Down Ticket #15: The most fascinating House contest of 2016, how the Clinton-Trump debate will shake up down-ballot races (and more!)

ST. PAUL, Minn. — As you may have heard, there’s a race this year between a well-organized and well-financed centrist Democratic woman (with an Arkansas background) and a political newcomer, a Republican who ran against the party establishment with some far-right views and a long history of controversial, even offensive, statements. We are talking, of course, about the congressional race in Minnesota’s Second District between former talk-show host Jason Lewis, 61, a sometime substitute for Rush Limbaugh, and health-care executive Angie Craig, 44, who if elected would be the first openly gay member of Congress from Minnesota.

And you won’t be surprised to learn that the race is close. Internal polling acquired by the Pioneer Press in late August gave two widely different pictures, with the Lewis campaign’s survey giving Lewis a 12-point lead while Craig led in her own poll by a one-point margin. It is one of the most competitive House races in the nation, in a district that covers the southern part of St. Paul, a large suburban swath with farmland to the southeast. Republican John Kline, who is retiring, has held the seat since 2002, but the district voted for Obama twice and supported Democratic Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar in their last two elections, while giving the edge to Republican challenger Jeff Johnson, who lost to Gov. Mark Dayton in 2014. If you want to attempt to divine anything from the low-turnout caucuses earlier this year, Marco Rubio won 37 percent of the Second’s support, compared with 30 percent for Ted Cruz and 20 for Trump. On the Democratic side, Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton 58 percent to 41.

No two campaigns are ever exactly alike, and despite the many parallels with the presidential race, there are large differences, both political and stylistic. Neither Lewis nor Craig made an endorsement in the state’s March 1 caucuses. Lewis has a strong libertarian streak — after leaving his decades-long career as a radio host in 2014, he helped found a libertarian social media network called Galt.io, named for the main character in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” — that puts him at odds both with the Republican hierarchy and some of Trump’s positions. He leans toward a noninterventionist foreign policy and opposes the war on drugs, which he told Yahoo News has had an especially harsh effect on communities of color. He wrote an entire book on the importance of states’ rights, and while it contains some arguments that could be generously viewed as not mainstream — such as proposing a constitutional amendment to allow states to peacefully secede from the union — it shows a philosophical side that hasn’t been much in evidence in Trump’s campaign.

In a minor irony, Craig, the Democrat, is running on her business background and outsider status, which she says will enable her to work with both sides of the aisle. She often quotes Klobuchar’s saying that political courage is the ability to work with those you disagree with to accomplish what you do agree on. Her positions include opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, support for veterans and fighting opioid abuse.

What can we learn from all this that will help make sense of Clinton vs. Trump?

Perhaps the most interesting question is how voters will view Lewis’ long history of colorful on-air remarks, including calling the victims of Hurricane Katrina “whiners” and denouncing an entire section of the electorate, young women, for caring only about abortion, gay marriage and “The View.” He has claimed America’s “white population” is “committing cultural suicide” by not having enough children, and his views on gay marriage involved a strained comparison to slavery — admittedly, long before he knew he would be in a race against Craig, who is married to a woman. His views were denounced by the deputy chair of the state Republican Party and by Kline, the outgoing congressman, who endorsed businesswoman Darlene Miller instead. But Lewis won the endorsement of the GOP convention in May following the sixth ballot and won the primary in August, defeating Miller and another candidate with nearly 50 percent of the vote.

Much of this record has been gleefully mined by his opponents. Lewis told Yahoo News that he believes all of the attacks have been taken “grotesquely out of context,” and in the case of the first ad put out by the Craig campaign, a local Minnesota news station at least partly agreed. But at times he has seemed to want to have it both ways. He has said that being provocative was part of his job description as a radio host, whose success depended on ratings. But he hasn’t backed down from any of his comments, either. “What my opponents don’t understand is that I actually believe this stuff,” said Lewis in a December 2015 edition of his podcast. “I say things and I write things because I hold them near and dear, I’m not about to walk away. When your opponents say you said this or Mitt Romney said the bottom half of taxpayers aren’t chipping in enough, they’re betting that you will run away from your heartfelt positions. I won’t, and that’s the difference in this campaign.”

