What kind of a cycle is this? It’s the kind of cycle where the National Republican Congressional Committee runs ads in Massachusetts.

This one is to help out Jeff Perry:

This morning they’re also debuting a new one against Ike Skelton in Missouri:

The NRCC releases a bunch of their internal polls:

• In Arizona’s 1st District, Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick trails Republican Paul Gosar by 3 points, 45-42.
• In Arizona’s 5th District, Democrat Harry Mitchell trails Republican David Schweikert by 1 point, 45-44.
• In Colorado’s 3rd District, Democrat John Salazar is tied with Republican Scott Tipton, 45-45.
• In Florida’s 24th District, Democrat Suzanne Kosmas trails Republican Sandy Adams by 10 points, 49-39.
• In Maryland’s 1st District, Democrat Frank Kratovil trails Republican Andy Harris by 4 points, 43-39.
• In Oregon’s 5th District, Democrat Kurt Schrader trails Republican Scott Bruun by 1 point, 45-44.
• In Virginia’s 2nd District, Democrat Glenn Nye trails Republican Scott Rigell by 5 points, 45-40.

None of these are done deals, obviously. But each of these Republicans can feel pretty good at this point.

It appears that the difference between a good year for the NRCC and a great year is how many House Democrats become defined by their relationship and loyalty to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Thus, with President Obama, Harry Reid and Pelosi all unpopular in these conservative districts, many incumbent Democrats are loudly insisting they’re independents who rarely if ever vote in lockstep with their party’s leaders. The NRCC counter-argument is to go to the voting record.

They’re doing it in North Carolina…

They’re doing it in Nevada:

They’re doing it in North Dakota…

They’re doing it in Texas…

They’re doing it in Missouri…

In addition to these five races, they’re running in 25 more. Full analysis to come.

The NRCC has launched a page to help voters find out if their representative — well, the representatives targeted by the committee, at least — will commit to extending the tax cuts for all Americans.  ”With Democrats packing up shop after this week to go back to the district to try and spin their failed record it’s a good chance to remind people that House Democrats stand with Pelosi and not their constituents,” they declare.

Patrick Ruffini wants a new update on the overall outlook for the House.

I had a list of 99 back in May. A few races have been added since then (Bob Etheridge had not grabbed anyone by the neck back then), and the outlook has shifted a bit. You can see my May categorization here. I’ve scrapped the NFL-team comparison and just gone with a simpler explanation, while retaining that reassuring and memorable Department of Homeland Security 
color-coded chart theme.

BLUE: GOP Should Win

Marion Berry’s open seat in Arkansas, Vic Snyder’s open seat in Arkansas, Dennis Moore’s open seat in Kansas, Charlie Melancon’s open seat in Louisiana, Paul Hodes’s open seat in New Hampshire, Eric Massa’s open seat in New York, John Tanner’s open seat in Tennessee, Bart Gordon’s open seat in Tennessee, Betsy Markey in Colorado, Frank Kratovil in Maryland, Carol Shea-Porter in New Hampshire, Earl Pomeroy in North Dakota, Paul Kanjorski in Pennsylvania. (13)

GREEN: GOP Has Good Chance of Winning

Brad Ellsworth’s open seat in Indiana, Joe Sestak’s open seat in Pennsylvania, Dave Obey’s open seat in Wisconsin, Bobby Bright in Alabama, Ann Kirkpatrick in Arizona, Allen Boyd in Florida, Alan Grayson in Florida, Suzanne Kosmas in Florida, Debbie Halvorson in Illinois, Phil Hare in Illinois, Baron Hill in Indiana, Joe Donnelly in Indiana, Travis Childers in Mississippi, Dina Titus in Nevada, Harry Teague in New Mexico, Bob Etheridge in North Carolina, John Boccieri in Ohio, Zach Space in Ohio, Betty Sutton in Ohio, Mary Jo Kilroy in Ohio, Steve Driehaus in Ohio, Kathy Dahlkemper in Pennsylvania, John Spratt in South Carolina, Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin in South Dakota, Glenn Nye in Virginia, Rick Boucher in Virginia, Tom Perriello in Virginia, Allan Mollohan in West Virginia. (28)

