After being entirely shut out of New England in 2008, House Republicans are making the traditionally liberal region competitive this year — so much so that liberal icon Rep. Barney Frank is facing his strongest challenge in years and had to call former President Bill Clinton in to stump for him on the campaign trail.
Indeed, while the Boston-area Democrat and chairman of the powerful Financial Services Committee still enjoys a double-digit lead in the polls, he's unlikely to see the 43-point victory he enjoyed in 2008 with Barack Obama at the top of the ticket. Instead, Republicans this year say they will capitalize on the same "tea party" anger and anti-Washington sentiment that catapulted Sen. Scott Brown to a surprise special election victory in January.
"Democrats right now, whatever else you hear, they're having trouble getting their people out," said former Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, who headed the House Republicans' campaign committee through the heady days of the early years of the presidency of George W. Bush. "When you take a look at this, and you've seen as much polling as I've seen, it's pretty bleak out there. Even Massachusetts, even Connecticut, even Rhode Island."
With less than three weeks until Election Day, GOP House candidates lead in the polls in both New Hampshire races and political handicappers give Republicans a shot in races in Connecticut, Rhode Island and even Massachusetts, where all 10 House districts are held by Democrats — the largest single-party delegation in Congress.
Still, it's not clear that predictions of a post-Scott Brown resurgence will materialize, especially with Mr. Obama himself heading to the region to rally some of the most reliably Democratic voters in the country.
"It's important to realize [President] Obama hasn't fallen to the degree in that region he has in the whole country," said Isaac Wood, House race editor for University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball.
"Scott Brown's victory was the result of a fair amount of special circumstances. ... I think the real problem Republican candidates could have is they have to motivate the tea party and conservative voters to come out, and keep them as fired up as they are, but at the same time there's so many moderate Republicans and moderate-to-liberal independents who they have to win."
Of course, having any presence in the Democratic stronghold of New England would be an improvement for a party that saw its lone House member, former Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, defeated in 2008. Republicans' best chances this time are in New Hampshire, where polls show former Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta leading incumbent Rep. Carol Shea-Porter by double digits and former Rep. Charlie Bass with a razor-thin edge over Democratic opponent Annie Kuster.
"New Hampshire has undergone the biggest sea change of any state in the country over the last three cycles," said state Republican Party spokesman Ryan Williams, who described the Granite State as "an island of fiscal conservatism" in the liberal Northeast. "This year, the national issues are playing into our favor - what President Obama is doing on a national level and what government is doing on a local level are getting Republican activists active; they're convincing independents to come over to our side and vote for the party of fiscal responsibility."
But state Democrats note that the Bass-Kuster race is tightening — a poll by the Hill newspaper this week had the former lawmaker just 3 points ahead — and said they hope to close the gap with Mr. Guinta by emphasizing questions over why he initially failed to report a bank account worth at least $250,000 on his personal financial-disclosure forms. Mike Brunelle, executive director of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said both men are too conservative for the famously independent state.
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