(Aaron Blake-The Hill).Public anxiety over the economy, stocks in decline, rising unemployment and a string of expensive Democratic initiatives are all encouraging high-caliber Republicans to compete in 2010.
The GOP is enjoying its best candidate recruitment streak in years.
The past week has been chock-full of good news for Republicans on the recruiting front and follows troubling developments for Democrats on their side of the ballot.
The GOP has seen candidate recruitment rise as joblessness continues to climb to new highs and Wall Street retreats after a brief respite in March, April and May. Compounding the situation, Republicans say, are Democrats’ recent moves to push forward with politically divisive efforts on energy and healthcare, along with broaching another stimulus package.
Meanwhile, Democrats failed to stop primaries in the high-profile New York and Pennsylvania Senate campaigns and lost leading recruits in several Senate races.
Democrats learned this week that two potentially game-changing Senate candidates — Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan (D) and Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) — would not run. And former Rep. Rob Portman (R) closed the gap significantly on a pair of Democrats in the most recent Quinnipiac Ohio Senate poll.
Portman’s gains came as President Obama sank below 50 percent approval in the same Ohio poll. Those are his lowest numbers of the year.
Atlanta-based GOP consultant David Johnson said polling has borne out the current recruiting surge.
“They’re getting candidates, and the polling numbers seem to be changing — not so much that it’s pro-Republican as it is anti-Democrat,” Johnson said. “It could change, but it’s beginning to feel a lot like 2006 and 2008 did for the Democrats.”
Johnson pointed to the economy as the driving force behind the recruiting successes, and GOP candidates who have launched campaigns in recent days have focused their message almost exclusively on that trend.
Republican strategists say the clarity of the economy issue could rival what Democrats had in 2006 and 2008, with former President Bush as the campaign issue that trumped all others.
Cook Political Report analyst Jennifer Duffy said the GOP had a “really good couple of weeks and probably its first good couple weeks in four years.”
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