YELLOW: GOP Chances About 50-50

Bart Stupak’s open seat in Michigan, Brian Baird’s open seat in Washington, Gabby Giffords in Arizona, Harry Mitchell in Arizona, John Salazar in Colorado, Ron Klein in Florida, John Barrow in Georgia, Jim Marshall in Georgia, Walt Minnick in Idaho, Melissa Bean in Illinois, Bill Foster in Illinois, Leonard Boswell in Iowa, Ben Chandler in Kentucky, Mark Schauer in Michigan, Gary Peters in Michigan, Ike Skelton in Missouri, Shelley Berkeley in Nevada, John Adler in New Jersey, Martin Heinrich in New Mexico, Michael Arcuri in New York, Tim Bishop in New York, John Hall in New York, Bill Owens in New York, Mike McMahon in New York, Larry Kissell in North Carolina, Mike McIntyre in North Carolina, Heath Shuler in North Carolina, Charlie Wilson in Ohio, Jason Altmire in Pennsylvania, Chris Carney in Pennsylvania, Mark Critz in Pennsylvania, Patrick Murphy in Pennsylvania, Tim Holden in Pennsylvania, Lincoln Davis in Tennessee, Ciro Rodriguez in Texas, Steve Kagen in Wisconsin. (36)

ORANGE: GOP Should Win With Luck or Wave

Bill Delahunt’s open seat in Massachusetts, Mike Ross in Arkansas, Jim Costa in California, Loretta Sanchez in California, Jerry McNerney in California, Bob Filner in California, Ed Perlmutter in Colorado, Jim Himes in Connecticut, Chris Murphy in Connecticut, Sanford Bishop in Georgia, Bruce Braley in Iowa, Dave Loebsack in Iowa, Gene Taylor in Mississippi, Russ Carnahan in Missouri, Rush Holt in New Jersey, Dan Maffei in New York, Kurt Schrader in Oregon, Chet Edwards in Texas, Jim Matheson in Utah, Gerry Connolly in Virginia, Nick Rahall in West Virginia, Ron Kind in Wisconsin. (22)

RED: GOP Will Need a Wave and Some Luck

Patrick Kennedy’s open seat in Rhode Island, Stephen Lynch in Massachusetts, Betty McCollum in Minnesota, Frank Pallone in New Jersey, Dan Boren in Oklahoma, David Wu in Oregon. (6)

That adds up to 105 seats the Democrats have to defend. 

Not too long ago, I looked at the GOP’s vulnerable House seats:

I would have put Joseph Cao, that Republican representing that New Orleans district, on the extremely endangered list, but “Cao led state Rep. Cedric Richmond (D) by a 51%-26% margin, according to a survey conducted May 27-June 2 by LA pollster Verne Kennedy.” That poll doesn’t guarantee Cao survives, but it suggests the race is not the slam dunk the DCCC thinks it is. Obviously, Hawaii’s Charles Djou won’t have an easy campaign, but observers aren’t putting his seat in even the top ten seats most likely to switch. In Illinois’s 10th district, Republican Bob Dold and Democrat Dan Seals are even in fundraising and a poll back in March put Seals up by only 3. It’s a similar story in the open-seat race in Florida, which is an R+5 district, by the way.

Holding Delaware’s lone House seat will indeed be tough for the GOP . . .

Ordinarily, you figure the GOP would lose most or at least some of their really vulnerable seats . . . but there’s an awfully strong undertow for Democrats right now. Maybe it mitigates by November, but right now there aren’t too many signs of that.

The first wave of ads from the National Republican Congressional Committee — about $22 million worth — will be running in these districts:

1. AL-02 (Roby v. Bright)
2. AR-01 (Crawford v. Causey)
3. CA-11 (Harmer v. McNerney)
4. CO-04 (Gardner v. Markey)
5. FL-02 (Not Yet Determined v. Boyd)
6. FL-08 (Not Yet Determined v. Grayson)
7. FL-24 (Not Yet Determined v. Kosmas)
8. GA-08 (Scott v. Marshall)
9. IL-10 (Dold v. Seals)
10. IL-11 (Kinzinger v. Halvorson)
11. IN-02 (Walorski v. Donnelly)
12. IN-08 (Buschon v. Van Haaften)
13. IN-09 (Young v. Hill)
14. KS-03 (Yoder v. Moore)
15. KY-06 (Barr v. Chandler)
16. MD-01 (Harris v. Kratovil)
17. MI-01 (Benishek v. McDowell)
18. MI-07 (Walberg v. Schauer)
19. MS-01 (Nunnelee v. Childers)
20. NV-03 (Heck v. Titus)
21. NH-01 (Not Yet Determined v. Shea-Porter)
22. NM-02 (Pierce v. Teague)
23. NY-20 (Gibson v. Murphy)
24. NY-24 (Hanna v. Arcuri)
25. ND-AL (Berg v. Pomeroy)
26. OH-01 (Chabot v. Driehaus)
27. OH-15 (Stivers v. Kilroy)
28. OH-16 (Renacci v. Boccieri)
29. PA-03 (Kelly v. Dahlkemper)
30. PA-07 (Meehan v. Lentz)
31. PA-11 (Barletta v. Kanjorski)
32. SC-05 (Mulvaney v. Spratt)
33. SD-AL (Noem v. Herseth-Sandlin)
34. TN-08 (Fincher v. Herron)
35. TX-17 (Flores v. Edwards)
36. TX-23 (Canseco v. Rodriquez)
37. VA-02 (Rigell v. Nye)
38. VA-05 (Hurt v. Perriello)
39. WV-01 (McKinley v. Oliverio)
40. WI-07 (Duffy v. Lassa)

