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By The Hill Staff
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Posted: 10/19/07 06:26 PM [ET] |
National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) has a tough job. He has been trying to keep retirements to a minimum since the 2006 elections threw control of the House to Democrats. Meanwhile, some of his colleagues privately — and publicly — are grumbling about the NRCC’s performance this cycle.
Fundraising, Cole admitted Wednesday, is a major concern. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has $28.3 million cash on hand with $2.9 million in debt, while the NRCC had more debt than cash on hand at the end of August.
“I’m on the street corner with a tin cup every day,” Cole told reporters.
The amiable third-term lawmaker believes the 2008 cycle will be different from last year’s. He maintains that 2008 will mirror the 1992 election, when voters rejected incumbents of both political parties.
Whether that scenario plays out remains to be seen, but it is worth noting that the political environment changed substantially between the fall of 2005 and the following autumn.
By the end of October 2005, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) had stepped down and Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, had been indicted. President Bush had been widely criticized in the wake of the government response to Hurricane Katrina and many pieces of legislation had stalled in the Congress. Yet few political experts were predicting at that time that control of Congress would flip.
Fast-forward a year. The guilty pleas of Jack Abramoff, Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) and the unraveling of the Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) scandal, among other controversies, clinched it for the Democrats.
While things went from bad to worse for Republicans, the events of an entire year can shift the political winds dramatically.
The problem House Republicans will face in the coming months is that more than a handful of them are facing potentially difficult primary challenges, including Reps. Wayne Gilchrest (Md.), Walter Jones (N.C.), Paul Broun (Ga.), Dan Burton (Ind.), Doug Lamborn (Colo.), Chris Cannon (Utah) and Jean Schmidt (Ohio).
If Cole is right, a few of these incumbents will lose. There are Democratic incumbents who also are facing challenging primary races, but there’s a big difference: The DCCC protects its own in primaries, while the NRCC does not. With approval ratings for Congress plunging from the early months of this year, primary opponents have more of a shot than normal.
Reps. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) and Joe Schwarz (R-Mich.) were the only House incumbents who lost in primaries last cycle. There is a real possibility that more will go down this year, and because of the resources the DCCC has, Republican incumbents are in more danger.
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