GOP’s hopes for 2010 lifted by economy

Public anxiety over the economy, stocks in decline, rising unemployment and a string of expensive Democratic initiatives are all encouraging high-caliber Republicans to compete in 2010.

The GOP is enjoying its best candidate recruitment streak in years.

{mosads}The past week has been chock-full of good news for Republicans on the recruiting front and follows troubling developments for Democrats on their side of the ballot.

The GOP has seen candidate recruitment rise as joblessness continues to climb to new highs and Wall Street retreats after a brief respite in March, April and May. Compounding the situation, Republicans say, are Democrats’ recent moves to push forward with politically divisive efforts on energy and healthcare, along with broaching another stimulus package.

Meanwhile, Democrats failed to stop primaries in the high-profile New York and Pennsylvania Senate campaigns and lost leading recruits in several Senate races.

Democrats learned this week that two potentially game-changing Senate candidates — Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan (D) and Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) — would not run. And former Rep. Rob Portman (R) closed the gap significantly on a pair of Democrats in the most recent Quinnipiac Ohio Senate poll.

Portman’s gains came as President Obama sank below 50 percent approval in the same Ohio poll. Those are his lowest numbers of the year.

Atlanta-based GOP consultant David Johnson said polling has borne out the current recruiting surge.

“They’re getting candidates, and the polling numbers seem to be changing — not so much that it’s pro-Republican as it is anti-Democrat,” Johnson said. “It could change, but it’s beginning to feel a lot like 2006 and 2008 did for the Democrats.”

Johnson pointed to the economy as the driving force behind the recruiting successes, and GOP candidates who have launched campaigns in recent days have focused their message almost exclusively on that trend.

Republican strategists say the clarity of the economy issue could rival what Democrats had in 2006 and 2008, with former President Bush as the campaign issue that trumped all others.

Republicans’ big recruiting successes are New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte and Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who joined high-profile Senate races on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively.

Kirk’s announcement came Wednesday afternoon, just hours after Madigan opted not to run. Madigan would have been a strong favorite to win Obama’s former Senate seat and probably would have all but cleared the field. The White House worked hard to get Madigan in the race, including a June meeting with the president, but she chose to run for reelection to her office.

Republicans also added a succession of candidates in the House in recent days, with former Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.); Corning, N.Y., Mayor Tom Reed; former Ohio state Sen. Steve Stivers; and Virginia businessman Scott Rigell filling out their lineup card in four top-tier races.

Cook Political Report analyst Jennifer Duffy said the GOP had a “really good couple of weeks and probably its first good couple weeks in four years.”

“The policy choices that are being made, whether it’s the stimulus working or various approaches to healthcare, give Republicans an opening,” she said. “And I think generally, a lot of [Republicans] got a big wake-up call. They woke up one day and they had nothing.”

The recruiting success comes in the aftermath of Democrats’ finally having nailed down 60 seats in the Senate.

Democrat Al Franken was certified as the winner of Minnesota’s Senate race June 30, nearly eight months after Election Day. His victory allows the party, in theory, to override a filibuster without a single Republican vote.

{mosads}Just a day after Franken’s big win, though, two Democratic House members — Reps. Joe Sestak (Pa.) and Carolyn Maloney (N.Y.) — made it abundantly clear they would challenge a pair of Democratic senators in primaries.

And the GOP candidates have demonstrated they’ve received the economic message.

Rigell, who announced his candidacy Wednesday against freshman Rep. Glenn Nye (D-Va.) in a swing district, said nothing about Nye, but offered a consistent message about out-of-control Washington spending.

“It’s a generational duty,” Rigell said. “I’m running to leave our children with a brighter future.”

Another candidate who launched this week, Pearce, was going to wait until later in the summer to decide his political future, but moved up his timetable in recent weeks because of what’s happening in Washington, according to a GOP source. Pearce was deciding whether to run for governor or for his old House seat against Rep. Harry Teague (D-N.M.).

Despite the good news, the GOP is by no means in the clear, as it still has several holes to fill, both in the House map and in the races against Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Reid was the top Republican target from day one, yet he still has no opponent. Bennet, an appointee in a swing state, has two little-known GOP opponents who have yet to prove their statewide mettle.

Republicans are also without a candidate in New York, and in Kentucky they have an incumbent in Sen. Jim Bunning whom they’d rather see retire than hold on for dear life.

Senate Democrats, meanwhile, have only one big recruiting hole left, against Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.). State Attorney General Roy Cooper resisted White House efforts to get in the race. But the party filled many of its races early this cycle.

Democrats also point to some recent stumbles for top House GOP recruits against Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.), with one candidate under investigation for a campaign finance irregularity and another involved in a bar fight.

“With the election 16 months away, I don’t think Republicans should be popping the champagne just yet — especially if they continue to knee-jerkingly oppose every solution to get this economy back on track,” said a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), Eric Schultz. “They will be the ones who created this economic mess and then ignored it.”