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Welcome to the Horse Race. This week, we take a close look at the May 12th special election in California's 25th congressional district with National Journal's Josh Crowshaw and with a special multi-candidate edition of Ads of the Week. We also talk with legendary political forecaster Charlie Cook about how to think about handicapping races. The horses are at the starting gate. They're off.
Joining me this week on the undercard is Josh Kraushaar, the political editor at National Journal and author and host of the Against the Grain column in National Journal and the wonderful podcast. Josh, welcome back to the horse race. Great to be back on the show, Henry.
Well, you know, for junkies like us, it's been like withdrawal the last couple of months. Oh, there's no voting going on anywhere. But we're actually going to have two congressional special elections that take place next Tuesday. And real votes that matter are going to be cast. One of them is the big one is California's 25th congressional district. And you've been following that closely. Tell the horse race listeners what's the race like and what's going on.
Well, this is one of those quirky races that's taking place in May. It doesn't seem to be following the national political patterns that we're seeing. A Republican, Mike Garcia is the nominee. He's an outsider. He's someone who was a Navy fighter pilot, served during the Iraq War, was a defense contractor. He is, by
By all accounts, by my reporting, talking to both Republican and Democratic sources, the Republican in a seat that Democrats held and that Hillary Clinton carried is leading his Democratic opponent. Her name is Christy Smith. She's a nominee. She's a state assemblywoman, a political insider in Sacramento. And this is one of those kind of quirky elections, Henry, that, you know—
The district, it's important to understand the geography of the district. The district is centered in the Santa Clarita Valley, a little bit outside of Los Angeles. It's more of a, it's not as urban as those Orange County and Los Angeles area seats that flipped last year.
to the Democrats, uh, in the last election. Katie Hill, is, is, is anyone who knows the name Katie Hill probably knows this district because of her scandals because she had to resign from office, uh, in the middle of a sex scandal. She had a, uh,
an affair with a staffer on the campaign. She was alleged to have had an affair with a Hill staffer that she employed. So this scene is open because of her resignation. Uh, it's a wide open race and her baggage is playing a role in this. And also the fact that a lot of the, um,
Hispanic vote in the district and a lot of the non-white vote in the district, a lot of the younger voters in the district don't really engage in non-presidential election years or non-normal election dates. So having a special election in
in May when we're really not even talking much about politics these days, it's sort of foreign to a lot of voters. A lot of people don't know there's even an election going on in the district. And it's a, it's a district that voted for Mitt Romney by two points in 2012. It had a traditional Republican bent for a long time, uh, but it, but it voted for Hillary Clinton and swung pretty significantly to the Democrats in 2016. Uh,
Hillary Clinton won that by seven points, and Katie Hill, the former congresswoman, won it by eight points in her 2018 midterm election, defeating the Republican congressman at the time.
Steve Knight. So big picture, this is a winnable race for Republicans, even though Republicans, when you look at the big house map, they may not pick up many seats in November. They don't have many good candidates that are challenging Democratic incumbents. They have had a lot of trouble raising money to fund their campaigns, to fund their candidates.
This raises the exception to that rule. We're doing well in a Clinton district. We've got a candidate that has a really inspiring story being a military veteran and someone who is the son of Mexican immigrants. He's got a very good story to tell that he's been talking about across the district.
He's been raising lots of money. A lot of donors are looking at his campaign. He's got he raised over, I think, a million dollars in the last three months. President Trump endorsed him on Twitter in the last couple of weeks. So this is one of those like rare bright spots this year for Republicans in a map and in a political environment that's looking awfully bleak.
Now, this is the sort of district, you know, that there is currently no Republican member of the House who holds a seat that Hillary Clinton carried with over 50 percent, except for, I believe, John Katko in Syracuse, New York, 24. And this is the sort of suburban seat that Democrats have been telling us for the last year or so is inevitably moving in their direction because of Trump taking even despite the
The fact that it's an all-male election and it's on an unusual date, wouldn't a Republican victory in a seat that went for Clinton by seven points and that went for Hill by eight points be something for Republicans to really stand up and crow about that they can't? It's hard for Democrats to say, oh, it's all Mike Garcia's popularity or it's all the bad demographics.
or the bad timing of the election that influenced demographically disparate turnout patterns. Isn't this something, if Garcia actually won, that Republicans could say, maybe the national polls aren't quite all that they're cracked up to be?
I wouldn't go quite that far, but it would give Republicans a morale boost at a time when they really need it. And it would give them a chance to win the seat, to pick up the seat even in November when you do have more traditional presidential level turnout. You know, I talk to Republicans and Democrats pretty regularly that have been involved in this race, and they point out to me that the
The turnout is just so dramatically different in a district like this. And the only comparison I can think of sort of locally to the D.C. area is Prince William County, which is a pretty Democratic suburb of Washington, D.C. And if you remember Henry, Corey Stewart, who's one of the very conservative Democrats
Senate candidate who was the, I think he was on the county board of executive, you know, he was on the board of supervisors as a very Trumpian conservative in a pretty Democratic county. And a lot of people wondered how he could get elected in such a Democratic area. But his elections were always on the off years. They were always on the years when the presidential race wasn't taking place. And they were in years when the governor's races weren't taking place. So he was able to, the Republicans in a Democratic area were able to
exploit that advantage, to exploit that low turnout, because a lot of the Hispanic voters, a lot of the more liberal voters in that district just didn't show up in any other election but the presidential elections and the governor's election. But let me push back just a little bit against that, because
There was an earlier round of this special election that the first round of the special election was held on Super Tuesday when California had a non-competitive Republican primary and a extremely competitive presidential primary. So Democrats who wanted to vote were turning out to vote.
This is before this is the day that Joe Biden turned the race around. So people were coming out to vote to really decide who the nominee was going to be. And yet.
Even under those circumstances, I forget whether the Republican candidates combined had 51 percent or the Democratic candidates combined had 51 percent. But even under an election schedule that favored Democrats because of their differential likelihood to turn out in a primary, Republicans almost or basically it was a 50-50 race.
