Lets Go Racin'!!!! Barack Obama Goes to Bristol

Now that the Democratic nomination has been settled, we’ll
start to transition into general election mode a bit. As the candidates criss-cross the country, we’ll try to add a little background to the places they visit and speculate about why they’re there and what they hope to accomplish.

A good way to kick this off is to look at Senator Obama’s events over the next few days. Tomorrow, he’s heading deep into the part of the country that vexed him throughout the primary season, Appalachia. He’ll be hosting a town hall meeting in Bristol, Virginia, located right on the state's border with Tennessee. Just across the state line is Bristol Motor Speedway, a stop on the annual NASCAR circuit. When running for governor of Virginia in 2001, Democrat Mark Warner capitalized on the area's passion for racing, sponsoring a race truck at the nearby Martinsville Speedway, using the sponsorship to both advertise his candidacy as well as show kinship with the local folks. When driving to New Orleans a few years ago, the fact that there was a Bristol, Virginia and a Bristol, Tennessee confused me to no end.

We know from the primary season (Clinton counties red; Obama counties blue) that Obama fared poorly in the region. I noted last week that the area, however, has been receptive to recent Democratic candidates in statewide elections. Bristol is actually an independent city, not part of a county. Bristol borders Washington County and gave Hillary Clinton a 35 point victory. Looking at its voting in presidential races, Bristol was last won by a Democrat in 1976. LBJ, Truman, and FDR won the city in each of their elections as well. Washington County has largely mirrored Bristol's voting. It hasn't given a Democratic nominee more than 40% since Jimmy Carter in both ’76 and ’80. It did give LBJ a ten point margin in 1964 and voted for FDR in each of his four victories.

Despite its strong support for Republicans at the presidential level, however, the region has had Democratic representation in Congress. Interestingly, Rick Boucher, endorsed Obama early on in the primary season and has managed to represent the ninth district since 1982. Despite Clinton’s 30 point win in the district, Boucher has remained a strong supporter. He has consistently been re-elected by large margins, only getting less than 60% in 1994 and during his first two victories in ’82 and ’84.

One might also note that about 120 miles up the road is Blacksburg, home to Virginia Tech. During this year’s primary, Obama won Montgomery County, home to the school, a bright spot for him in area.

Obviously, Obama is showing a willingness to campaign in areas where he needs to build familiarity and trust. This move, in fact, seems to build upon his primary season strategy. In mapping out a plan for capturing delegates, Obama focused on states that one would have thought would have been unreceptive--Idaho, Nebraska, North Dakota, etc. but that offered, collectively, a bounty of elected delegates. As we know now, this strategy allowed him to tap into areas untouched by a Clinton campaign focused almost entirely on big states. Now that he is the presumptive nominee, he seems equally willing to reach into unfamiliar areas in search of votes. Hoping to turn Virginia blue in November, this seems like a wise strategy from a campaign that has, tactically and strategically, performed brilliantly to this point.

Levittown Wipeout

We're starting to get some detailed numbers in, although Philadelphia city breakdowns remain elusive. A few posts ago I pointed to Bucks County as a possible area of strength for Obama. Looking at the results we see how poorly he did there, despite some demographics I thought could work in his favor. The final Bucks County totals show a 63-37% Clinton win.

One part of the county we might focus on to view as a microcosm of Obama's suburban underperformance is Levittown. Built after its New York counterpart, the planned suburban community offered an oasis to post-war city dwellers seeking greener pastures. These originals settlers were heavily Catholic and Jewish. The racial breakdown of Levittown is currently 94% white with the remainder evenly divided between African Americans and Latinos. While suburban, it is more middle than high income.

Levittown is not incorporated as its own township but is instead made up of Bristol Township, Falls Township, Middletown Township, and Tullytown. Combining the vote totals for these four townships, I was able to get the vote totals for Clinton and Obama. What we see is that not only did Clinton get a higher percentage than her statewide showing, but Levittown gave her a higher percentage than her overall total in Bucks County. The final margin was 67-33%.

So, as we start to look for reasons why Obama was unable to hold Clinton to single digits, its places like Levittown that may give us some answers. While we thought the Philly suburban ring might be the key to an Obama surprise, it seems now that despite what we saw in some earlier states, we were perhaps being too optimistic.

