{"id":2776,"date":"2008-02-15T16:21:45","date_gmt":"2008-02-15T23:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2008\/02\/15\/over-there-somewhere-in-eastern-washington\/"},"modified":"2008-02-15T16:21:45","modified_gmt":"2008-02-15T23:21:45","slug":"over-there-somewhere-in-eastern-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2008\/02\/15\/over-there-somewhere-in-eastern-washington\/","title":{"rendered":"over there somewhere in Eastern Washington…"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the past 3 elections in Washington\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 4th Congressional District<\/a>, Democrats have been gaining ground on Doc Hastings. From\u00c2\u00a0the dismal 34%\u00c2\u00a0of Craig Mason (no offense\u00c2\u00a0Craig)\u00c2\u00a0in 2002, the semi-well funded Sandy Matheson in 2004 with 37%, to the wildly underfunded 2006 Richard Wright campaign with 41% there is a serious trend\u00c2\u00a0in play\u00c2\u00a0and something to watch in 2008.\u00c2\u00a0 With record Central Washington turnout in the 2008\u00c2\u00a0Democratic Caucus, and the dismal performance of the WA GOP caucus, 2008 could very well be the year the 4th CD trends back to it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Democratic roots.<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hm.<\/p>\n

Actually you can chart it back to 1998 when the glorious Gordon Allen\u00c2\u00a0Pross garnered 24 percent of the vote.\u00c2\u00a0 But to get the unequivocal line\u00c2\u00a0upward, you would have to leave out Jim Davis in 2000, who bested Craig\u00c2\u00a0Mason by a few percentage points.<\/p>\n

That was meant to be snarky.\u00c2\u00a0 It is impossible not to be skeptical, and\u00c2\u00a0I think we can account for the shifts in percentages to external\u00c2\u00a0factors moreso than local voting trend-lines.\u00c2\u00a0 Craig Mason under-performed\u00c2\u00a0by a few percentage points because he was perceived as a big L liberal\u00c2\u00a0egghead college professor type.\u00c2\u00a0 Richard Wright over-performed by a few\u00c2\u00a0percentage points because the year 2006 saw a Democratic wave, the\u00c2\u00a0effect on the Fourth Congressional district were those few points.\u00c2\u00a0 Thus\u00c2\u00a0the typical result would have to be Jim Davis’s 2000 and Sandy Matheson’s\u00c2\u00a02004 result of… 37 percent.<\/p>\n

I suspect some things offset — presidential election means entrenched\u00c2\u00a0partisan voting down-ballot, with a general Democratic year.\u00c2\u00a0 Um…\u00c2\u00a0better finance (He is the dream candidate in that regard, right?\u00c2\u00a0 Self-Financer?)\u00c2\u00a0 will bring us…<\/p>\n

The trend line back to 1998, skipping over 2000 for convenience,\u00c2\u00a0continues!\u00c2\u00a0 3 more points still!<\/p>\n

But the dawning of a new Partisan order suggests some districts you\u00c2\u00a0don’t expect to vote Democratic will indeed do so.\u00c2\u00a0 But from the point of\u00c2\u00a0view of someone in Seattle or DC, manning purse-strings, it makes\u00c2\u00a0complete sense that they would scour about and skip past this and deem, say\u00c2\u00a0the fifth district as a better candidate for that.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, that\u00c2\u00a0district was a disappointment in 2006 — somewhere in the last wave of\u00c2\u00a0suspected possibilities for the political party, and the candidate did\u00c2\u00a0not perform much better than Richard Wright’s shoe-string campaign.<\/p>\n

I thought Doc was supposed to retire.\u00c2\u00a0 Or is he still holding out for the Republican takeover of Congress when he gets to get his dream position of chair of the Rules Committee.\u00c2\u00a0 (Maybe he can give up that dream, say, after the 2012 election — which is the next time I can possibly see the Republicans take back the House?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past 3 elections in Washington\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 4th Congressional District, Democrats have been gaining ground on Doc Hastings. From\u00c2\u00a0the dismal 34%\u00c2\u00a0of Craig Mason (no offense\u00c2\u00a0Craig)\u00c2\u00a0in 2002, the semi-well funded Sandy Matheson in 2004 with 37%, to the wildly underfunded 2006 Richard Wright campaign with 41% there is a serious trend\u00c2\u00a0in play\u00c2\u00a0and something to watch in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doc-hastings-and-the-4th-congressional-district-of-washington-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}