How do the sources explain that if they're trying to say that, well, Garcia is ahead, but it's all a turnout based effect? Well, all of my analysis and then hopefully that kind of comes from talking to a lot of folks involved in this campaign. So Democrats actually had the advantage in the vote in the spring in the presidential primary, 51 to 49 percent.
And when you look at historical trends, when you look at it, I don't want to get too technical here, but when you look at sort of the primary vote in California, all the candidates of both parties are on the same ballot. So when you compare the partisan vote on the primary ballot and you compare it to the November ballot, usually Republicans have a small advantage when you compare the primary to the November.
the November actual full presidential election in general. So, you know, Katie Hill won the race in 2018 with 54% of the vote. The Democrats on the presidential, on the primary ballot running for Congress won 51% of the vote. You know, you add the Katie Hill scandal, which is unique to this district, and you add that in as a factor. And I don't think it's that much of a discrepancy. I think that it would be consistent, um,
with sort of the argument that this is going to be a Trumpian electorate, even though it's a Clinton district. It's a lot of the Democratic voters that normally show up for presidential elections but are not engaged in this election. That's a very real dynamic, and I think it's compounded by the fact that Katie Hill is not well-liked anymore in this district. She's not exactly helping Democrats hold the seat.
And, you know, that's something that's also unique to just this district and probably not other districts that are battlegrounds in the country. Yeah. So just two things I want to ask you about. One is...
There was a video that went viral in which Christy Smith allegedly disparaged Mike Garcia's background as a fighter pilot. Has that actually made a voter impact or is that another one of those Twitter tempests in a teapot? And Katie Hill has her own ad starring herself in this district where she doesn't endorse any candidate, but she just asks people to vote. But it, again, puts her face in front of voters. Is that having an impact?
Yes and yes. First off, the video you referenced where I believe it was like a Zoom meeting, a Zoom town hall that the Democrat was holding with some of her constituents, and she kind of mocked.
that Garcia was a fighter pilot. And, you know, that's been a big part of his messaging. And she sort of was being very condescending and elitist in this video. And it's circulated not just on Twitter, but it's circulated among Garcia's supporters and among voters who were paying attention in the district. Now, this is a turnout battle. This is a race where there's not going to be huge turnout. So engaging your supporters, that's
big part of winning this election and there's no better way these days henry to engage your base than by killing someone who's kind of looking down upon someone who spent uh many many years serving this country in the military uh even if even if you know maybe maybe it was intended to be a private conversation it wasn't meant for public consumption you've got to assume everything you say as a candidate is public and i think it very much damaged christie smith um insofar as you can you know make a blunder in this type of race
And the, you mentioned the really kind of unique dynamic in this race is Katie Hill. Um,
Usually when you're a scandalized member of Congress who had to resign her seat in a flurry of controversy, usually you don't try to stay in the news. Usually you kind of lay low. Usually your party doesn't want you kind of be front and center. But Katie Hill transferred her campaign cash, her leftover campaign cash, into a PAC. And she has this very –
It's a very unique ad showing her in a mask and then unmasking herself and talking about how Democrats need to show up in this election to vote against Donald Trump, vote against President Trump.
I talked to the ad maker behind the ad. I talked to him and kind of got some sense of what the thinking was. And again, their argument is that among Democrats, Amy Hill is still pretty popular and they need to have their voters to show up too. And among the base, among the liberal base, younger voters in particular, they think that that type of ad might actually get people to pay attention and show up.
I'm skeptical that it'll make a big difference. I'm skeptical that it's going to really make the difference in a race that Democrats are really struggling in. But certainly it underscores the fact that that message wasn't intended for your average voter. It was intended for these unlikely voters, you know, younger voters, Hispanic voters, more liberal voters that don't always show up in a special elections. Well, there is one other race on the ballot. Um,
The 12th of May, and that is a special election in rural Wisconsin, Wisconsin's 7th congressional district. What's going on there?
So that is the seat of former Congressman Sean Duffy, who made quite a name for himself. He was actually he sort of predated President Trump as a celebrity member, a celebrity politician. He was known as a reality show contestant. He won a primary, I guess, 2010. He defeated, I believe he won the seat held by longtime Democratic Congressman Dave Obie, which was a rural Democratic district in northern Wisconsin.
And he served and served, you know, and never had much of a difficult campaign ever since he first took office. This district is changing politically. It's one of those districts that was once a battleground district. Democrats held it for quite some time until Duffy won. And it voted only narrowly for Mitt Romney in 2012, 52 to 48 or 50 to 48.
or 52 to, sorry, 51 to 48 over, over, uh, Barack Obama. But it swung more to Trump than almost any other district in the country. It went for president Trump in 2016 by 20 points. So, um, this is a seed, Tom Tiffany, who is a state Senator. He's the Republican nominee. Uh,
He is expected to win comfortably in the election. He's running against Patricia Zunker, who is a school board member from Wausau. This is not expected to be competitive. The only thing I'd say is if this race is close, if it's somehow competitive, that would be sort of a worrisome sign in Wisconsin, which is a state that Republicans absolutely need to win, that President Trump absolutely needs to win to have a chance at being reelected in November.
Well, last question. In this day and age with mail-in voting, I have to ask, when will we know the outcome in these races? Will they actually have the votes counted on election night? Or is this one of those things where we're going to have to wait for weeks until we know who the next congressperson is?
Well, for California, if past is prologue, it may take a few days at least to really have a sense who won in a close race. California, about half the vote in California traditionally is done by mail. This election is now an entirely, I believe it's almost exclusively a mail-in election. So I imagine it'll take a little longer than we normally would expect to have the ballots counted. Well,
We may get a late, late Tuesday night, early Wednesday morning. There may be a sense of where it's headed based on the vote that is counted. But, you know, there are a lot of elections where you saw the initial results on election night in 2018 where Republicans were leading. And then as absentee votes were counted, as late ballots that were cast late in the process were counted, Democrats ended up pulling ahead.
So if it's a close race, we may not know for quite some time, maybe a week or longer. The Wisconsin race, you know, again, will be a substantial mail in component. So I expect I'd expect that Republican is heavily favored there. He's heavily favored that if it's not really close, we'll have an earlier call. Well, Josh, thank you very much for sharing your wisdom and your insights with us on the horse race.
