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Open Seats Lost by Dems Since 1994

by: DavidNYC

Sun Dec 06, 2009 at 12:19 AM EST


Alright, here's sort of a group trivia question: Which open seat House races (including special elections) have the Democrats lost since 1994? I'm sure that together, we can name them all.

UPDATE: I think this chart covers it. Let me know if I've missed any.

Year District Incumbent Status Successor Opponent Results
1995 CA-15 Norm Mineta Retired Tom Campbell Jerry Estruth 59-36
1996 AL-03 Glen Browder Ran for Senate Bob Riley Ted Little 50-47
1996 AL-04 Tom Bevill Retired Bob Aderholt Bob Wilson 50-48
1996 IL-20 Dick Durbin Elected to Senate John Shimkus Jay Hoffman 50.3-49.7
1996 LA-05 Cleo Fields Retired John Cooksey Francis Thompson 58-42
1996 MS-03 Sonny Montgomery Retired Chip Pickering John Eaves 61-36
1996 MT-AL Pat Williams Retired Rick Hill Bill Yellowtail 52-43
1996 OK-03 Bill Brewster Retired Wes Watkins Darryl Roberts 51-45
1996 SD-AL Tim Johnson Elected to Senate John Thune Rick Weiland 58-37
1996 TX-05 John Bryant Ran for Senate Pete Sessions John Pouland 53-47
1996 TX-12 Pete Geren Retired Kay Granger Hugh Parmer 58-41
1997 NM-03 Bill Richardson Named UN Ambassador Bill Redmond Erica Serna 43-40
1998 CA-03 Vic Fazio Retired Doug Ose Sandra Dunn 52-45
1998 CA-36 Jane Harman Ran for Governor Steven Kuykendall Janice Hahn 49-47
1998 KY-06 Scotty Baesler Ran for Senate Ernie Fletcher Ernesto Scorsone 53-46
1998 NC-08 Bill Hefner Retired Robin Hayes Mike Taylor 51-49
1998 PA-15 Paul McHale Retired Pat Toomey Roy Afflerbach 55-45
2000 MI-08 Debbie Stabenow Elected to Senate Mike Rogers Dianne Byrum 48.8-48.7
2000 MO-06 Patsy Danner Retired Sam Graves Steve Danner 51-47
2000 NY-01 Michael Forbes Lost Primary Felix Grucci Regina Seltzer 56-41
2000 PA-04 Ron Klink Ran for Senate Melissa Hart Terry Van Horne 59-41
2000 VA-02 Owen Pickett Retired Ed Schrock Jody Wagner 52-48
2000 WV-02 Bob Wise Elected Governor Shelley Moore Capito Jim Humphreys 49-46
2001 VA-04 Norm Sisisky Died Randy Forbes Louise Lucas 52-48
2002 IN-02 Tim Roemer Retired Chris Chocola Jill Long Thompson 50-46
2002 MI-10 David Bonior Ran for Governor Candice Miller Carl Marlinga 63-36
2002 MI-11 Jim Barcia Elected to State Senate Thad McCotter Kevin Kelley 57-40
2002 OH-03 Tony Hall Named to UN Post Mike Turner Rick Carne 59-41
2002 PA-06 Bob Borski Retired Jim Gerlach Dan Wofford 51-49
2002 PA-18 Frank Mascara Lost in PA-12 Primary Tim Murphy Jack Machek 60-40
2004 KY-04 Ken Lucas Retired Geoff Davis Nick Clooney 54-44
2004 LA-07 Chris John Ran for Senate Charles Boustany Willie Mount 55-45
2004 TX-02 Jim Turner Retired Ted Poe Nick Lampson 56-43
2004 TX-10 Lloyd Doggett Elected in TX-25 Michael McCaul 79-0
2004 TX-11 Chet Edwards Elected in TX-17 Mike Conaway Wayne Raasch 77-22
2004 TX-24 Martin Frost Lost in TX-32 Kenny Marchant Gary Page 64-34

The Michigan and Pennsylvania races in 2002, the Texas races in 2004 and the LA-05 race in 1996 were all due to redistricting. Obviously the Texas races pose a bit of a definitional problem, since most of the affected Dem incumbents ran in different districts (or at least, renumbered districts). But I've left TX-10, 11 & 24 on the list because there were indeed no incumbents who ran in those races. TX-02 is a little trickier, because Jim Turned retired outright, but incumbent Nick Lampson ran in the 2nd CD (albeit a very different-looking 2nd CD). But I think it merits inclusion.

