Seems that Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball has downgraded John Spratt’s chances for re-election:
SC-5 (John Spratt-D)
Rating Change: Safe D to Leans D
Rep. John Spratt finds himself in good company as a long-time Democratic congressman from a Republican district suddenly endangered in this newly-Republican national environment. Republicans had been trying to push him to retire and while it looks like he has rebuffed those attempts, his political future is still less than certain. After voting for the stimulus, cap-and-trade, and the House health care bill, Spratt has drawn a strong Republican challenger. State senator Mick Mulvaney was named by Time Magazine as one of the top ten GOP challengers most likely to become the next Scott Brown, pulling off a surprise Republican upset. This will be House election number fifteen for Spratt, the chairman of the House Budget committee, and he has won every way imaginable. In 1994, though, his margin was just four percent and 2010 could turn out to be at least as close, if not closer.
Sounds to me like that’s not based on much other than buzz. After all, the Republicans have been trying to write Mr. Spratt’s political obituary for quite a few cycles.
And that’s a bad thing, and one of the things that’s wrong with political parties. The thing is that John Spratt is one of the smartest, most competent members of the U.S. House of Representatives, an asset both to his home state and to the nation. And he is a moderate, no Nancy Pelosi or even Jim Clyburn. But the Republicans don’t care about that. They want more Republicans, and they think that seat should be “theirs.” So they throw a certain amount of resources at Mr. Spratt every two years, with little regard to whether the district will get better representation, so long as he is replaced by someone with an “R” after his name. (And I say that with no particular reflection one way or the other about Sen. Mulvaney. I don’t know him. But thus far I have no reason to believe he would provide better representation than Mr. Spratt, and the general trend has been to line up candidates without regard to their quality.)
But you say, that’s what parties are for, right? To provide alternatives, to try to win seats? Precisely. They do so without regard to the quality of the incumbent. They are mindless about it. If a representative has a safe seat you won’t see this kind of effort exerted, even if the incumbent is a total loss. But Rep. Spratt is an excellent representative, so it’s rather galling to see him constantly endangered simply because Republicans see an opportunity.
I wouldn’t mind if the opportunity were that Mr. Spratt is a weak representative. But this happens purely because of the mindless math of partisan wrangling, not for reasons bearing upon the job Mr. Spratt has done. And that’s what gets me.
Oh, and for those who want an example where Democrats have bugged me doing the same thing, look no further than Jim Manning‘s unfortunately successful bid to unseat Mike Montgomery in 2008.
That was, without a doubt, my biggest disappointment in that election (yes, bigger than McCain losing, because after all, I liked Obama, too). Mike Montgomery was to Richland County Council what Mr. Spratt is to Congress, only perhaps more so: One of the smartest, most competent, hard-working members. And he was unseated by a guy who had only two arguments for his candidacy, one of them exceedingly narrow (about a portion of the district rather than the county as a whole) and the other being the simple fact that he had a “D” after his name.
Mike Montgomery’s loss was Richland County’s and it happened purely because of partisan math, not because of the quality of the job he had done. And I hate it when that happens.