Thanks, Henry.
This week's ad of the week will actually be ads of the week. What I want to do this time is take you through how a campaign develops on the airwaves in a competitive race. And we will use the race that we just talked about with Josh, California's 25th congressional race, and show you how a campaign consultant does advertising in order to both maximize name identification and create the coalition that they want their candidate to have.
Recall what Josh told us. This is a district that is largely ex-urban. It is a district that rests on Simi Valley in Ventura County, Santa Clarita, a large city on the edge of the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
And a really ex-urban area, the Antelope Valley, cities of Palmdale and Lancaster, which maybe 30 years ago were small desert outposts with a military base nearby, but have now become places where young families go to buy housing that they can afford and then make obscenely long commutes to the jobs that they hold.
As we know, this is a district that used to trend Republican, has swung to the Democrats during the Clinton years. But in 2018, it was split at the state legislative level. The assembly district that elect Christy Smith, who is a Democratic candidate to become the next congresswoman, went Democratic. But the Republican incumbent in the other district.
Assembly District that has the bulk of this congressional district won reelection. So despite the national trend, the local trend still shows a willingness to cast Republican votes for decent Republican candidates, which might be why Mike Garcia, as Josh told us, is in the running here. Let's start with Christy Smith's first positive ad. As we will see, this is one that is much different than the ad that she is currently running on the Los Angeles television stations.
Note that this is an introductory ad.
This is an ad that even though Christy Smith has run before, there's an entire half or more of the district that she's never run in before. And the ones who did vote for her a few years ago may have forgotten her name because people remember names of politicians around election time. And then these things tend to fade. She's only been in office in the legislature for a year and a half before this election. So she hasn't had a lot of time to build up the sort of personal connection that members can often have with districts.
This is one that tries to talk about her in a personal way, and it emphasizes two things that we should take of note. First, with pre-existing conditions and health care, these are issues that tend to unite Democratic concerns with concerns of moderate Republican switch voters. These are the issues that Democrats used in their positive advertising during the 2018 congressional campaign.
Smith also emphasizes that she's willing to work across the aisles. That bipartisan appeal also tries to unite people who may still think of themselves as Republican-leaning, but very open in the Trump era to voting for the right sort of Democrat. So this is an ad that is crafted to recreate the Katie Hill, the Hillary Clinton coalition, the coalition of Democrats who have won this historically Republican but fast-shifting area.
Now Mike Garcia, let's listen to his first ad. Remember, Mike Garcia has never run for office before, and this is how he introduces himself to the voters of this district.
He broke records and piloted the F-18 Super Hornet, flew over 30 combat missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Now, Navy fighter pilot Mike Garcia has his sights set on Congress. Garcia's next mission, defeat socialism, build a wall, and enact term limits to get rid of career politicians. When it comes to defending our freedom, Mike Garcia is lined up and ready to take off once again.
I'm Mike Garcia, and I approve this message. This is very much like the Smith ad in one way. It is a positive ad, and it talks about Garcia. It doesn't create a contrast between the candidates. But the imagery couldn't be more different. Whereas Garcia is talking about his military background, Smith is talking about her mom. Whereas the music and the sense of the ad in Garcia is upbeat and
motion-oriented with the fighter plane in the background showing that he is a fighter pilot and bringing those juices to bear. Smith's ad is very visually soft, showing pictures of her late mother and having her appear on the camera. The issues Garcia talks about are
are different as well. Garcia talks about building the wall and talks about protecting our freedoms. This is an ad that is designed to raise Garcia's appeal among Republican and Republican-leaning voters. The imagery, the red, white, and blue colors surrounding the campaign logo, talking about the wall, talking about protecting freedoms. This is an ad that does exactly the same thing that Smith's ad is designed to do, which is introduce a
candidate to voters who have never heard of this person before, but does so with an eye towards the Republican coalition. Now, of course, no campaign that's competitive survives the positive phase for long. Eventually, people in the middle are going to have to choose. And
Faced with two competing positive and appealing messages, that choice is often hard. So candidates try and give them a little shove by saying things that they may not like about the other person. With Christy Smith, her negative ad, the contrast ad, is something that's right out of Democratic Central casting. Let's listen to her negative ad.
When somebody's the president of the United States, the authority is total. I absolutely do support the president. I always have. The White House used to have this office that dealt specifically with the pandemic. And in 2018, President Trump disbanded that. Well, I just think it's a nasty question because I don't know anything about it. I'm encouraged by this administration. Relative to other countries, we have very few cases. Confirmed coronavirus cases in this country climbs to over
Over a million. We're in great shape compared to other places. And deaths surpass American losses in the Vietnam War. I think Trump is a good president. Yeah, actually, I support the president. Our death totals, our numbers per million people are really very, very strong. We're very proud of the job we've done.
And I am the new brief that supports this president. Right, and then I see the disinfectant. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection? We need to support the president.
You don't have to be more obvious than this. This is an ad that uses Donald Trump's words, Donald Trump's images, and Mike Garcia's words and images to tie Garcia to Trump. You can't get more transparent than this. If you voted for Hillary Clinton, you want to vote for Christy Smith. If you don't like Donald Trump, you don't like Mike Garcia. And this is an ad that is one minute in length. It is twice as long as the typical ad and consequently is something that's quite expensive to air. But it does the job.
in communicating the message that unites the moderate Republicans who don't like Trump, but still like Republicans on issues along with the partisan Democrats. It's an ad that's likely to drive turnout, and it's an ad that can also persuade. So how does Mike Garcia respond to that? He has two separate negative ads up. So let's listen to the first one, and I'll speak about that, and then we'll listen to the second. So here's Mike Garcia's first negative ad.
Could you imagine firing teachers when times get tough? Sacramento politician Christy Smith did. Smith voted to lay off teachers and slash salaries. Christy Smith even voted for AB5, which threatens 70,000 jobs and could decimate retirement income. If Christy Smith already supported tax hikes, teacher layoffs, and threatening jobs, imagine her recklessness during these frightening times. Sacramento politician Christy Smith hurts Californians in need.
