A bad omen in Illinois

John Fund:

Karen Hanretty, the spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, had a terse response to the startling loss of former Speaker Dennis Hastert's seat in a special election in Illinois on Saturday.

"The one thing 2008 has shown is that one election in one state does not prove a trend," she noted. Fair enough. Indeed in June, 2006, Republicans retained a California seat in a high-profile special election, but that had no predictive value given that Democrats stomped their way to control of Congress a few months later.

But special elections in highly visible seats do have a psychological effect on parties. Not only can they boost or depress morale, but they can affect how political contributions flow in the months leading up to the general election.

That should worry Republicans because history does show that some special elections have captured a growing mood against the party that controls the White House. In early 1974, Republicans lost the Michigan seat vacated by Gerald Ford when he was appointed vice president by Richard Nixon, a clear sign that Watergate was weighing heavily on GOP political fortunes. Twenty years later, Democrats anxiously realized that the Clinton administration was a liability to them in the middle of the debate over Hillary Clinton's health care plan after they lost a Kentucky special election. Republican Ron Lewis was able to win an historically Democratic district in part by running an ad showing Democratic candidate Joe Prather morphing into an image of Bill Clinton. The next fall, Democrats were swept out of Congress.

It's unclear what the significance of the GOP's loss in Mr. Hastert's seat is, but the news is not good. Mr. Hastert had won election ten times from the district on the outer fringes of the Chicago metro area, which also includes the birthplace of Ronald Reagan. It is a normally Republican seat, giving George W. Bush 55% of the vote in 2004.

But Democratic physicist Bill Foster, a political neophyte, was able to win 53% of the vote to seize the seat from Republican dairy owner Jim Oberweis. The two candidates will face each other again in the fall, but Mr. Foster's incumbency will make him the favorite in the rematch.

...

In 1961 John Tower won the seat Lyndon Johnson gave up to become Vice President. Is was not an omen for coming elections, but Tower remained in office until 1985 and was the first of many Republicans in Texas to hold statewide offices that are now all held by Republicans.

In 1994 a Republican also knocked off the then leader of the Democrat House. But the 2004 race that saw Tom Dachle, the Democrat leader of the Senate, lose was not an omen for the 2006 election.

The Republicans would have been better off if Hastert had stayed in office.

Bill Kristol talks about the Hastert seat in his story about McCain's daunting task. I should remind folks that Tower's election did not lead to a Republican victory in 1964, but a landslide for Democrat Lyndon Johnson. It is time for us to keep this all in perspective.