Washington’s Inslee to Resign

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA-1), already a declared 2012 candidate for governor of Washington state, will resign his seat in Congress this week. With gubernatorial election polling continuing to show him either behind or tied with Attorney General Rob McKenna (R), carrying out his responsibilities in the nation’s capital while still trying to campaign in a state that is the farthest away in the continental region from Washington, DC is logistically too difficult.

The timing of his resignation is important, hence the reason that he has waited until now to leave office. Under Washington election law, resigning in March prior to the state’s May 18 candidate filing deadline will allow a special election to be conducted concurrently with the state’s regular primary and general election schedule, Aug. 7 and Nov. 6, respectively.

This is a curious decision because the current 1st District, where a special election would be held, is more highly Democratic than the new 1st District. Though the Obama 2008 percentage in the new 1st is 56 percent, usually regarded as a strong partisan number, Rep. Dave Reichert’s (R) current 8th District has the same percentage, yet he has held even in the worst of Republican years. Therefore, the open battle in the new 1st figures to be much more competitive than one in the current 1st.

While it’s true that any new member would serve just a short time under the current lines if the election were held sometime before November, the short-term incumbency advantages would seemingly put the winner in a stronger position when facing a viable Republican regular election opponent, presumably 2nd District 2010 nominee John Koster who held Rep. Rick Larsen (D) to a 51-49 percent win. Much of the Koster base territory is in the new open 1st.

Expect WA-1 to be competitive in the fall. The concurrent special election will be virtually meaningless, because the winner will serve only the final two months of the current term. If the two elections produce different winners, the special election victor will have only eight weeks in office during the interim transition period.

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Santorum Wins Kansas

Despite losing badly in Saturday’s Kansas Caucus, Mitt Romney still kept pace on the delegate count with strong performances in the three territories that also were voting on Saturday: the Northern Marianas Islands, Guam and the Virgin Islands.

Rick Santorum topped the 50 percent mark in the Kansas Caucuses, winning the state with 51.2 percent of the vote. Mr. Romney was a distant second with just 20.9 percent. Newt Gingrich was next with 14.4 percent, and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX-14) brought up the rear at 12.6 percent. For the event, Santorum appears to have been awarded 33 delegates and Romney seven. But it was in the territories where Romney scored big. In Guam, he was surprisingly uncontested; the 207 people who attended the caucus meeting were able to award all nine delegates to him.

In the Northern Marianas Islands, Mr. Romney notched a whopping 87.3 percent of the vote (848 total voting universe) and swept all nine of this entity’s delegates.

Finally, in the Virgin Islands, it was Ron Paul who placed first among the votes cast with 112, followed by Romney’s 101; Santorum recorded 23, and Gingrich finished last tallying just 18 votes. On the delegate count, however, Paul scores just one for sure as four will remain uncommitted, while the three official Republican Party delegates declared for Romney. Therefore, despite placing second, Romney looks to leave the Virgin Islands with four delegates compared to Paul’s one.

According to our estimate of the number of remaining delegates that Romney must secure for a first ballot victory at the Republican National Convention, the former Massachusetts governor needed to commit a minimum aggregate of 29 delegates over Saturday’s four nominating events. With his seven from Kansas, nine each from the Northern Marianas and Guam, and four from the Virgin Islands, he appears to have exactly hit that number. This still leaves his ability to attain the necessary 1,144 delegate commitments in doubt, however, as the estimates only produce the bare minimum victory count.

Turning back to Kansas, the 29,855 voters attending the caucus meetings was a 53 percent increase in turnout over 2008. Four years ago, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee claimed a 59.6 percent victory in the Sunflower State Caucuses, far out-distancing all other contenders. Though Romney failed to even reach 21 percent in Kansas this year, his performance was greatly improved over 2008 when he finished with only 3.3 percent of the vote.