NRCC is responsible for the content of this ad. This ad plays up on the issues that unite Republicans with those swing voters. Notice that they're constantly calling Christy Smith a Sacramento politician. This is designed to play the inside-outside game that people often say they don't trust politicians, they don't trust people.
Well, Mike Garcia isn't in office. So to the extent that there's a person who may not like Donald Trump, but likes the idea of cleaning shop, likes the idea of bringing somebody new, that establishes that Christy Smith isn't your choice. Christy Smith is just another one of those lying politicians.
And the ad uses images of Nancy Pelosi as well, trying to signal to Republicans and moderates who may not like the liberal Pelosi to say, if you don't like the liberal Pelosi, you're not going to like Christy Smith. So again, it's trying to bring together the Republican coalition in a way by emphasizing the things that the swing voter won't like and bring them in their choice over to Mike Garcia.
Now let's listen to the second ad, and this one's about as obvious in its orientation as Christy Smith's ad. Sacramento politician Christy Smith.
I'm not going to go and raise taxes. That was a big lie. Smith supported higher sales and income taxes. And Christy Smith supported gutting Prop 13, meaning higher taxes that kill jobs. With unemployment surging, Christy Smith's tax hikes would cripple our recovery. Smith already supported firing teachers and threatening jobs. During these frightening times, we can't trust Sacramento politician Christy Smith. NRCC is responsible for the content of this ad.
taxes taxes taxes taxes that tax hiking sacramento politician this is about as a transparent play for middle class people who like democrats on social issues and don't like donald trump but really don't like democratic economics if you don't like democrats economics and you value your education you don't like christy smith that means that you should be choosing mike garcia
This is something that, again, highlights the differences and energizes the Republican base to turn out and vote while uniting swing voters with the Republican candidate. Two things to note, though, about all these ads. First, the ads with Mike Garcia, if you note, don't have Mike Garcia saying the statutorily required, I approve this message.
That's because it's being run by the National Republican Congressional Committee. That means two things. One, it means that the NRCC is being charged more money per spot because candidates get special rates. So people are seeing these ads less or it's costing Republicans more. That's bad for Garcia. But it's good for Garcia in the sense that you don't have an image of a candidate associated or the voice of a candidate associated with negative messages.
Research often shows that in a negative campaign, the negative message is believed, but people also don't like the messenger. Christy Smith's ad is one that doesn't have that. And so consequently, you've got the association of Smith with a negative ad, however brief, whereas Garcia is able to avoid that. But.
One of the large constituencies in this district is Latino. That Garcia is the Latino on the ballot, but Democrats often rely on heavy turnout from the Latino vote. Christy Smith has her own ad out talking in exclusively Spanish, 30-second Spanish ad that is aired on Spanish television. And she's the only candidate with a Spanish language ad. She's trying to actively drive up turnout and support.
among a key democratic constituency which as josh noted in this special election if she can't get low propensity to vote but a high propensity to support democratic people to cast a ballot at an unusual time she's got a much harder chance at winning than she would if this were a race during the general election when people will be motivated to vote because of the presidential campaign as you can see this is the sort of
subtle chessmanship that goes back and forth between a campaign that's fought exclusively over the airwaves. Positive, then contrast, is a classic strategy that strategists of both candidates employ. And I hope that you can see a little bit how this unfolds on your television ads now that you've seen how both sides do it on this week's Ads of the Week. ♪
This week, I am privileged to be able to talk to the pioneer of political forecasting, and that is Mr. Charlie Cook. Charlie is the editor and publisher of the Cook Political Report and a columnist at the National Journal. Charlie, welcome to The Horse Race. Thank you. Thanks for having me on, Henry.
Well, Charlie, you are a legendary name in this business because everyone has to go. Every field has a first mover. Mathematics has Isaac Newton, who founded calculus, and you kind of founded political calculus when you founded the Cook Political Report back in 1984. Yeah, there were people that went on long before me. Kevin Phillips, who
uh, was, uh, had been a strategist in the, uh, 68 Nixon campaign. And instead of going into the white house, he started something called the American political report. And I believe he coined the phrase sunbelt, but just a brilliant guy. And there was, uh, Alan Barron, who was a little bit more on the democratic side and Evans Novak had a newsletter as well. But, um, yeah, Stu Rothenberg and I got, uh, Stu started actually his newsletter a little bit before I did, but, uh,
The game was was we were early in the game relatively. Well, I think we've all read and learned from Kevin's magisterial work, the emerging Republican majority, which at the time was probably the best statistical analysis and data driven analysis of voting trends that was available on a national scale.
Yeah, Kevin's just a brilliant guy. I haven't seen him in many, many years, although I actually met his son fairly recently. But just I, you know, my first job out of college, I would just read his newsletter just religiously. And, you know, he was I guess we all have strange heroes. And he was kind of a hero of mine, just incredibly bright, talented guy. And I think I think he and Martha are living down in Florida now.
Oh, wow. He is one person I would like to meet because I know how I felt after I read the book. I read it in the early 80s because I'm a little younger than you guys, but I felt like scales had fallen from my eyes. Things became clearer because, of course, back in the 80s, we were much closer to the political demography of 1968, which is what he was writing about.
But you know who I think today does some of that, a lot of that? Ron Brownstein at Atlantic and on CNN. I just read religiously everything that Ron writes. Just an incredibly bright guy who's just looking over the horizon. Someone I listen to a great deal. Yeah, so do I. I think if Kevin...
coined the phrase Sun Belt, and I think he did. Ron coined the phrase the wine set to describe the upper income Democrat whose preferences continue to influence the course of primary campaigns, even if their choice doesn't always prevail. And he also coined Blue Wave or the Blue Wall.
Oh, he did. Yes. Yes. We did a podcast or a national journal webinar a couple of weeks ago and that came up. But anyway, so but they're just, you know, it's a it's a it's a great field to be in. And they're just lots and lots of really bright people. And, you know,
That's why you can just sort of soak it all in and and, you know, just hearing good ideas from other people can prompt you having good, you know, just sort of prompts your thinking challenges your thinking and then you come up with still other things. So anyway, it's a lot of it's a lot of fun and a lot of really interesting people.