Obviously, they hope to broaden the field even further.

The NRCC’s cool new map is now embeddable: 

The Republican Governors Association has a cool map, too, not yet embeddable.

Wondering which Republicans are running for the House in your state? The National Republican Congressional Committee offers a really neat map tool here.

Now make it embeddable, guys!

UPDATE: If you’re seeing “N/A”, it probably means the state you’re looking at hasn’t held its primary yet; the NRCC linked only to the GOP candidates who have won their primaries already. Note that the GOP found candidates in 430 of 435 districts this year, so five districts will have to find some other option.

In a unique set of circumstances — two major Democrats on the ballot, and only one Republican — the GOP’s Charles Djou wins the special House election in Hawaii’s 1st congressional district. It is not a surprise, but I am sure, to many Republicans, it is a relief and a welcome bit of good news.

(R) Charles Djou: 67,610 votes, 39.4 percent

(D) Colleen Hanabusa, 52,802 votes, 30.8 percent

(D) Ed Case 47,391 votes, 27.6 percent

National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) chairman Pete Sessions (R., Tex.) issued the following statement:

I congratulate Charles Djou for his victory and a successful campaign based on the widely-shared values of cutting spending, shrinking government and creating real, permanent American jobs. I have no doubt that Hawaii families will be well-represented in Congress as he joins our fight to return common sense economic policies and fiscal sanity to Washington.

Eighteen months ago, President Obama carried this district with seventy percent of the vote, which makes Charles Djou’s victory an impressive one. Tonight, the voters of Hawaii reaffirmed that middle class families are looking for fresh, new leaders who will take this country in a new direction and serve as a check and balance to Washington Democrats’ reckless and unpopular policies of deficit spending, higher taxes and fewer jobs. Charles Djou’s victory not only changes the makeup of the House of Representatives, but it helps Republicans move one step closer toward winning back the majority in November. Both Charles and his wife Stacey worked tirelessly in this campaign and tonight it paid off.

I would also like to take the opportunity to thank Chairman Steele and the Republican National Committee for the money and manpower they provided in this winning effort. I am grateful for all that he and his team have done to help ensure that 2010 is a successful year for the Republican Party and the entire slate of candidates running across the country.

One of my guys on the ground looks at the preliminary numbers on the ground and concludes:

Likely rematch in Nov between Djou and Hanabusa. I don’t think Case can beat her one-on-one, and the fact that she rallied to beat him in the late balloting when the early polls had him up over her, shows he won’t be able to beat her in August. But, between the two, I think Djou would like to have Hanabusa as his opponent rather than Case.  She’s got baggage, and she’s completely tied to the Dem. machine. Independents are more likely to go for Djou with her as his opponent, than they would be if Case was an option.  I think among Case’s 27.6% are a ton of independents. The minor candidates got less than 3% total — good news for Hanabusa since it shows that Djou is going to have to mine Case’s voters for most of the 11% more he’ll need in Nov., and the biggest portion of those voters are Democrats.

There’s grumbling in Washington about the NRCC:

Both sources, one a Republican lawmaker and one a senior GOP staffer, said National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Pete Sessions took responsibility for the loss and promised to study the results and learn the lessons of the Burns’ defeat.

Both sources said they did not believe there would be an effort to replace Rep. Sessions as chairman of the NRCC, but said it was made clear there is deep dissatisfaction.

The accounts also exposed anew long festering tensions or rivalries among House Minority Leader John Boehner and some of his deputies in the leadership. The two sources, both from the more conservative factions of the House GOP caucus, noted it was the Ohio Republican who tapped Sessions for the NRCC’s top post and said most of the NRCC’s top staff have ties to Boehner.