And here's an interesting tidbit: Not counting losses attributable to redistricting, Dems have lost 27 open seats and 12 incumbents since 1994, for a total of 39 over a 15-year period. To take back the House, the GOP needs to win two more than that total - 41.
DavidNYC :: Open Seats Lost by Dems Since 1994
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Open Seats Lost by Dems Since 1994 | 61 comments
We
lost Dick Durbin's seat that he vacated to run for the senate.

19, Male, Independent, CA-12
Do new seats caused by GOP gerrymandering count?
If so, there are some in 2002.
Yes
For the purposes of this question. Any Dem-held open seat which turned red counts. Obviously some seats can get redistricted into oblivion, so there may be a couple of cases where it's not quite "fair" to chalk it up to a loss. But we're just trying to be as thorough as possible here - we can quibble over blame later. :)
[ Parent ]
NC-8 lost as an open seat in 1998

AL-3 and Al-4 lost in 1996
La-5 lost in 1996, but it was gerrymandered.  
Also TX-5 mid decade map redraw
Not sure TX-14 counts because Dem switched parties before we lost the open seat race.
[ Parent ]
Maybe CA-31 (now 32) also?
In 2000, incumbent Dem Matthew Martinez switched parties after losing the primary to Hilda Solis, though the seat would go back to D when Solis got sworn in.

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28, New Democrat, Female, TX-03 (hometown CA-26)
[ Parent ]
California 03
Vic Fazio's seat that was lost to Republican Doug Ose when Fazio retired in 1998. Ose himself retired in 2004 to be replaced by Dan Lungren. I have my fingers crossed that we can beat him next year.

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28, New Democrat, Female, TX-03 (hometown CA-26)
MI-08: Debbie Stabenow
We lost that seat to Mike Rogers when Debbie decided to move on up in 2000.
and David Bonior
his district was reconfigured and he retired.  Candice Miller won it in 2002.  KY 4 Ken Lucas > Geoff Davis in 2004.  LA 7 Chris John > Charles Boustany 2004. IN 2 Tim Roemer > Chris Chocola 2002. OH 3 Tony Hall > Mike Turner 2002. PA 6 Robert Borski > Jim Gerlach 2002. PA 18 Frank Mascara > Tim Murphy 2002.  MO 6 Pat Danner > Sam Graves 2000. PA 4 Ron Klink > Melissa Hart 2000. VA 2 Owen Pickett > Ed Schrock 2000. WV 2 Bob Wise > Shelley Moore Capito 2000. CA 36 Jane Harman > Steve Kuykendall 1998.  KY 6 Scotty Baesler > Ernie Fletcher 1998.  PA 15 Paul McHale > Pat Toomey 1998. LA 5 Cleo Fields > John Cooksey (idk if this one counts) 1996.  MS 3 Sonny Montgomery > Chip Pickering 1996.  MT AL Pat Williams > Rick Hill 1996.  OK 3 Bill Brewster > Wes Watkins 1996. SD AL Tim Johnson > John Thune 1996.  TX 5 John Bryant > Pete Sessions 1996. TX 12 Pete Green > Kay Granger 1996.  

16, Male, MI-01
[ Parent ]
CA-36
Harman defeated Kuykendall to win back her seat in 2000.

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28, New Democrat, Female, TX-03 (hometown CA-26)
[ Parent ]
Pete Geren, not Green
Geren, BTW, went on to be both Air Force Secretary and Army Secretary under GWB.
[ Parent ]
VA-04
Sissiki died, Randy Forbes won...last special election to flip to Republicans.

Also MT-AL, WV-02, KY-04, LA-07

A few that we won back; IN-02, SD-AL, VA-02

LA-03: Chris John's district in 2004.
John ran for Breaux's seat but lost to Vitter.  Republicans took the seat in the runoff.  We did, however, make it up by taking LA-07 with Melancon the same day.

Follow the elections in Georgia at the 2010 Georgia Race Tracker.
LA-07
Not LA-03, I do believe. Melancon took LA-03

30, male, Democratic, CO-01
[ Parent ]
You're right.
We lost LA-07 and took LA-03.

Follow the elections in Georgia at the 2010 Georgia Race Tracker.
[ Parent ]
Special election pickups since 1994
Since 2001 we've made a killing in specials.

Dem pickups:
NY-23 - 2009
MS-01 - 2008
LA-06 - 2008
IL-14 - 2008
SD-AL - 2004
KY-06 - 2004

Rep Pickups:
VA-04 - 2001
NM-03 - 1997
CA-15 - 1995

NM-03 really shouldn't count
The only reason we lost it is because of the Green Party, and we won it right back in 1998 with now-Senator Tom Udall.

