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  Give 'Em Heck
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ContributorRalphie 
Last EditedRalphie  Feb 04, 2010 05:12pm
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CategoryOpinion
AuthorEli Sanders
MediaNewspaper - The Stranger
News DateTuesday, February 2, 2010 06:00:00 PM UTC0:0
DescriptionDemocrats could lose a congressional seat in southwest Washington this fall. Why they need to get behind a candidate now, and why that candidate is Denny Heck.

Down in southwest Washington, up against the Columbia River, is a good example of why liberals find the future so unsettling: Washington's 3rd Congressional District. This district's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives has been held by a Democrat for 46 of the last 50 years, and since 1999 it has been in the hands of Democrat Brian Baird, the Iraq-war-flip-flopping, health-care-reform-dissing congressman from Vancouver, Washington. Baird won his last four elections with over 60 percent of the vote, and then suddenly announced in December that he's retiring to "pursue other options." When he did this, respected political soothsayers in D.C. took one look at his district and declared it a "toss-up" that could easily fall to a Republican this November.

Which makes sense. The average unemployment rate for the seven counties in the district is 12.9 percent. Anger and frustration are high, and voters there haven't shown any particular loyalty to one party or another over the last decade. Sure, they sent Baird back to Congress six times, but that's more about his idiosyncrasies matching theirs than about him being a Democrat. This is a confusing, ticket-splitting bunch of voters we're talking about. They embraced Barack Obama after they twice embraced George W. Bush, went for Democratic Senate candidate Patty Murray and Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi in the same election (2004), and went the other way by picking Republican Senate candidate Slade Gorton and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gary Locke in a different election (2000).
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