Analysis: Winners got out of ’08 gate quickly

The national parties’ House and Senate campaign committees are hitting a crucial stage for recruiting, according to an analysis of 2008 election results by The Hill.

Of the more than five dozen new members of the House and Senate, a solid majority declared their candidacy more than a year before the election. And among those who defeated incumbents, three-quarters started their campaign by October 2007.

Lawmakers and candidates often begrudge the never-ending election cycle, but evidence from 2008 shows it’s almost never too early to start a campaign.

{mosads}Only two new members of the House launched their campaigns after January 2008 and went on to knock off an established incumbent.

Though 20 new House members waited until the election year to launch their campaigns, the vast majority of them entered the race only after an incumbent decided to retire.

The exceptions include two Louisiana Republicans: Rep. Joseph Cao, who unexpectedly defeated Rep. William Jefferson (D) in a heavily Democratic district, and Rep. Bill Cassidy, who entered the race after a May special election in the same district.

On the Democratic side, freshman Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) entered the race late, in May 2008, but only because her party’s choice candidate dropped out of the race. Titus was off to a running start against then-Rep. Jon Porter (R-Nev.), but she had a name recognition advantage, having been the Democratic nominee for governor in 2006.

Of the 27 new House members who launched a campaign against an incumbent, 21 announced by October 2007, and 17 were in by August 2007.

Six of those 27 wound up running for open seats, after the incumbent either retired or lost a primary.

At the same time, there might also be such a thing as getting in too early.

Only two new members of the House and Senate officially entered the race by March 2007. Another 15 jumped in during the spring months, while 19 got in during the three-month span between August and October.

{mospagebreak}Seven of nine winning Senate candidates were in their races by October 2007. Of the two who had yet to join their races, Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) entered the race after then-Sen. Pete Domenici’s (R-N.M) October retirement announcement, and Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) got in the race after then-Sen. Ted Stevens’s (R-Alaska) legal troubles mounted.

Stevens was eventually indicted and convicted on corruption charges before the election. He is appealing.

Begich officially got in the race in April 2008, but opened an exploratory committee two months prior.

The Hill’s analysis looked at the official campaign announcements and financial filings of all new members to make a determination about when their campaigns actively began.

For some members, determining an actual launch date was complicated.

Freshman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who defeated Rep. Chris Cannon (R) in a primary and went on to easily win his seat in November, didn’t announce his campaign until October 2007, though he had been actively raising money for nine months by that point.

{mosads}Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.) officially launched his campaign in January 2008, but had been raising money for four months for the seat of retiring Rep. Jim Ramstad (R).

In both cases, the member’s actual launch date was determined to be when they started raising serious money for their campaigns.

The new member who ran the longest campaign in 2008 was Rep. Larry Kissell (D-N.C.), who relaunched his campaign against then-Rep. Robin Hayes (R) immediately upon conceding in November 2006.

After Chaffetz’s January 2007 entry, the next earliest entrants were Reps. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Ohio) and Eric Massa (D-N.Y.), the latter two which, like Kissell, were effectively extending their 2006 campaigns for the same seat.

The most popular month for candidates to enter races was October 2007, when six new House members and two new senators launched their campaigns. Retirements began to mount in September of that year, and they wound up clearing the way for approximately three dozen open seats.

After a holiday lull in November and December, 12 new House members launched their campaigns in January and February of 2008. Ten of them were running for an open seats created by retirements.

Though several Senate campaigns have gotten off to a very early start in the first four months of the 2010 election cycle, none of the nine new senators in the 111th Congress launched their 2008 campaigns before April of the off-year.

In fact, only one jumped into the race before August 2007: Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), who had said he would run for the seat for years but officially launched with 17 months to go in the cycle.

Democrats wound up landing top recruits like now-Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Mark Warner (Va.) and Tom Udall (N.M.) in the fall of the off-year.

This cycle, the parties already have top candidates for open seats in Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio. Most of those seats became open sooner than any seats in the 2008 cycle.

Early open seats in the House have similarly drawn lots of interest in the first months of the 2010 cycle.