In the Right

And there definitely will be Senate seats in play -- in the latest CQ Race Ratings for the Senate, there are six seats considered toss-ups, and another seven that fall into the next-most-competitive "Lean" category.

What's not so understandable, however, is why the RNC would want to spend its monies on Senate races -- because next year is the election cycle where control of governors' mansions and state houses comes into play in time to affect redistricting.

That kind of election cycle happens only once out of every five, so it's not to be overlooked -- and anyone suggesting that RNC money is better spent on a stand-alone U.S. Senate race than on a key governor's race, or even in selected state legislative races, isn't thinking about how best to leverage the use of scarce campaign dollars.

Consider: Next year, there will be more governor's seats in play than at any time in history -- no fewer than 37 states will hold a contest for the governorship. (Normally, 36 seats would be in play next year, but former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman's resignation earlier this year, to accept a post as the U.S. Ambassador to China, necessitates a rare gubernatorial special election to fill out the last two years of the term to which he was elected in 2008.)

Of those 37 contests for governor, the CQ Race Ratings currently rank 10 races as toss-ups, with another 16 in the next-most-competitive "Lean" category. Only 11 races fall into the less-competitive "Favored" or "Safe" categories.

The ten toss-ups are composed of five seats currently held by the GOP (Nevada, Minnesota, Florida, Connecticut, and Rhode Island) and five seats currently held by the Democrats (Wyoming, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania).

The sixteen "Lean" contests are composed of seven seats currently held by the GOP (Texas, Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, California, and Vermont) and nine seats currently held by the Democrats (Oklahoma, Tennessee, Oregon, Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts).

For the chairmen of the national party committees, this is what is known as a "target rich environment."

In a perfect world, each race would be fully funded. But it's not a perfect world, and choices will have to be made. And it's in the making of the choices that reputations are made ... and lost.

Let me give you an example of how important governors' races are, compared to U.S. Senate races, from the point of view of a national party chairman, by focusing in on just one seat that will be in play next year.

If the Democrats can recapture the California governorship next year -- an open seat race, due to California's two-term limit on its governors -- they will control California's redistricting in 2011.

This alone should send a shiver down the spine of every Republican in the nation ... or, at least, every Republican in the nation who harbors even the slightest desire for the Republicans to regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives at some point in the next decade.

Why? Because believe it or not, the current map in California -- which created 33 Democrat seats to 20 Republican seats, and was drawn by Democrats when they controlled the governor's mansion, the state Senate, and the state Assembly -- is not nearly as bad as it could have been for Republicans.

That's another way of saying it could have been worse -- and, if Democrats control the line-drawing process in California in 2011, it could be worse.

The fact is, the 2001 California map was the result of a deal cooked up between the two major parties -- it was approved by Bush White House adviser Karl Rove and then-NRCC Chairman Tom Davis, who at one point secretly flew to Sacramento to lobby GOP state legislators for its passage.

According to The Almanac of American Politics, the map was drawn by Democratic redistricting expert Michael Berman (brother of California Democratic Congressman Howard Berman), who had worked on California's redistricting in the 1970s and 1980s with the legendary Congressman Phil Burton. Berman was paid $20,000 per Democratic incumbent to draw the new lines, about which California Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez remarked, "Twenty thousand is nothing to keep your seat. I spend $2 million every election. If my colleagues are smart, they'll pay their $20,000 and Michael will draw the district they can win in."

(What was truly fascinating about the 2001 California remap is that Rove -- long advertised as one of the Republican strategists most concerned, long-term, about the party's outreach to and support from Hispanics -- would approve it, given the thoughtful critique of the plan offered by then-House Ways and Means Chairman/California Republican Bill Thomas. Thomas argued strongly against the plan, on the grounds that a plan that put most Hispanic voters into safe Democratic districts would reduce Republican incentives to develop ties to Hispanic voters -- and, consequently, would reduce the California GOP's ability, long-term, to be competitive. Thomas lost the argument, the map was agreed to, and Hispanic voters in California have shifted even more decisively toward the Democrats in the intervening decade.)

California is just one example of a governor's race that's crucial to control of the national redistricting to take place in 2011 -- and with it, control of the House of Representatives for the next decade.

So, if you were sitting in the fourth floor chairman's office at the Republican National Committee and your political team came to you next October and said, "Mr. Chairman, we have a request from the NRSC to spend our last $10 million on GOTV operations in Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire, and Illinois" (states where there's a toss-up Senate race, but no similarly competitive governor's race) -- what decision would you make, if you knew that spending that $10 million in those states would mean that you could not spend $10 million on GOTV operations in, say, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Connecticut, or Nevada (states that will feature competitive governors' races and Senate contests) -- or, even worse, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and California (states that will feature a competitive governors' race, but no competitive Senate race)?

Of course, one solution to that conundrum is for both the RNC and the NRSC to raise so much money that GOTV operations are funded everywhere, and no difficult choices have to be made.

But in lieu of massive fundraising success, party chairmen will have to make hard choices about the allocation of scarce resources.

That's why they get paid the big bucks.

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