Article by Erik Smith. Published on Monday, June 28, 2010 EST.

No Obama on the Ballot Spells Trouble for Dems in Off-Year Election 

Turnout was low for this year’s state Democratic convention — an ominous sign for the Dems?

See Also: Scenes From the Democratic Convention

By Erik Smith

Staff writer/ Washington State Wire

VANCOUVER, June 26.—Washington state Democrats, holding their off-year convention in what promises to be one of the most embattled congressional districts in the country, gave a rousing send-off to their party’s congressional candidates, including U.S. Sen. Patty Murray and local favorite Denny Heck.

            They endorsed the legalization of marijuana but decided liquor sales in grocery stores was just too radical an idea.

            And they listened to speech after speech exhorting them to prove everyone wrong about Republican victories in the fall election.

            But there was one ominous sign. A third of the chairs in the room were empty.

            Two years after Barack Obama and an energized Democratic party beat John McCain and swept their candidates into office on the state and national level, the Dems had trouble filling the room. To be sure, the emptiness was accentuated by the cavernous meeting hall at the Clark County fairgrounds. But if guests were counted attendance was less than half that of the Republican state convention that had been held in Vancouver two weeks before. A little over 700 delegates were seated, versus 1,200 at the GOP meeting.

            And the rows of empty chairs illustrated the challenge ahead for Democrats this year as they try to hold the line.

            State Democratic Chairman Dwight Pelz said the attendance was a disappointment – the party had hoped to see 1,000 delegates. Some fall-off is natural after a party wins big, he said. “It’s an off-year election and we’re the party in power,” he said. “We had such a high in 2008. When you’re the party in power, sometimes there’s not as much of a feeling that it’s important to go to meetings.”

            But the Dems staged quite a show, for those who came.

            Murray Jabs at Rossi

            Actually, some of Washington’s congressional delegation skipped it, too. Absentees were U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, who is not up for re-election this year, and congressmen Rick Larsen and Adam Smith, who are. But all the others were on hand, and they told the party faithful this a year Democrats just can’t afford to stay at home.

Highlight of the convention was the address by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, who faces what is looking like a tough fight against Republican Dino Rossi, an unsuccessful two-time candidate for governor.

            Survey numbers released on convention eve by pollster Scott Rasmussen show the 18-year senator is in a dead heat with Rossi, 47 percent to 47 percent.

            Murray hammered Rossi for his promise never to seek a congressional “earmark” for funding for local projects. Not that she was willing to dignify him by name.

“I make your needs known in Washington, D.C. because it is my responsibility as your elected representative to stand up and fight for you,” she said. “Now, there’s some folks in this race who are going to stand by and watch, who right out of the starting gate have said they are going to refuse to stand up and fight for Washington state. They’d rather delegate that responsibility to some bureaucrat miles away from here, or a federal agency that doesn’t know anything about our state and who think Vancouver is in Canada.

“I know where Vancouver is, and I’m going to fight for Vancouver in Washington, D.C.

            Mocks Rossi’s Foreclosure Business, Vacillation

“I’m fighting for you because, unlike some others in this race, I haven’t forgotten and I certainly did not support the bad decisions of the Bush administration that got us into this mess in the first place. I voted against going to war in Iraq. I said no to their unpaid-for tax cuts for the wealthiest. I’m fighting instead for our working families with middle-class tax breaks and credits for college home ownership and support for our clean energy technology.

“That’s what we should be fighting for in this country today, and I’m fighting for you because unlike some others in this race who are out giving lectures on how to profit off of foreclosures. I’m actually working in Washington D.C. to make sure our Washington state families stay in their homes and get help and get mortgage counseling. That’s what fighting for you is.

“And unlike some others in this race I have never hemmed and hawed or hedged my bets and wondered whether or not this was the right thing to do for me or for my family. I did not have to have anybody convince me or make me promises or drag me into this race.”

Murray, now one of the top senators in terms of seniority, also showed the audience she hasn’t tired of her 1992 slogan, when she cast herself as the outsider and called herself “the mom in tennis shoes.” Murray said, “I’m still standing up every day to people who say you can’t make a difference, and you bet I’m still wearing my tennis shoes.”

For the record, she was.

            Will Do Better Than People Think

With no charismatic national candidate to head the ballot this year, party leaders acknowledged they face a tough challenge hanging on to their gains from 2008. Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine said the party won big because Barack Obama inspired legions of voters who had never come to the polls before. The trouble is, history shows 70 percent of them probably won’t vote again this year. So the Democratic party nationally is mounting an enormous effort to target those unreliable voters, he said, through its Organizing for America grass-roots arm and by sending staff to assist state parties nationwide.

“If we can just increase their percentage turnout from 30 percent to 40 percent, that’s a million-and-a-half more votes for Democratic candidates all over this nation,” he said. “If we can get it to 45 percent, that’s 2 million votes. And so that’s what we’re trying to do, working with your great state party, working with candidates. We will energize our reliable voters, and we will reach out especially to the first-timers to say, you know, that democracy and voting is not a sporadic thing. It’s an everyday responsibility and everyday challenge, an everyday joy.

“And if we do that right, we’re going to sweep a lot of races this fall that other folks aren’t counting on us on. You know, the other guys think they’re going to take both houses back there, going around saying that that’s what they’re going to do, but I think our proven track record, our great candidates, and our proven ability to do grassroots, street level, at-the-screen-door politics is going to enable us to do a lot better this fall that a lot of people think.”

            Third and Eighth Districts Are Top Priorities

Two Washington congressional races are expected to attract national attention and support, Democrats said, because they are considered swing districts. One is Susan DelBene’s challenge to Republican Dave Reichert in suburban King County; the other is the wide-open race for the southwest Washington seat being vacated by Democrat Brian Baird. Though the field remains crowded in the Third District, the strongest contenders are Republicans Jaimie Herrera and David Castillo and Democrat Denny Heck, who was named the party’s “official candidate” at Saturday’s convention.

In fact, the location of the convention was a sign of the party’s interest in winning the seat – just as true for the Democrats as it was for the Republicans.

“Now, absolutely every single person sitting in this room, without fail, has noticed the Republicans have targeted the Third Congressional District,” Heck told the crowd. “Karl Rove is sitting on so much money to be used as independent expenditures that it would even make a Wall Street banker blush, and I didn’t think that was possible.”

            Getting Down to Business

And then came the actual business of the convention – the passage of resolutions and a party platform, and endorsements for ballot measures. The business session was chaired by state Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver.

There was a spirited and ultimately successful floor fight to endorse Initiative 1068, which would legalize marijuana under Washington law.

But when it came to privatization of state liquor stores – the subject of two initiatives this year – the idea proved just too radical for the Democratic crowd. Part of the reason, of course, is that the unions are against it.

One delegate declared it “means the loss of jobs – there are state employees who are unionized, and they will lose their jobs if you privatize.”

The best line of the convention? It came from a delegate who rose to protest a plank in the platform that would eliminate the state’s “three-strikes-you’re-out” law for habitual criminal offenders.

The delegate said, “I still would like that rule applied to Dino Rossi.”

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