Politics and Other Random Topics

24, Male, Democrat, NM-01, Chairman of the Atheist Caucus, and Majority Leader of the "Going to Hell" caucus!

[ Parent ]
I had a feeling...
Alabama had one, so I looked it up. Robert Aderholt took the seat from Tom Bevill in 1996.

NY-14, DC-AL (college) Distraught Mets fan
Alabama had two
they also had the seat Bob Riley won, which was formerly represented by Glen Browder
[ Parent ]
I have the feeling that, by winning two tough races in Alabama (and thus gaining one on them)
was kinda payback.

party: Democratic, ideology: moderate, district: CT-01
[ Parent ]
lost AL 3 in 2002 as well
Rogers beat Joe Turnham by 4k votes in a very republican year
[ Parent ]
Looking at wikipedia...
2008:
None

2006:
None

2004:
KY-04
LA-07
TX-10 - due to gerrymander
PR-AL - Nonvoting office

2002:
AZ-01 - New Seat
CA-21 - New Seat
CO-07 - New Seat
FL-24 - New Seat
FL-25 - New Seat
GA-12 - New Seat
IN-02
MD-02
MI-10
MI-11
NV-03 - New Seat
OH-03
PA-06
PA-18
TX-05 - New Seat
TX-31 - New Seat

2000
MI-08 - Vacated by Stabenow's run for Senate
MO-06
NY-01 - Incumbent Forbes ran as indpeendent
PA-04
VA-02
WV-02
NY-01
Chad, your history here is not accurate.  Michael Forbes was elected as a Republican in the 1994 deluge to this seat in Long Island.  Five years later, because of his disenchantment with the increasing conservatism of the GOP, he switched parties and became a Democrat.  He lost the next primary by a handful of votes to a 71-year retired librarian who had never run for office and had raised virtually no money.  Most commentators attributed the loss to his opposition to abortion.  Republican Felix Grucci was then elected to the seat in 2000.

The failure of Forbes to win the primary is one reason you don't see more party switches.  A similar situation happened in the 14th district of Texas when Greg Laughlin switched from Democrat to Republican after the 1994 election.  In 1996, he lost a primary runoff to Ron Paul, because he was attacked as being too moderate for Texas.  Arlen Specter's current travails might also be mentioned.

[ Parent ]
Well
The GOP ratfucked us quite nicely in NY-01. They supported Regina Seltzer in the primary very deliberately. They did the same thing in 1994 with Mike Synar. We've done the same ourselves, such as that VT-Sen race where we helped nominate this old farmer who endorsed Leahy!
[ Parent ]
Vermont
was more to do with the fact that the Republican candidate was a millionaire carpetbagger. Vermonters don't take kindly to that sort of thing.
[ Parent ]
UT-03
1996 Bill Orton lost to Chris Cannon. Suprising that he survived 1994 in a very red district centered around Utah County.
Sorry
Just realized these are supposed to be open seats
[ Parent ]
A chronicle of non-open losses
would also be welcome. :)

party: Democratic, ideology: moderate, district: CT-01
[ Parent ]
We already did that
So there is no need to do that in this thread. See here:

http://www.swingstateproject.c...

[ Parent ]
So...
Barring a flood of retirements we would need about twice as many Dem incumbents to lose in 2010 than have lost every year since 1994 for Dems to lose the House.
[ Parent ]
No
More like 3 times as many. Most of those losses on that chart were due to redistricting. In non-redistricting-related matchups, 12 Dem incumbents have lost since 1994. But we haven't had any anti-Dem wave elections since then, of course.
[ Parent ]
Anyone know the story with Durbin's seat
He's always been very liberal in the Senate.  Why did his seat flip after he vacated it?  I always assumed he represented a very democratic house seat given his liberal bent.  And Shimkus is not even a moderate republican.
All I can say is
Don't assume. IL-20 went for Clinton by only 48-41, and went for Bush over Gore 52-46. The new IL-19 (where Shimkus now sits) became a LOT redder - it went for Bush over Gore 56-41.
[ Parent ]
From memory, Durbin's seat was in S. Illinois
without much of the St.Louis metro area - with politics closer to S Indiana than Chicago.

I think of Durbin as someone who evolved from a "moderate". He was certainly less liberal than Paul Simon, who he replaced in the Senate.

From Wikipedia, he defeated an R in '82 to win the House seat.