But as provocative as he can be on the issues, as a candidate Lewis has avoided personal attacks. He has called Craig “a good person” but “misguided.” Members of his party haven’t been as considerate. In a Facebook post promoting a GOP fundraiser, a Goodhue County Republican official shared a photo of Craig’s family that referred to her wife as a “female marriage partner.” The photo was next to images of the families of Republican candidates. Lewis told Minnesota Public Radio that family and private lives should be off-limits.

Craig was raised by a single mother in an Arkansas trailer park. She graduated from the University of Memphis, and after a stint as an education reporter at the Commercial Appeal, she entered corporate communications. She moved to Minnesota in 2005 to join the St. Jude’s Medical Group, rising to head of human resources before stepping down to focus on the election. She announced her campaign even before Kline’s retirement and had cleared out the primary field early with a series of endorsements and fundraising successes. Her campaign has enjoyed high-profile support and joint appearances with Klobuchar and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer.

Lewis has called Craig’s positions “radical” for the Second District, citing her endorsement by the Congressional Progressive caucus, but her platform is fairly mainstream for a Democratic politician in 2016. The New Democrat Coalition, a group that describes itself as fiscally responsible and moderate, also endorsed her.

“The New Democratic Coalition basically understand that the private sector business is where jobs are created,” said Craig in an interview with Yahoo News. “That’s who I am from a fiscal point of view. On the other hand, the Progressive Caucus is very focused on issues like equality; that’s who I am. So I believe it’s the perfect fit for a purple district like this, where the preponderance of voters are more socially progressive but they’re fiscally responsible.”

How will all this play in November? “The district has changed enormously since John Kline was elected,” said Larry Jacobs, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. “He was able to get mostly reelected by comfortable margins — not always, but mostly — based on his personal reputation and bond with voters. The district has become much more evenly balanced. When you look at the largest county in the district, it’s Dakota County, and that has seen an influx of voters who are college educated; it’s a more diverse electorate, and we’ve started to see Democrats doing well.”

When Lewis won the primary, the Cook Political Report moved the race from the “tossup” category to “lean Democrat.” Jacobs also sees Craig as a better fit.

“Jason Lewis is quite smart, and he’s quite provocative. He’s a great guy to have a conversation with,” said Jacobs, “but he is much more conservative than that district. While the Republicans have put up a candidate who’s not a good fit for a district that’s become more moderate, the Democrats have put up a candidate who’s from the business community, running on issues of fiscal prudence, socially liberal. She’s a much better fit for that district.”

So far Craig has released three ads, two biographical and one a compilation of some of Lewis’s controversial statements. National Democratic groups have already sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into advertising in the district to get the former talk radio host’s words back on the air.

For his part, Lewis thinks attacking him on his old quotes could backfire on the Democratic campaign.

“Lord knows I’m no Ronald Reagan,” said Lewis, “but there was an expectation created of him in 1976 leading up to ’80 that he was this horrible ogre, commentaries on the radio, they dug up those. And people would see him and say, ‘He seems like an OK guy to me.’ We’re seeing a lot of that. They tried to paint this caricature, but people know me, I’ve been on the radio here. Then when people who don’t know me meet me, they ask, ‘Where are the horns?’ I think we’re getting a little benefit from that.

“I think if you look at the desperation of the opposition’s campaign ads, they think we’re up. We’re in a good position, but they’re going to outspend us.”

There are two factors that add to the difficulty in projecting this race. Minnesota doesn’t register first-time voters by party, so there’s no way to tell which way new voters of the Second are leaning. And this is just the second congressional election following Minnesota’s adoption of no-excuse, absentee voting, which lets anyone vote early by mail. This would in theory increase turnout, which would in theory help Craig, but it’s impossible to tell for sure. The Craig campaign said it has partnered with the local Democratic-Farmer-Labor (the official name of the Democratic Party in Minnesota) office on the early get-out-the-vote-via-mail efforts, while the Lewis campaign is relying on the local Republican Party for that work. In addition to the fundraising advantage, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee told Yahoo News that the Craig campaign’s ground game has been one of the best in the nation this cycle.

