Democrats are targeting Louisiana Rep. Anh 'Joseph' Cao and Hawaii Rep. Charles Djou. | AP Photos Dems' fail-safe plan: Go on offense

Democratic lawmakers can rest assured; their party is thinking creatively about how to keep its majorities in the House and Senate. And it's working hard to hold as many governorships as possible.

There’s only one catch for incumbents: As the party faces the prospect of serious losses at every level of government, its best survival strategy may involve focusing on candidates who aren’t yet in office.


An emerging Democratic fail-safe plan depends on winning a handful of key congressional and gubernatorial races that could allow the party to retain power even in the face of widespread defeats. In the House, that means taking a small group of Republican-controlled seats — all within reach — that would allow Democrats to lose roughly 40 seats and still emerge with a slim majority.

On the Senate side, winning just two open GOP-held Senate seats — Missouri and Kentucky — could offset an otherwise awful Election Day and possibly prevent a Republican takeover.

In governors' races, where Democrats are facing an even tougher landscape, the Democratic Governors Association is eyeing big trophies like California, Texas and Florida — currently held by Republican governors — as targets so consequential that they could counter more numerous losses elsewhere on the map.

No one is relying on this backstop approach more heavily than the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, where Democratic House strategists predicted confidently earlier this summer that “Democrats will win at least four Republican seats.”

“As a result, the real number of seats Republicans will have to pick up to win a majority is at least 43,” a July strategy memo read, highlighting Louisiana Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao and Hawaii Rep. Charles Djou’s seats, as well as open seats in Illinois, Delaware and Florida, as opportunities to take the edge off Democratic defeats.

The DCCC has only intensified its focus on takeover opportunities since then. Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the committee, was in Louisiana this week to campaign with Cao’s challenger. Democrats have also released internal polling showing Democrat Joe Garcia in a strong position to take Florida’s open 25th Congressional District, and blasted out fundraising information showing Hawaii state Sen. Colleen Hanabusa in a solid position against Djou.

A longer, and perhaps less plausible, list of Democratic targets might include Republican Reps. Dan Lungren of California, Jim Gerlach of Pennsylvania, Lee Terry of Nebraska and Dave Reichert of Washington.

Republicans are skeptical that the DCCC, already stretching its considerable funds across a huge electoral map, will follow through on all but the easiest of targets. Some of the potential Democratic targets — including the Chicago-area House seat of outgoing Republican Rep. Mark Kirk — are in expensive media markets, and Democrats would have to make zero-sum spending choices that could leave their own incumbents high and dry.

“They have to make a calculated decision,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Ken Spain said. “Do they want to go try and play offense in some of these open seats or in some of these costly media markets, as opposed to defending incumbents who are already in office?”

But if that’s a cold calculus, it’s one that Senate Democrats have inched toward as well. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has placed several million dollars in ad reservations in two Republican-held states — Missouri and Kentucky — even as Republicans aim at about a dozen seats currently held by Democrats.

Among the DSCC’s first three independent expenditure campaigns this cycle was an ad blitz against Missouri Rep. Roy Blunt, who’s running for retiring GOP Sen. Kit Bond’s seat. The DSCC ad’s message: “Roy Blunt … isn’t just in Washington. He is Washington.”

Recent polls have shown Blunt leading Democratic Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, but Democrats believe the race is highly competitive and that Blunt could be vulnerable to attacks on his tenure in Congress.

A Senate Democratic strategist argued that the DSCC’s ability to go on offense was a key difference between this year’s campaign and the Democratic wave elections of 2006 and 2008: “If you look at the ’06 and ’08 map, those two cycles combined, the only blue seat that was competitive was [Louisiana Sen.] Mary Landrieu, and that fell off the map before Labor Day. … If you look at the races that were in play, they were all on their turf.”

In addition to Missouri and Kentucky, some Democrats also look to Florida as a potential buffer against a GOP takeover, thanks to Gov. Charlie Crist’s independent bid.

To date, the only Democratic-held seats where the DSCC has run ads are Colorado, where appointed Sen. Michael Bennet is running for reelection, and Pennsylvania, where Rep. Joe Sestak is running to replace outgoing Sen. Arlen Specter.

The committee did not comment on its plans for independent expenditure spending.

On the gubernatorial level — where Democratic chief executives are term-limited out of office in unfriendly states such as Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wyoming — there’s virtually no chance that Democratic governors will hold a majority of seats after November.

The DGA has adjusted its plans — and expectations — accordingly, and outlined a high-value-target general election strategy Wednesday that focuses on competitive “states that have relevance in congressional redistricting, implications for the 2012 presidential election and the sheer size of their population.”

“Governors' races are relatively insulated from the national dynamics playing out in federal races,” DGA Executive Director Nathan Daschle argued, writing: “The most telling indicator will be how the GOP performs in a wave year in critical states such as California, Colorado, Florida and Texas.”

Put differently, the strategy goes something like this: Pick up a few trophy states — especially those where redistricting stands to affect many Democrat-held seats or that loom as 2012 presidential battlegrounds — in order to claim victory even in a murderously bad year.

The DGA has divided its attention so far between defending incumbent governors, including Ohio’s Ted Strickland, Illinois’s Pat Quinn and Iowa’s Chet Culver, and spending in open-seat races, such as Colorado, New Mexico and takeover opportunities in California and Nevada.

The committee plans to continue splitting its resources between protecting Democratic seats and pursuing takeover opportunities. The DGA considers some 18 races to be competitive this fall, with the Georgia and Minnesota governors' races joining Florida, California and Texas on the list of big-state targets. Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont and Hawaii are also races where Democrats hope to pick up ground.

“If we can pick up some of these states, then we can show this electorate isn’t hungry for a return to Republican leadership,” Daschle told POLITICO, suggesting that state races could ripple beyond 2010. “If that’s the case, I think the president’s prospects in 2012 look a whole lot better.”