty much irate when I found out a bunch of my friends voted green party in 06 gubernatorial in MN.  Not only does the Independence Party take enough votes from the DFL when their candidate is more of the progressive mold, but then you have the Greens.  To me it's Kucinich like, voting down not progressive enough legislation only to nearly help kill it with a bunch of conservatives.
[ Parent ]
I agree completely
Third party progressives annoy the hell out of me on campus. They don't get it that this is two party system were compromise is sometimes necessary.  
[ Parent ]
This is blatantly untrue
conservative Republicans (who, let's be honest, make up this district's entire electorate)

If this were true, Bill Sali would have been reelected.  

Nope
Conservative != crazy. Some conservatives voted for a Democrat instead of a crazy Republican but would have voted for a sane, merely conservative one.

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
--  Will Rogers  
[ Parent ]
Some would have
A majority of conservatives would have voted for Sali.  It was because 35-40% of the district were not conservative Repubs, Minnick won.  If the entire district were conservative Repubs as the diarist suggests, Sali would have won easily.
[ Parent ]
You're right
clearly, conservatives aren't the ENTIRE electorate in that district.

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
--  Will Rogers  
[ Parent ]
You don't give away elections
Walt should keep on doing what he's doing. If guys like Gene Taylor can hang on there's no reason Walt can't.

And John King's show stinks.

Goal for 2010
Democrats have 58 House members elected with under 60% of the vote (using CNN's whole number results).  Fully 48 of those were first elected in 2006 otr later (including comebacks Ciro Rodriguez and Baron Hill).  We need to get as many of these into the solid 60+ range as possible.

Those who scored 54% or less (Danger, Will Robinson) are:
Carol Shea-Porter (up to the comparative safety of 52-46), Jim Himes (51-48), Michael Arcuri (52-48), Eric Massa (51-49), Kathy Dahlkemper (51-49), Frank Kratovil (49-48), Steve Dreihaus (52-46), MaryJo Kilroy (50-50), Mark Schauer (49-46), Gary Peters (52-43), Steve Kagen (52-48), Glenn Nye (52-48), Tom Perriello (50-50), Allan Grayson (52-48), Bobby Bright (50-50), Parker Griffith (52-48), Travis Childers (54-44), Chet Edwards (53-43), Paul Kanjorski (52-48), Harry Mitchell (53-44), Dina Titus (48-42), Walt Minnick (51-49), Schrader of Oregon (54-39).

The two most imperilled of those 22 are Bobby Bright ansd Walt Minnick although Eric Massa, MaryJo Kilroy, Paul Kanjorski, Frank Kratovil, and Tom Perriello are also skating on thin ice.  Kanjorski might be an easy take out in a primary as he is seriously weaker than his district.  

Can't see Himes, Peters or Schrader losing
Under any circumstances. Probably not Titus or Chet either. The rest are probably your top-tier defense list.
[ Parent ]
Well
Since we're going to cherry-pick here, I guess I can take this quote from the article:

"It means somebody who thinks realistically and pragmatically about spending," Wotring said when asked to define the term heard so often in Washington these days because of the delicate health-care negotiations among Democrats. "I believe Blue Dog Democrats see their constituents more realistically than the real strong liberals. I really do."

As meaning that Blue Dogs better represent their districts than other Democrats.

I mean, one person said it, so it must be true, right?

:)

ID-1: Walt Minnick is Toast. | 28 comments

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