Here’s a surprise: Democratic Congressman Brian Baird of the 3rd district of Washington has announced he is going to retire and not run for reelection in 2010.
Baird has been something of a free spirit among congressional Democrats. Although he voted against the Iraq war resolution in 2003, he returned from a trip to Iraq in 2007 and announced he supported George W. Bush’s surge strategy. He was the lead Democrat in supporting changes in the law and Constitution to provide for continuity in government in the event large numbers of House members were killed in a terrorist attack (the problem is that House vacancies under the Constitution can be filled only by special elections, which take time, and in the absence of a quorum of half its members the House cannot act). Recently he voted against the House Democrats’ health care bill.
Baird first ran for the seat in southwestern Washington in 1996, when he lost 50.2%-49.8% to populist Republican Linda Smith. In 1998 Smith ran for the Senate (and lost) and Baird won the seat 55%-45%. His margins in subsequent elections: 56%-41%, 62%-38%, 62%-38%, 64%-36%, 62%-38%. Those numbers, plus his independent stand on some issues, suggest he would have had no trouble winning reelection in 2010—although he has had some flak from left-wingers on the Iraq surge and from labor union apparatchiks on his health care vote.
But perhaps he sensed trouble ahead. His district has few of the urbanite left-wingers who dominate politics in Seattle or of the culturally liberal techies thick on the ground in the eastern and northern Seattle suburbs. It does include the government-loving state capital of Olympia, but it also includes heavily forested counties on the Pacific and the lower Columbia River and Republican-leaning Lewis County. Its biggest county is Clark County, across the Columbia River from Portland, the second fastest-growing county in Washington state this decade.
One of the attractions of Clark County is that you can live there in Washington state this which has no income tax and then cross over the bridge and shop in Oregon which has no sales tax: historically blue collar country that is now taxophobic. Over half the 3rd district’s residents live in Clark County, and this seems likely to be tea party country—and Baird denounced the tea parties in vitriolic terms (“brownshirt tactics,” reminiscent of the anger that led to Timothy McVeigh) earlier this year.
George W. Bush carried the current 3rd district 48%-46% in 2000 and 50%-48% in 2004; Barack Obama carried it 53%-45% in 2008. In other words, it voted pretty much like the nation as a whole. Baird would certainly have been the favorite to hold the district in 2010, but might have faced a tougher contest than he has since 1998 and 2000. He turns 54 in 2010, not old enough (one would think) to contemplate retirement but young enough to cash in on 12 years of incumbency. In any case, this national-average district must now be considered very much up for grabs.