I spoke to a GOP consultant who said that this sentiment was definitely out there, less “It’s time for Sessions to go!” and more “What’s wrong over there?”

While I think every Republican is frustrated that the NRCC hasn’t managed to pick off any recent special elections, only so much of the blame can be laid at the feet of the NRCC or Sessions. Overall, the NRCC seems to be running pretty smoothly; no fundraisers spending money at bondage-themed clubs or nodding as a CNN host comparing the party to Nazis here.

They’ve got the wind at their back, but recruitment has generally gone quite well.  Tom Ganley switched from a longshot challenge to Rob Portman in Ohio’s GOP Senate primary to having a serious chance of knocking off Rep. Betty Sutton (D., Ohio). Tim Griffin also forsook a rumored Senate bid to become a top-tier House candidate. While Charles Djou is greatly helped by the two Democrats/one Republican dynamic of the special election, that race isn’t competitive without a good Republican candidate well-liked within that district. There’s a mix of former congressmen, veteran state legislators, retired military officers, small businessmen and philanthropists, a two-time lumberjack speed-climbing world champion, and the Wisconsin Red Cross Hero of the Year who saved a woman from a knife-wielding assailant in 2007. NRCC top guys have told me their approach is consider every district winnable, and then find the candidate whose profile — experience, ideology, geography, ability to fund-raise, media savvy — fits what is needed to win that district. From time to time, they’ve tried to nudge GOP candidates who aren’t their favorites to other races, but for the most part the committee is content to let the primaries play themselves out.

In the New York special elections, losing Republican candidates Jim Tedisco and Dede Scozzafava were selected by the local party committees. Once they were picked, all the NRCC could do was do its best to elect the Republican. You’ve seen the reaction to Charlie Crist’s refusing to return contributions from Republicans who feel betrayed; I can only imagine the legal challenges to the committee if they tried to use money from Republican donors to elect a non-Republican candidate and defeat a Republican candidate, even if Doug Hoffman was much better than Dede Scozzafava.

The NRCC’s fundraising strikes me as okay for a tough economy. Raising cash is just harder when you’re in the minority.

The one thing I hear from readers is that they find the NRCC ads painfully generic, way too abrasively negative, and generally unsatisfying. But they ran ads against David Obey not too long before his surprising retirement announcement, and they’re getting healthy amounts of “earned media,” that is, the ads are run by local and national news organizations in their coverage of the race, bringing them before a wider audience at no expense.

I suspect if the grassroots have better ideas, the NRCC is all ears.

Talking to an NRCC guy who’s looked at last night’s numbers extensively, he concludes that the polls and expectations in Pennsylvania’s special election were thrown off not merely by the competitive Democratic Senate primary, but particularly by Joe Sestak’s surge in the final two weeks.

Committee strategists worried about the effect of the Senate primary at first, but as they started getting polling numbers back, they suspected the special election would be the chief driver for turnout in this part of the state. Until the beginning of May or so, that seemed to be the case. But in the final weeks, Sestak’s surge — driven by massive amounts of television advertising, hitting Specter for his ties to George W. Bush — drove a sudden burst of interest in voting among the Democratic base. This analyst thinks these Sestak-driven voters amounted to about 8,000 to 10,000 voters, roughly the size of Critz’s margin of victory. The Sestak-surge-driven Democrats turned out because they were determined to toss out Specter; they were more liberal and more partisan than your average district Democrat. Thus, Tim Burns, who usually ran well among Democrats, in the neighborhood of 20 percent, probably only won about 15 percent of Democrats last night.

This NRCC number-cruncher notes that on paper, the Republicans did have high-intensity turnout; they outperformed the highest Republican level of turnout for a primary – although that’s not the highest bar to clear; since Murtha usually appeared untouchable, GOP primaries in this district weren’t usually big affairs, with 20,000 to 26,000 votes. The Republicans brought out 45,000 votes and expected the Democrats to bring out about 60,000 votes. (If Burns took 20 percent of that, and kept most of the Republican vote, he would win handily.)

Instead, 83,000 Democratic voters turned out.

This NRCC number-cruncher isn’t drawing a ton of conclusions from this race yet, but he wonders if there’s a need for Republicans to be wary of poll numbers indicating rural, red-state, or coal-country Democrats are turning against the party they traditionally support: “We can’t take that at face value. We’ve got to have a little cynicism about those numbers, because these are folks who have been voting for Democrats for decades, and their moms and dads were voting for Democrats for decades before that. They don’t just jump across that easily.”