Well, tell horse race listeners a little bit about your background and how it is you came to found the Cook Political Report and get into the forecasting and analysis business as a profession rather than as a hobby.
Well, I had grown up in Shreveport, Louisiana, and I'd been a high school debater and gone to debate camp a couple summers at Georgetown and kind of got bit by the Washington bug then and worked in a U.S. Senate race my senior year of high school. In 1972, a guy from my hometown, a conservative Democrat named Bennett Johnston, was running for the Senate. And anyway, he got elected, and about the time I was starting college,
at Georgetown and I worked on the Hill for him and other places while I was in college and got out and my first job out of college was at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and sort of bounced around worked at a polling firm worked in a couple of campaigns and and at the National Association of Home Builders with their political action committee and
And I found myself, though, becoming this was the early 80s. I found myself becoming a swing voter. I was voting Republican almost 40 percent of the time. And, you know, it's kind of in poor form to be working for one side and being a ticket splitter.
a prolific ticket splitter. And so I was trying to figure out how can I make a living in politics, but you can't work for both sides. So there were, as I said earlier, several political newsletters out there, but there seemed to be room for one that was aimed at
lobbyists and people that run political action committees, you know, both ends of the spectrum. And so I took my $6,000 out of the Senate retirement fund and my father-in-law loaned me, co-signed a bank note for $10,000 from the Bank of Hollandale, Mississippi.
And I started a business and that was in fall of 84. And, you know, we pretty much lived off my wife's salary for, you know, for a good while. And the business, you know, it struggled in the late mid to late 80s and then started kind of catching on in the early 90s. And it was a really interesting time in American politics. Ninety one, we had the first Persian Gulf War. Then they had the economy soften up and the
George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton race. And not too long after that, 94, we had the Gingrich tidal wave election. And we just sort of went through a phase where electoral politics was unusually interesting. And also, and I'll speak for, for Stu Rothenberg as well. Uh,
that it was a good time to be coming up because C-SPAN and CNN were just coming of age and the appetite for political analysis was great and for a relatively young person to be
coming along, you know, before. I mean, it was ABC, CBS, and NBC, and that was it. And you had to be a grown-up to get on one of those. So there were opportunities to kind of come on. So anyway, I started the newsletter. It was a one-man operation. Two years after I started it, so starting in 86, I started writing a column in Roll Call that I did for a dozen years. In 98, switched from my column from Roll Call to National Journal. And
And gradually, you know, had been a one man operation and gradually they're now six of us, you know, working full time on it. And I've got some really, really talented people. And, you know, I would say the quality of the House and Senate coverage is far better than,
now than it was back, uh, back when Bennett, when I did it. And, uh, so the way we've got it set up now is, uh, Amy Walter and I are sort of the macro people doing the sort of national politics and big picture stuff. And David Wasserman is the, uh, our house editor and he just knows the house on a, a granular basis, uh,
Plus has some really interesting takes on the national. And Jennifer Duffy was our governor editor for a very long time, and she just retired towards the end of last year. And Jessica Taylor came over to us, and she had worked for Stu a long time ago and had been a political reporter at NPR. And so she's come on board in doing this statewide. So then we have two other people that
put out the website and handle our site licenses and all of that. So anyway, it's a, it's a, it's small, but it's as big as it needs to be. And you know, my money is mostly from speeches and, you know, from sort of you know, we don't do any, I don't do anything for party committees for pay, but you know, corporations, trade associations, labor unions, all kinds of groups and go and sort of do the
tour de force of what's going on in American politics. So, or at least did back when they still had meetings before the lockdown. Stu was on the program last week and he said that his newsletter, well, I wanted to cover the waterfront. Zocktales tomorrow night, my wife, Lucy and I and Stu and Elaine. So we were direct competitors and we're still very, very, very good friends.
Well, he credited you quite a bit with helping him in the early days, both idea-wise. He said that you guys interviewed candidates together when he got started. But he credited the Gingrich 94 revolution with really –
Being the event that brought him out of the struggling phase and into kind of being able to make a go of it. And so I'm just wondering is that, again, many of the listeners are not old enough to remember that there was a time when Republican control of the House of Representatives was considered laughable.
because of the gap from 1954 to 1994, when not only did they not win, but they never really came close. It's so true. I remember in, it would have been maybe 1990, 1991. And somebody was having a party. We were in the backyard of a townhouse on Capitol Hill. And I, you know, just a handful of people talking and somebody said, uh,
what do you think will happen first? Democrats will elect a president or Republicans will elect a speaker. And everybody laughed.
because at that point, you know, Republicans had had, you know, President Reagan, Ronald Reagan had won twice, George H.W. Bush had won. It almost seemed laughable that a Democrat could get elected president and even more preposterous that a Republican could get elected speaker. But I remember that conversation, whoever it was that said that. And then someone else said, but you know, as soon as
Soon as one of them happens, the other will follow, which I thought was as a firetruck goes by. I thought that was incredible. You know, I just vividly remember I can't even remember who said that.
But it's that's that's sort of what it required. But it was, you know, to have President Bush going from an 89 percent job approval rating to losing reelection. And, you know, that whole Ross Perot in and out, in and out. It was it was a breakthrough race for for us and.
You know, at that point, there were only a couple of us in the Cook Political Report, but it happened to be the first year that I hired a house editor, a dedicated house editor. And it was a young man, young at the time, Ben Scheffner, hired him out of, he had just graduated from Harvard and had been the editor of the Harvard Political Review.
And we had never had a dedicated house editor. And so that was really the first time we were watching the house as closely as all of that. And it turned out to be a really good cycle to do that. But yeah, that was, if I had to point to one cycle, that was a breakthrough cycle.
And then, of course, in 94, as we learned later, Gingrich made swinging the Perot voters to the Republican side a priority of his campaign and at least for one election managed to get the lion's share of them.