There are variables at work: The candidates will have at least one debate, and there’s the possibility that even more offensive comments will surface from Lewis’s radio archive. There’s also the chance Craig, running her first campaign and a relative novice candidate, will make some sort of blunder, but that would be a departure from her consistently polished performance thus far.

“It’s a tight race,” said Craig. “I won’t allow myself to believe that I’m the favorite in this race, because I think this race is going to come down to a two- or three-point race. I think it’s going to be a close race. I hope I’m wrong and voters give me this job by a wider margin, but I want to behave as if, and I believe this is going to be a close race.”

So now you know everything about the campaign in Minnesota’s Second District, except the two things that matter most: who will win — and what that result will tell us about the bigger campaign that’s also going on in America right now.

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How Clinton’s big debate win could actually wind up hurting down-ballot Democrats

By Andrew Romano

Every poll taken after Monday’s big debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump came to the same conclusion: Clinton won. According to CNN, 62 percent of voters declared Clinton the winner versus only 27 percent for Trump — a 35-point margin. A separate postdebate survey from Public Policy Polling gave a Clinton 52-40 advantage. And even Breitbart, whose former executive chairman now runs Trump’s campaign, found that Clinton outperformed the Republican nominee.

According to Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, Clinton’s big win suggests that “she’ll gain in head-to-head polls over Trump in the coming days.”

But how will the Hofstra debate affect down-ballot races?

As of Tuesday morning, reactions and responses from House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates locked in tight contests were few and far between. House Speaker Paul Ryan wanly praised Trump’s “energy.” But most other Republicans — especially the electorally imperiled ones — have been mum. Nothing from New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte. Nothing from Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey. Nothing from Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. And so on.

The bottom line is that there are very few GOP candidates who want to talk about Trump, even on one of his good days — and yesterday was not one of his good days.

Down-ballot Democrats have been more vocal, but only slightly. Keystone state Senate challenger Katie McGinty posted a series of #debatenight tweets attempting to link Toomey to the GOP ticket-topper; Catherine Cortez Masto, the Democratic Senate candidate in Nevada, warned of the “threat of a @realDonaldTrump presidency” and retweeted Elizabeth Warren’s remark about Trump “ranting and raving” on the debate stage.

But other Democrats, such as Ohio’s Ted Strickland and Florida’s Patrick Murphy, have yet to weigh in. Not every Dem is making his or her race a referendum on Trump; others probably prefer to wait for the conventional wisdom to fully crystallize before jumping into the fray. Plus it’s still early: Expect more reactions later Tuesday, once reporters start questioning the candidates at their public events.

A word of caution, however, for Democrats — and encouragement for Republicans. According to the latest research on presidential coattails, Clinton’s commanding victory could wind up hurting down-ballot Democrats more than it helps them. Here’s how. Robert Erikson, a professor of political science at Columbia University, is an expert on public opinion and elections; in a recent paper, Erikson looked at the U.S. House vote in the 17 presidential election years, from 1948 to 2012. He found that for every percentage point that a presidential candidate gains in the two-party vote, his or her party’s down-ballot candidates gain almost half a point themselves. This suggests that if Clinton rises in the postdebate polls, down-ballot candidates will rise as well.

The only problem? Erickson also discovered a countereffect called “balancing.”

“The idea here is that in down-ballot contests, some voters may tilt toward the opposite party of the candidate they believe will win the White House,” Erickson told the Washington Post. “They may do this to balance the ideological makeup of government. If the president’s going to be a Democrat, for instance, maybe a Republican Congress can help keep them in check.”

Like the coattail effect, balancing can be quantified. By looking at the effect on the House vote of the preelection odds that the Democrat would win the presidency, Erickson found that, as the odds went up, the Democratic House vote declined. “Being seen as a certain winner rather than a certain loser,” he concluded, “actually penalizes down-ballot candidates by about 3.5 points.”

Controlling for other factors, this suggests that the more confident voters are that a Democrat will become president, the more likely they are to vote for down-ballot Republicans. In other words, Clinton’s win might boost down-ballot Democrats a little bit. But if it makes her look like she’s got a lock on the White House, it could ultimately boost down-ballot Republicans more.

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Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that Craig supported an increase in Syrian refugees to the U.S. The Craig campaign supports the Obama administration’s current policies.

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