[ Parent ]
Durbin
definitely flipped on choice, and I think since his vote for DOMA he has come out for gay marriage (not sure about that one). He's definitely moved to the left, like Gillibrand but probably a little bit more gradual.

21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/
[ Parent ]
Evolved on the issues
That sounds a lot like (gasp!) Kirsten Gillibrand.
[ Parent ]
What prompted this little group project?
Anything fun and interesting or just curious?

Do another because this only leads to the next obvious questions, how about defeated incumbents instead of open seats.

I would be much more interested in that
Because they can't take the House on the back of open seats.
[ Parent ]
We've done that before
See the link I posted upthread.

What prompted this was my curiosity about how frequent open-seat losses are compared to incumbent losses. Not counting redistricting, 12 Dem incumbents have lost since 1994, while we've lost 27 open seats.

[ Parent ]
PA-06 shares no territory with Bob Borski's PA-03
It was an open seat in pretty much every sense.  
I switched Borski
To PA-03. But redistricting shows you how hard it is to properly compile this kind of information.
[ Parent ]
The deal is this
PA-03 as it existed for Borski is no more. It was a NE Philly district which was drawn together with the 13th. Borski retired instead of primarying Joe Hoeffel.  
[ Parent ]
I know
I'm not really sure what you want from me. There's no perfect way to describe this situation. In normal, non-redistricting-related cases you would say, "We lost so-and-so's seat because they retired." It's not really fair to say that about Borski, but we certainly did lose an open seat that year, because a new seat with no incumbent in it got created thanks to redistricting. Borski retired rather than face an incumbent-vs-incumbent primary - running in the new 6th was not an option for him.

I guess perhaps this is akin to a situation where a state simply gets a brand-new district in re-apportionment - we lost quite a few "open seats" that way in 2002.

[ Parent ]
Want? Oh, nothing, I'm just trying to sketch out what happened
I think it's almost as simple as "defeated: district removed."  
[ Parent ]
Capito Moore (WV-02) was badly outspent in 2000
Her opponent for the open seat Jim Humphreys spent an enormous sum of his own money on that open seat race.  Humphries ended up spending just under $7 million to Capito Moore's $1.3 mill.  Of course Capito Moore had the advantage of having a well known last name in West Virginia.

Same thing happened in 2002 when Humphreys again ran against Capito Moore and outspent her $8.2 mill to $2.5 mill.  In the rematch she crushed him 60-40%.

Talk about a bad return on investment.  He spent about $14 mill on two losing elections.

And funny thing is
Capito Moore's 2004 opponent spent a whopping $77K and took a higher share of the vote than Humphreys took in 2002 when he blew $8 mill.
[ Parent ]
Interesting from PPP
"We're releasing a poll tomorrow that's good for Democrats! First time in ten weeks by my count"

Boucher above 50% maybe?

 

Pick up in Missouri?


Follow the elections in Georgia at the 2010 Georgia Race Tracker.
[ Parent ]
Nah they polled that too recently

[ Parent ]
Ohio?
Oh, I noticed they're now doing a straw poll to see which district they should poll next.  My vote's for NH-02.  I guess if NH-02 is on the list, New Hampshire is probably not there.

Follow the elections in Georgia at the 2010 Georgia Race Tracker.
[ Parent ]
NH-01, not -02.


Follow the elections in Georgia at the 2010 Georgia Race Tracker.
[ Parent ]
I voted Markey
Seems to me her margin last year, Musgrave or no Musgrave, was so strong as to suggest she might be better off than some or assuming. Probably means it isn't Colorado either. Could be Ohio. I mentioned Boucher because Jensen specifically said they were polling it when they announced the Snyder numbers last month.
[ Parent ]
I completely agree on Markey
She impresses me as the 2008 Zach Space. The margin of victory was just too good.

26, Male, Democrat, TX-26
[ Parent ]
I voted NH too

[ Parent ]
Sigh
Looks like DE-AL. Big deal.
[ Parent ]
It is a big deal.
It's a pickup of a district where we can have a sustainabile presense and have far more leeway to pursue progressive legislation.

Follow the elections in Georgia at the 2010 Georgia Race Tracker.
[ Parent ]
I know
Just meant along the lines of "Tell me something I didn't already know" so disappointed no good news from an incumbent.  
[ Parent ]
Heh
What's next on the "OMGZ great news for Dems" front?  
My guess: "Cao trailing badly in LA-02, Dems primed for pickup."
[ Parent ]
PA-06, a similar district, would be far more interesting

[ Parent ]
Open Seats Lost by Dems Since 1994 | 61 comments

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