Well, and, you know, going back and, you know, it's sort of to say, how did we get going this general direction? And, you know, in some ways you could think about Richard Nixon, the silent majority and the hard hat revolution and all of that. And then you could talk about the Reagan revolution where he was targeting
targeting a lot, you know, white working class to a great degree. I think also, though, and this is, again, you know, before cable became important, I think talk radio, I mean, I would credit two people, entities with the 1994, or more than two, but one was talk radio and specifically Rush Limbaugh that it enabled, you know,
It was sort of the first narrow casting as opposed to broadcasting in terms of media, you know, on a big scale. And then, you know, Gingrich was you could like him or not like him, agree with him or not. But he certainly was a visionary and put together a strategy that at the time you kind of wondered whether it was crazy or not, but it turned out to be brilliant.
And also, though, there was a great degree of arrogance then that when you've had the House for 40, when you've won the House for 20 consecutive elections and there was an arrogance that was there that that I think fed into this. And then there was one other thing. And I wouldn't bother most people with this, but Henry, you'll appreciate this.
When I look at the degree of partisanship that we have today and say, you know, maybe we'd have gotten here sooner or later. But when I look back and say, OK, where did this first really get started? I point back to 1984. There was a House race in Indiana's 8th District between Frank McCloskey, a Democrat, and Rick McIntyre, a Republican.
And it was one of these things where the race, it was basically dead even. And, you know, there were some ballots that were screwed up and this and that. And God only knows who really won it. And there had been a similar Senate race in Maine. No, New Hampshire. New Hampshire. Yeah, Wyman Durkan. Yes, Wyman Durkan. And the Senate just said, do it over. We can't tell who won.
And that's what the House should have done in 1984. But the and there are others that will have a different version of this. But I think House Democrats just said, screw it. The House is the final judge of our judge of its members. And we're going to seat our guy, Frank McCloskey.
And that so outraged Republicans that even some of the most liberal Republicans in the House, like Congresswoman Nancy Johnson from Connecticut, that kind of pushed her over towards Gingrich and the sort of get along, go along thing.
conventional old-fashioned Republicans just basically got, over time, shoved aside. Gingrich takes over. And that's when you started things going back and forth, Gingrich going after Jim Wright, Democrats going after Newt. But it was just the House that was really that partisan then, just bitterly partisan. And it made things unpleasant
But in the House, the majority rules said it really didn't affect governing that much. But it was kind of like going back and looking at a bar fight at the video and say who threw the first punch. I actually point to Democrats with that Indiana 8 as throwing the first punch. But the partisanship was pretty much just in the House. And then as you had House members, Democrat and Republican, moving over to the Senate,
in those early 90s, late 80s, early, late 80s, mid 80s, late 80s, it was like a contagion coming over into the Senate. And the Senate, you know, it had been a very civil place. And the Senate, because of its rules and traditions, it can't deal with that level of partisanship.
And it's almost like the Senate just went into convulsions and that and I think the Bork, you know, the Bork nomination fight. I mean, there were just all kinds of things that suddenly the Senate began acting more like the House.
And as I said, because of its rules and traditions, it really can't deal with that. And so I, you know, I guess everybody's got their own version, but that's sort of how I remember it, how I think of it about terms of how things got so partisan that, you know, there's plenty of blame on both sides here.
But I think Democrats need a first punch. How is it that you look at races and your staff? But, you know, I really am interested for you, your personal history. Going back to the 90s, what would you be looking at when you were trying to decide, is this race a toss up? Is it lean in one direction or another? And has that analysis or framework changed over the last couple of decades?
Oh, that's a good question. I think part of it was my mindset, having been a high school debater, where you're debating the affirmative side of a question one hour, and the next hour you're on the negative side, and that you learn that truth, justice, and the American way isn't exclusively on one side of an issue, and to sort of think that there's generally some merits in both. And so it
that actually was sort of what helped me get to the point where I just didn't want to work for one side anymore. I didn't consider my, I just wasn't comfortable as a partisan on either side. And then you get into this and you think, well, you know, professionally speaking, I want to be right. And you basically convince yourself that you can't
you can't, um, have a preference that you, you, I, I mean, I don't care who wins. I just want to be right. Or if I'm wrong, I want to realize that I'm wrong and get on the, get, get right on it as soon as possible. Um, you know, it's just sort of professional pride. And then you start building, uh, sources on both sides, uh, you know, campaign consultants and managers on both sides so that, um,
You've got people that are confiding in you and that are sharing with you. If you behave in a partisan way, you're going to betray half of them. I don't want to do that. Some of my best friends are pollsters in both parties. I love trading emails with
you know, one Republican pollster within the last two hours. And I love that's part of the, part of the job I like most is sort of comparing notes with people that are seeing a lot of data and, you know, just off the record, what are you thinking on this or that? But the other, the other part of it was when I'd worked at the national association of home builders with their PAC, you know,
a colleague of mine, Lisa Stoltenberg, and I would rate every race on a numerical scale. And we sort of negotiated out. And my background had been on the Democratic side and her background had been on the Republican side. She had actually worked at NCPAC, the National Conservative Political Action Committee. And but we would collaborate on coming up with race ratings for every single House race.
And, you know, it became, you know, where you it was not a competition, but, you know, you want to be right when you do that. And so and you learn that, you know, 80 percent of these people,
House districts. I mean, there were times when there was actually a point where there were about 150 either competitive or potentially competitive districts.
And so you could you could blow off, you know, the biggest number. But with 150, you had to really pay attention and and look and, you know, you have to look at the traditional voting patterns, but then say, OK, if things are different this time, why is it different? Why might this district that traditionally votes Republican, why might it go Democrat or vice versa?
And, you know, I've just done it a long time. And so now, I mean, I kind of and Stu at his shop, you know, we kind of came up with our own recipes that were very similar, actually. And then, you know, as we get bigger, other people come along and they take the recipe that you have and they, you know, modify it a little bit and put their own little twists on it. And so but anyway, it's just amazing.
I really, you know, I don't know what the hell I'd be doing if I wasn't doing this for a living. But a lot of it is just wanting to be right and to look for patterns. And, you know, I remember going into the spring summer of 1994, and here the House had been Democratic for, well, since the 1954 election.
