It started at the end of 2013. Republicans had picked up a traditionally Democratic seat in the Western Coal Country of Kentucky. Confident party leaders predicted that this was the beginning of the end for Greg Stumbo and the Democratic Party’s long 80+ year control over the State House.
Nearly a year later, as the dust settled on the 2014 election, it became clear that the Republican Party had not met their goal. As Democrats across the South were getting shattered on election night, Kentucky Democrats managed to preserve their majority, without one net loss.
In this diary, I am going to analyze some of the themes I saw in this year’s State House elections. Part I will discuss the overriding trends that led to the Democrats keeping control. The first few themes will look at the shortcomings of the Republican Party and the last few themes will remind Democrats why their time might be limited.
Part II will offer an individual district by district analysis and look to see whether a 2016 takeover by Republicans is possible.
Theme 1: Republicans didn’t try.
Despite State House Minority Leader Jeff Hoover’s confident statements that Republicans were going to take the majority, his actions and his state party’s actions reflected something else.
Republicans left 25 Democratic incumbents completely unchallenged this year! While it would be expected to see some unchallenged seats particularly in safe Democratic areas, most of the unchallenged incumbents were in Tossup or even Lean R seats. Here are some notable facts:
•Republicans left two House seats open (HD-16 and HD-22) that 2011 Democrats running for statewide office could not win, even as they were winning statewide by 20 points. Wilson Stone’s HD-22 includes Allen County, a county that has Republican DNA dating back nearly a century (like most counties in Southern Kentucky)
•Republicans left nearly every seat in Southeastern Kentucky unchallenged (mounting to 9 seats), some of which have zoomed to the right in recent years. They even failed to find a challenge to Democrat Chris Harris who represents one county (Martin) that never became unionized and has thus been Republican for a generation.
•Two other notable misses for Kentucky Republicans were Fitz Steele’s HD-84 (20% Obama, 30% Grimes) and Rick Nelson’s HD-87 (22% Obama, 26% Grimes).
•Republicans left Dennis Keene (HD-67) unchallenged. This is a seat in Northern Kentucky, one of the home bases of the state party that Barack Obama did not win.
•Republicans left John Tilley (HD-8) in Hopkinsville unchallenged. This area has severe midterm election dropoff, particularly among minorities.
Theme 1.1: Republican candidates dropped out
Republicans did have one semi-good thing to say about their candidate recruitment this cycle. Following the filing deadline in January, I was surprised to see that Republicans had managed to field candidates against every single Democrat within Jefferson County (Louisville), including those Democrats in black majority districts.
And then it started to unravel.
Kentucky law says that once a candidate drops out, the state party is not allowed to replace him or her and thus the opposing candidate automatically wins. Over the course of the summer, Republicans watched their candidates drop out in HD-28, HD-30, HD-37, HD-41 and HD-44. HD-28 is a suburban seat that Barack Obama did not win and HD-37 is a seat Obama barely won. While it is unlikely that either seat would have flipped this cycle, you'll never find out if you don't recruit candidates that want to stay in the election until November.
Theme 2: Where Republicans ran strong campaigns, they did surprisingly poorly.
The fact that Kentucky Republicans had conceded about half of their plausible pickup opportunities was well known when filing ended in January 2014. But what was shocking was how poorly candidates did that were supposed to be running great campaigns and were backed up by third party conservative groups.
Why did Democrats running against Republicans in tough seats do so well? They relentlessly nationalized the elections in a way that did not work in West Virginia in 2014 or Arkansas in 2012. They obtained endorsements from union groups, gun rights groups, Chamber of Commerce groups, and other interest groups. And some of them were better funded.
Let’s look at some examples.
•The 3rd State House District covers the city of Paducah, an area famous for its quilt museum and underground music culture. Republicans had managed to win three very downballot-Democratic districts in Western Kentucky for the first time in a generation in 2012, so they thought they would try for this one. The incumbent Gerald Watkins was helped by the fact that his district, unlike the others, included a swath of urban Paducah. But it also included some of the most Republican areas in Western Kentucky (southern McCracken County). He was not a good fundraiser and was outraised early by local Republican and realtor Randy Bridges. But Watkins out-campaigned Bridges, and managed to win by 8 points on Election Night.