***Update: A reader pointed me to this long article on Levittown from a recent New York Times Magazine.

Pennsylvania Paradox

Building upon Prof. CBMurray’s post, Philly’s bellwether suburban Montgomery County sits at the heart of this year’s Pennsylvania Paradox, where the Democratic presidential primary finds Keystone political players and their traditional constituencies all mixed up. Lining up behind Hillary Clinton is Gov. Ed Rendell, the Upper West Side-born socially liberal Jewish former Philly mayor with a history of battling public employee unions. Barack Obama’s most prominent surrogate is Sen. Robert Casey, Jr., the pro-gun, pro-life Catholic Democrat; a union stalwart and a scion of Scranton.

Rendell lost the 1986 Democratic gubernatorial primary to Casey’s father, the late Robert Casey, Sr., but defeated Casey, Jr. for the same nod in 2002. (ElectionDissection.com would be remiss if we failed to note that a Clinton-Casey clan rivalry dates back to 1992 when nominee Bill Clinton refused a Democratic convention speaking slot to Casey, Sr. to air his anti-abortion views, despite a long history of both families sharing the services of consultants Paul Begala and James Carville.) Rendell won that contest by racking up huge majorities in the affluent, socially liberal suburban counties that ring his Philly base. Rendell beat Casey, Jr. by 13 points, but won only 11 of the Keystone State’s 67 counties.

Casey, Jr. even mustered over 20% in the city of Philadelphia, where pro-union, pro-life urban ethnic Catholic Democrats are not yet extinct. But in Montgomery County, home of the tony “Main Line” towns that were once the heart of WASPy liberal Republicans, Rendell trounced Casey, Jr. 88%-12%, and racked up margins nearly as lopsided in surrounding Bucks, Delaware and Chester counties.

Despite Rendell’s indefatigable barnstorming for HRC this year, given Obama’s strength among college educated, affluent social liberals this primary season, the post-primary map is likely to resemble that 2002 Rendell-Casey, Jr. map, but with Casey-endorsed Obama winning Rendell territory and HRC romping away in Casey Country: Pittsburgh, Coal Country and Appalachian “Pennsyltucky,” her traditional down-scale, union-heavy base this cycle.

Montgomery County leads these trends. In fact, Montgomery was the only county that Casey père couldn’t carry in his landslide 1990 reelection. The Main Line forsook the pro-life Democrat of working class roots for Barbara Hafer, the liberal Republican state auditor and a vociferous advocate of abortion rights. (Despite hailing from suburban Pittsburgh, Hafer’s career reflects Montgomery’s political evolution: she switched parties in 2003 and her daughter is vying for the Dem nod to challenge freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy (PA18).

And after voting for him in ’94 and 2000 (against pro-life Pittsburgh-area fmr. U.S. Rep. Ron Klink), Montgomery County lost patience with trade-bashing, gay-baiting Sen. Rick Santorum, favoring none other than Bob Casey, Jr. against him, 62-38%, surpassing Casey’s statewide margin.

This evolving partisanship is marked by stunning shifts in party registration totals, which might give Obama a fighting chance to pull off an upset. ElectionDissection.com advisor Bill Boyle pointed us to this graphic, illustrating the steep drop-off in those suburban Philly counties in Republican and independent registrations coupled by even sharper gains for Democrats. A reporter friend who spent time on the ground in Pennsylvania’s hotly contested 2004 Republican Senate primary recounted how, to narrowly fend off a challenge for renomination from then-U.S. Rep. Pat Toomey, Sen. Arlen Specter scrambled to re-register Philly ‘burb voters who had switched parties to vote for Rendell in ’02, suggesting that the graphic might be even more dramatic had Specter not needed to undertake that effort.

Hillary’s saving grace may be Montgomery’s heavily Jewish precincts, which have turned out historically for both Republicans (Specter, fmr. U.S. Rep. Jon Fox) and Democrats (U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz, fmr. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky) with ties to the Jewish community. The test will be whether Jewish voters who favored Hillary Clinton in Florida (note her margins in CDs 19, 20 & 22), New York (see Riverdale’s Assembly District 81) and Maryland (see precincts in Pikesville, B’more Co.) will do so in enough numbers here to tamp down Obama’s expected margin of victory, neutralizing Obama’s Rendell 2002-inspired strategy.