Connecticut Votes Colorblind
WASHINGTON, Nov. 6, 2004- On election night, during national contests described in opposing hues of red and blue, Connecticut voters proved themselves colorblind.
The campaigns of George W. Bush and John F. Kerry counted Connecticut among the blue Democratic states, and Kerry upheld that label by carrying every county. But in statewide elections, voters split along a very different fault line: they chose experience over new talent across the board, regardless of a candidate’s party. The likely reason: incumbency brings with it an almost insurmountable mountain of political capital.
A town-by-town survey of the 2 nd District’s political landscape over the last four years made abundantly clear the stark advantage of an incumbent representative.
On the national level, incumbent members of the House of Representatives enjoyed a reelection rate as high as 90 percent over the past few election cycles. In Connecticut, that rate hasn’t dipped below 100 percent since 2000, when Republican Rob Simmons beat incumbent Democrat Sam Gejdenson. And with all five incumbents returning to Washington, it will not change this year.
Incumbency gives a candidate an advantage in two obvious arenas: fund raising and the ability to provide money for pet projects for constituents during the federal appropriations process. An incumbent Simmons took advantage of both in his win over Democrat Jim Sullivan. He doubled Sullivan’s fundraising efforts and after four years in Congress could take credit for helping bring funds to numerous ventures in Eastern Connecticut.
Such money-moving brought Simmons another benefit that helped him win voters in a traditionally Democratic district – name recognition. His success after the state’s 2001 redistricting effort underscored the advantage of being well known.
In the wake of the 2000 census, 11 towns were added to the 2 nd district. Three of those – Somers, Suffield and Enfield – came from the now defunct 6 th District, then represented by Republican Nancy Johnson. The other eight were chiseled out of the 1 st and 3 rd districts, each represented by a Democrat.
During his first bid for reelection in 2002, 10 of the 11 towns voted to keep Simmons in office. On Tuesday, he took all 11. But before redistricting, the eight towns from the 1 st and 3 rd Districts had solid histories of voting for Democrats.
“It’s because of the independents,” said Christopher Barnes, a University of Connecticut pollster and expert on the state’s voting patterns.
As the largest voting bloc in the state, independents – or those unaffiliated with any party – account for 44 percent of Connecticut’s 2.1 million registered voters. They tend to be less politically active people who register by party, Barnes said, which makes name recognition vital to winning their support.
“They know the names,” Barnes said in a phone interview. “We have a lot of challengers starting from scratch, and the default position for the independents is to vote for the incumbent.”
Take Madison, for instance. Redistricting moved this affluent seaside town 30 miles west of New London from the 3 rd District into the 2 nd . For the past three election cycles, Republican registered voters there have outnumbered Democrats nearly 2 to 1. The town’s first selectman, Thomas Scarpati, is a Republican. And in 2002 and 2004, it voted to reelect Republican Simmons by an average of 60 percent.
But in 2000, when it was part of the 3 rd District, the town voted to reelect the Democratic incumbent, DeLauro, by nearly the same margin. Reflecting the statewide average, 43 percent of Madison’s 13,385 registered voters that year were independent.
“Independents lock on to the incumbent, and so aren’t really that independent,” Barnes said.
The jockeying for the independent vote in Connecticut forces many candidates, especially Republicans, to dodge association with a national party.
“The way it works in Connecticut is that if you want to be a successful Republican candidate, you place yourself as a maverick,” Barnes said. Simmons used this technique to great success in both bids for reelection, under very different circumstances.
“He did the first with a tailwind and the second with a headwind,” Barnes said.
In 2002 Simmons shared a ticket headlined by a then-popular Republican governor, John Rowland. This year, he ran in front of an electorate that predominantly favored the Democratic Kerry. Simmons defied pollsters, who called his race against Sullivan a dead heat, winning by an 8-point margin.
