Connecticut’s 4th District: A Moderate Democrat Stronghold

Challengers in 2018: Harry Arora, a first generation American who came to the United States 25 years ago from India as a graduate school student. He worked as an investment manager and analyst for 20 years researching and investing in commodity and currency markets. He eventually started his own investing firm and led it through tumultuous times, before deciding to run in 2018.

Margin of victory in 2018: Jim Himes beat Harry Arora by a margin of 21.8% in 2018, indicating this as a very safe Democrat seat.

Primary election outlook: There were no primary challengers to Jim Himes. Jim Himes hasn’t had to face a primary election challenger since 2008.

General election outlook: Jim Himes has defeated his general election challengers for the last decade, almost always increasing his margin of victory as time goes on. To go further on, New England is also almost entirely made up of Democrat representatives and is culturally very liberal, Jim Himes is effectively ensconced in a safe space for him to be reelected for some time. Additionally, the strength of the financial and insurance industries here presumably makes it difficult for more progressive candidates to take root and compete.
Current prediction: Safe as safe can be in this political climate, he consistently wins double digit numbers in the general and doesn’t have regular primary challengers.
2016 vote: Jim Himes won 59.9%, 40.1%, winning by a margin of 19.8%. It wasn’t quite as strong of a year as 2018 but considering that the Republicans swept Congress in 2016 and that 2018 was a swing year for Democrats, a difference of 2% is not very surprising.
Campaign finance status: I went into this topic at some length with my previous two blog posts. One of Himes' biggest strengths as a campaigner has been his capability to attract big money donors, which is important in a district as spendy as Connecticut's 4th. Only 4% of his donations came from small individual donors, while 60% came from large individual donors. The remaining donations came mostly from Political Action Committees totalling around 34%. Large amounts of his campaign’s financing comes from insurance, securities, and investing industries which are also the largest employers within his district. Himes regularly raises well over two million dollars for each of his campaigns, reaching almost as high as four million during his 2008 election. Fundraising for this candidate is almost a non-issue, with a wide pool of big donors ready to flood his coffers.

Major issues: And while his large donors make fundraising a non-issue, it introduces a whole host of other problems. Being a pro-business Democrat, his support for bills rolling back Obama-era banking regulations has met with some opposition from his colleagues, Nancy Pelosi saying that one of the bills he co-sponsored “would take us back to the days when unchecked recklessness on Wall Street ignited an historic financial meltdown.” Additionally a bill he co-sponsored had a section of two crucial paragraphs which were copied word for word from Citigroup and other banking lobbyists. If Jim Himes were to be met in a primary, his challenger very well could make a strong case for Representative Himes being very deeply in the pocket of some corporate interests.

(The wonderful wonderful source for these memes can be found at https://www.facebook.com/625184804532608/photos/625197294531359/. I can only hope to one day have someone hate me as much as this person hates Jim Himes. 😍)

As always, good night, and good luck!

-Aaron