And just seeing, seeing patterns of things that were different than we'd seen before. And just sensing that some way, something's, something is going on here. And, and I actually remember one conversation I'd had, it was with a, a,
who had been a moderately senior guy, relatively senior guy at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. And we were...
Several of us had been over there meeting with them in their conference room, and we had gone through from Alabama to Wyoming, all 50 states and every district that was remotely competitive. And then after everybody else had left, this guy and I were talking, and he said, let me just ask you, off the record, are you seeing anything odd, different?
And, you know, I sort of didn't know, not really. And he said, I've just seen some funny numbers and it's in different corners of the country, different kinds of districts. And, you know, I kind of went back to the office and started thinking about that for a few days and started watching and looking around.
you know, anew at all these districts and at what we were hearing, what kind of polls we were seeing or hearing about and realizing that there was a pattern that was developing and there was a wave that was developing. And, you know, I think I coined the phrase tsunami to describe this
great wave that was coming on in 1994. And it became very clear that Republicans were going to pick up a boatload of seats, but they needed 40. And going through race by race, you could get Republicans to a 30-seat game, but 40 just seemed too far.
And not only did they get to 40, they got to 52 or 54, depending on which how you count a couple of things. But anyway, but that was just bigger than any of us had ever seen and where it was almost like everything that wasn't knocked or locked down went over the side.
And, you know, we've subsequently seen a bunch of these. And so that the old adage of all politics is local, you know, I kind of amended to say, well, all politics is local except when it's not. And just every two, three, four elections, we began to see one that just wasn't. And now to the point where
I think anybody that thinks that all politics is local in 2020, they're smoking something because we're now in a parliamentary, largely a parliamentary system where people, very little ticket splitting and people are moving over waves. I mean, partisans are still staying on their respective sides, but we're seeing, you know,
just enough people that are swinging back and forth that we're seeing some really violent things happening. And for example, 2016 was the first election since we started the direct election of senators in 1914, where every single U.S. Senate race went exactly the same way that state was going in the presidential race. And that never happened before.
And, you know, it wasn't quite that high, but it was pretty damn high in 2018. And where it's, you know, for a...
moderate Republican in a bad year for Republicans or a moderate Democrat. I mean, you just get washed out to sea and you don't have to be that moderate to get washed out to see if you're in a competitive state. So we're just sort of in a different place politically than we were back when I started the thing in 1984.
Yeah, I mean, I was a young political consultant in California in 1984. And the phenomena of the swing district, the district that would vote for Reagan at the top of the ticket, but Democrats at the bottom of the ticket was a real phenomena.
And conversely, you had a lot of places that would vote Democratic at the top of the ticket, but would still vote Republican at the bottom of the ticket pretty loyally. And that doesn't exist anymore. And the idea that the candidate is the key is something that was revolutionary in the 1970s or the 1960s during the height of the ticket splitting era.
And I think we're trying, we're now unlearning that, that there's still entire races or entire industry built around the idea that the candidate and the candidate's campaign is what matters most. When in fact, it seems that basic partisan trends matter most. And you can spend $30 million trying to establish your own identity in a race and maybe budge 1% off of the underlying partisan trends.
Ron Brownstein has a great line that it used to matter what name was on the back of your jersey. And now it's just what color jerseys you're wearing.
And he had said that specifically in the context of, you know, you could be a prior in Arkansas, you could be a Landrieu in Louisiana, and that would help you. Or a Chafee in Rhode Island on the Republican side. Excuse me? Or a Chafee in Rhode Island. Exactly. Yeah. And then it got, yeah, that doesn't matter. The Susan Collins Senate race in Maine would be...
It just shows how difficult it is for someone that's nowadays trying to stick to the middle. And you can't stay in the middle. I mean, there are too many votes that are just you can't do that. And so now it's almost like sailing where you're having to kind of tack back and forth, but keep an eye on where you're trying to get. But.
of the nature of votes on the Senate floor now is such that there's no path straight down the middle anymore. There are only two ways to vote on Kavanaugh unless you don't show up. There are only two ways to vote on impeachment unless you just don't show up. That's one to watch whether it is possible
for someone, I mean, you know, I'm thinking of Maine and think of Bill Cohen, think of, you know, think of the tradition that states had. And, you know, it's not clear that you could do that anymore. I definitely think the Collins race is going to be either the exception that proves the rule or more likely probably the final proof that the old ways of
differentiating yourself just don't work anymore. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. And then also just other people that are not nearly as moderate in tone and style and substantively as she is. But, you know, take a Cory Gardner in Colorado or Tom Tillis in North Carolina. Those races are going to be determined in the suburbs.
And where under normal circumstances, both of them would probably be OK. But is the you know, are the are the suburban voters and particularly these college educated suburban white women who really don't like President Trump at all? Are they just going to just going to be seeing blue when they go and vote and they're going to just vote against anybody else?
Anybody that's wearing a red jersey and can, you know, can can folks like that hold on? And the same same is true, obviously, for Democrats. And, for example, 2010 and 2014 that, you know, you could be Michael Phelps or Mark Spitzer or in my day, Johnny Weissmuller, you know, an Olympic winning athlete.
swimmer, but sometimes the undertow just gets so great that no matter how strong a swimmer you are, in some places, you're going to get sucked under. Well, how do you see the national environment right now? And obviously Biden's up in the polls, Democrats are up in the generic ballot, but how do you see that
possibly changing or not changing depending on what's going on in the national environment.
Well, we're looking at, I mean, you know, it goes without saying that we're looking at a situation that we've never seen before. And just working on my next column and thinking that, you know, we have economists that are seeing data that they never thought in their entire careers they would ever see and making forecasts that they never thought that they would be able to. And we see Congress passing these trillion dollar bills
multi-trillion dollar packages that they never would have done in 2008 or any time other time and the Fed doing things. And so we're clearly in uncharted waters. And anybody that thinks they really know what's going on, I think they're delusional. But, you know, I think that Republicans have a demographic challenge that they're
That the president's recipe, and this was not the Mitt Romney recipe, and it wasn't the John McCain recipe, and, you know, it were some resemblance to George W. Bush, but not this far, of basically sort of doubling down on shrinking groups.