•The 6th State House District is the last rural House district held by Democrats in Western Kentucky. The incumbent is Will Coursey. Republicans believed at the start of the campaign season that this would be an easy pickup because Coursey was embroiled in a sex scandal. They recruited Keith Travis, an administrator at a local hospital to challenge Coursey. Coursey took the threat seriously, raising tons of money, airing tv ads, crisscrossing his district and touting endorsements from Steve Beshear and others. Coursey also highlighted his local work bringing jobs to the district and hit Travis on his “job-killing” at a local hospital. Travis hit Coursey on the gas tax, Obamacare, and pledged to resolve the pension crisis. Travis was helped by outside conservative groups. In the end, one of the seats where Republicans spent the most amount of money was not even close. Coursey won by a surprisingly large 12 points.
• The 13th State House District takes in the city of Owensboro, which has gradually become more interested in voting for Republicans in recent years. Republicans noticed that Democrat Jim Glenn had managed to win his last two elections by the skin of his teeth (less than 300 votes.) So they recruited political novice and Businessman Alan Braden to the seat. Braden managed to keep par with Glenn in the money race and in the campaign race. I don’t really understand why Glenn (who is a black liberal Democrat) won here, but he did so by a surprisingly comfortable 5 points. Perhaps it was because Allison Lundergan Grimes topped out at 48%, and Glenn has always managed to overperform the top of the ticket by 2 or 3 percentage points.
•And perhaps the biggest fail of them all was the 39th State House District, which is located south of Lexington. 20 years ago, this district was mainly agricultural but has since become suburban as Lexington has become a magnet for business. Republicans have long bragged that all they would have to do to win this district is have popular Democrat Bob Damron retire. After all, this isn’t a district full of conservative Democrats. Damron decided to retire this cycle and Democrats nominated popular mayor Russ Meyer, who was opposed by real estate agent Jonah Mitchell. Jessamine County has one of the strongest economies in the state, and Meyer, to his advantage, used that. On Election Day, Jonah Mitchell’s campaign could not even get 45% of the vote in a district that should be Safe R (Obama: 33%),
Theme 3: Democrats were helped by redistricting
Because of lawsuits, the Kentucky House map (drawn by Democrats) did not go into place until this cycle. It created a bunch of new open seats and caused other incumbents to retire. In the end, Democrats held on to two open seats (western HD-10 and suburban Louisville HD-49), which helped to pad their majority. Republicans had to spend a lot of time campaigning for open seats rather than focusing on Democratic incumbents.
Theme 4: The War on Coal message didn’t work.
The “War on Coal” message has obviously caught on in national elections, despite the fact that most state leaders (Democrats and Republicans) will tell you that the number one thing Eastern Kentucky needs is economic diversification. They will also tell you that the War on Coal should be more aptly renamed the “War on Appalachia” since Kentucky’s western coalfields (more economically competitive coal here) are still doing just fine. It is interesting to see the contrasting rhetoric at play in state and national elections (with Hal Rogers being the bridge between the two.)
Now, how do we know the War on Coal was a bust in this year's election? In the Democratic primary, coal operator Keith Hall faced Pike Magistrate Chris Harris. Hall tried to run the War on Coal campaign against Harris, who claimed that health and worker safety came first. In the end, Harris beat Hall by three points.
In the general election, Republicans left most seats unchallenged in Eastern Kentucky. But in the counties where there was a Republican on the ballot, he or she relentlessly tried to nationalize the race and talk about the War on Coal. To say it went badly is an understatement.
Republican Bobby McCool got 42% in Johnson County, 28% in Morgan County, and 30% in Wolfe County in his bid to defeat Democrat Hubert Collins. Incumbent Republican Gary Herald tried using the coal message as a reason for why Democrat Cluster Howard should not be elected. In the only coal-mining county in the district, Howard won by nearly 50 points, enough to eek out a 14 vote win district-wide.
Kentucky was certainly unique in its rejection of candidates talking about the War on Coal. Just across the border in West Virginia, thirty two year incumbent and Democrat Truman Chafin lost his reelection bid to Republican who raised almost no money. His loss is almost entirely attributable to the War on Coal.