And that in part because of Hillary Clinton, in part because of how the economy was performing in some very specific places in 2016, Donald Trump was able to win despite the fact that he was sort of going against almost everything that was in that Republican autopsy from after the 2012. He was able to do it.
And, you know, it's possible that he can, it's entirely possible that he could pull that off again. But as a long-term strategy for the Republican Party,
In a country that's getting more diverse, less and less white, in a country that's getting fewer and fewer working class whites, whites with less than a four-year college degree, fewer and fewer people living in small town rural America, fewer and fewer religious people, it's...
It's it's you know, it seems to be a demographic death spiral that maybe they went against. They were able to beat the trend in 2016 and maybe they can do it in 2020. But as a long term strategy, you know, it can't possibly work over the long haul. And so I asked, you know, I asked all my Republican pollster friends, you know,
Five years after Donald Trump has left Washington, no matter whether the meter starts in January of 2021 or January of 2025, what is the Republican Party going to look like?
And nobody knows. And the theory that I'd had six, eight months ago is that how the Republican Party would be five years after President Trump leaves town is,
that it might be more determined by who Democrats nominate in 2020 than anything else, that you've got these, you know, upscale, these white suburban voters, particularly white college-educated women who have, who were once part of the Republican base, moving more and more away from the Republican Party towards Democrats. But the question is, who is going to greet them at the door? And if it was going to be a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren,
Then a lot of them would probably have made a U-turn and gone back. But if somebody if it was somebody that was less polarizing, maybe they'd just keep on going. Well, you know, I think now I think that wasn't entirely crazy, but it now you'd have to say, well, it depends on how Biden does.
And and who he picks as a running mate, because I don't think running mates really make much of a difference electorally at all, to be honest. I mean, I think you can make a case of Lyndon Johnson, that John Kennedy picking Lyndon Johnson in 64 was the last time a running mate really made a difference. But whether Biden wins or loses, whoever he picks.
assuming he's not picking somebody with a seven at the front of their age, is going to have a leg up or at least the inside track towards being the Democratic leader coming out, you know, for 2024. And is what direction is that? And is that a, you know, if he goes forward,
someone substantially to his left, then that takes the Democratic Party one direction. But if he stays with somebody who's, you know, left of center, but not terribly left, then that can make a difference. But it's, you know, we're just in such a bipolar political environment that what one side does has a dramatic impact on the other side.
Well, it's very, very rare when party coalitions break down and reformulate to the large degree that they are right now. That's what in political science literature used to happen in realigning elections or realigning periods. I think we're living through one and there's a contingency to those periods that
Really depends on political statesmanship and news, that if one side gets it really wrong, that gives the other side a big advantage. But if one side gets it really right, that's something that's very hard for the other side to counteract. And so far, I think over the last decade, we've been seeing both parties, to use a tennis analogy, double faulting whenever they got the serve. And we will see if the Democrats get the serve back this time, whether...
they can finally deliver an ace or if they double fault like their predecessors have. To say the same thing in a different way, you give one party, the White House, the House and the Senate, the clock's ticking. It is only a matter of time before they self-destruct. It is inevitable that they will go too far.
And it doesn't matter whether they're Democrats or Republicans. It just, it just, it just happens. So that when a, you know, somebody, you know, some of my friends on one side of the other get despondent that they just had a wipeout election, I'd say, okay, look at your calendar, look at your watch, because this is going to get, this is going to get undone. And, and when you think about it,
How often, if you're a member of one party in a competitive state or district, the chances of losing when the other party is in the White House are not real high. I mean, when you get washed out to sea, it's when you've got somebody in your party in the White House.
And particularly if you've got your party has the House and Senate, man, you know, there is a there is a bullseye on your back if you're in a competitive district. And just it's just a matter of is it going to be two years or six years or, you know, conceivably four, but more likely two or six in the next midterm election. You better you better pray that the other side nominates the wrong person, because otherwise, you know, there's a good chance you're toast.
Well, Charlie, it's always wonderful speaking to you. And how would people be able to follow you if they are not paid subscribers to the Cook Political Report? First of all, our website is cookpolitical.com.
And all the macro stuff is in front of the paywall. And so I should say this, but it's all available for free. You know, what is behind the wall is a lot of the individual race by race analyses. And the what I call micro political stuff is behind the paywall. But the conclusions about the races, the ratings are outside of the payroll. Yeah.
Yeah, the ratings, the ratings are out front. It's, it's sort of the narrative is, is behind the wall, but all of Amy Walter's columns, all of my columns, uh, minor and national journal initially, which is usually behind their paywall, but it comes, uh, we get to put it on our site, uh, after 72 hours and all of my stuff is, uh, virtually all of it is in front. So for the macro stuff that, that, that,
the vast majority of people who are interested in politics would want, it's all out front and for free. And, you know, somebody wants to pay 350 bucks and get all, get the innards, they can, they can do that too. But, uh, anyway, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's been, it's been a good ride. Um, and, and, you know, one of the things I love about my job is, uh, is getting just to sit down and talk shop with really smart people. And, uh,
You know, you and I have been at some embassy lunches, small embassy, you know, two of us with an ambassador here or there and just talk politics for an hour and a half with some great food and wine. And it's like, Jesus, you know, this is awesome. I mean, how do you know, making a living this way? That's, you know, it's great. So I know it took me to my late 50s. Yeah.
Took me to my late 50s, and I sit there at some of those lunches with you and think, why did it take me so long to figure out that this is a great way to live? Well, I just tell myself it's a long way from Shreveport, where I grew up. But it's been a lot of fun and just get to meet some really, really, really interesting people. And, you know, I don't know what the heck I'd have been doing otherwise.
if I wasn't doing this for a living. So it's been fun. Well, thank you. And I'd love to have you back on the horse race. Anytime you ask. That's it for this week's horse race. Next week, we'll be talking with CNN political analyst, Harry Enten, about how to interpret the polls and how to build forecasting models that can predict elections. I'm Henry Olson, and I'll see you next week in the winner's circle.