So if the War on Coal didn't move votes, what did in Eastern Kentucky? To me, the number one indicator of whether a candidate wins in Eastern Kentucky is whether they are willing to be fiscal liberals in an economically depressed area as well as whether they are endorsed by unions. That large part was crucial to the re-election of Republican Jill York of Carter County, the only Republican to represent Eastern Kentucky. York was helped by a weak opponent and union endorsements.
Not-A-Theme 5: Mitch McConnell’s reelection hurt downballot Kentucky Republicans.
This is the statement that has been given by the Kentucky State Republican Party. The logic goes that Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul were focused on the Senate election so they couldn’t spend time knocking off State House Democrats.
This does not take into account the fact that numerous outside conservative groups spent money in State House races, Rand Paul dedicated time and effort to fundraising for local Western Kentucky candidates and McConnell sometimes won by 15 to 20 points while Democratic State House incumbents were on their way to a landslide win.
Despite the fact that the election did not go well for Republicans, there were some issues for Democrats too…
Theme 6: Emerge Kentucky was a failure.
Democrats made a big point of talking up “Emerge Kentucky,” a pro-women interest group that would train local mayors and business owners to run for the State House. They ended up recruiting Ashley Miller (HD-32), Debbie Barber (HD-36), Gretchen Hunt (HD-48), Audrey Haydon (HD-50), Jacqueline Coleman (HD-55), Rita Smart (HD-81) and Creasa Reed (HD-88) to run for State House.
Besides from Smart, who is a popular two-term candidate from Richmond, not one of the Emerge candidates was able to pull of victory. Some of the losses were embarrassing: Debbie Barber lost by 38 points, Gretchen Hunt lost by 16 points, Audrey Haydon and Ashley Miller lost by 7 points, and the much hyped Jacqueline Coleman could barely manage to get 35% of the vote.
Democrats will want to keep expanding the playing field in future elections, but they are not going to do so with Emerge candidates.
Theme 7: Democrats have some incumbents who are due for retirement.
One of the things that few people have talked about is that a lot of incumbent State House Democrats are getting up there in age. It is infinitely easier for Republicans to pickup open seats, and there should be plenty in the years to come:
•Hubert Collins, HD-97, aged 79 (35% Grimes, 25% Obama), eastern KY
•Thomas McKee, HD-78, aged 74 (37% Grimes, 35% Obama), eastern KY
•Charles Miller, HD-28, aged 75 (49% Grimes, 45% Obama), Louisville suburbs
•Terry Mills, HD-24, aged 65 (41% Grimes, 35% Obama), Central Kentucky
•Jody Richards, HD-20, aged 77 (46% Grimes, 48% Obama), Bowling Green
•Tommy Thompson, HD-14, aged 66 (37% Grimes, 32% Obama), rural west KY
•Jim Glenn, HD-13, aged 67 (48% Grimes, 46% Obama), Owensboro
•David Watkins, HD-11, aged 72 (47% Grimes, 44% Obama), rural west KY
Additionally, Democrat Rick Nelson (HD-87) is running for State Treasurer. His seat would likely flip (26% Grimes, 22% Obama.)
Theme 8: Democrats should be worried long term.
It is clear that the state of Kentucky is trending in the wrong direction for Democrats.
What started as a promising possibility to capture a US Senate seat this cycle ended in a 15 point loss. While nobody will be forgetting Allison Lundergan Grimes’s horrendous campaign, the fact that even a local Democrat could barely get 40% of the vote should be concerning to Kentucky Democrats.
One of the positive trends for State House Republicans was their consolidation of gains in Hardin County. They knocked off longtime Democrat Jimmie Lee of Elizabethtown (one of two Democrats to go down on Election Night). Republicans have a stronghold on every area of the state that is growing.
In terms of seats to target, Democrats are also maxed out. They can target some seats in Western Kentucky that are historically Democratic by registration but 1st term and 2nd term Republicans did well there this year. They can target one Louisville seat and maybe try to get Jill York's seat back (the only Republican to represent Eastern Kentucky.) But for the most part, Democrats do not really have anymore offensive opportunities.
Greg Stumbo’s caucus was saved this year partly by luck, partly by help from Republicans and partly by amazing local campaigns. But none of these trends are stopping the fact that Kentucky is reddening and popular Democratic incumbents will eventually leave office. I doubt it will be very long before the State House is in Republican hands. And once it flips, the House will be in Republican hands for a generation.
