Tyler Bilbo, Columnist
Ideology: Partisan Democrat | Writing from: Georgetown University
In 2007, at the height of America’s disaffection with the Republican Party, a Democratic scion of the Tsongas family nearly lost a special election for Marty Meehan’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Located in Boston’s Northwest’s suburbs, the 5th district represents everything that the most casual observer of politics associates with Massachusetts. Even as the district enabled the state’s well-known Republican tradition at the gubernatorial level, progressive Democrats like Meehan continued their monopoly over the state’s Washington representation. In conjunction with John Kerry and Ted Kennedy in the Senate, Democrats such as Meehan honed Massachusetts’ reputation as a liberal bastion that would not elect a Republican Senator until hell froze over.
All of that changed last week with the election of former State Senator Scott Brown to the US Senate. Republicans of all stripes have heralded Brown’s ascendancy as a harbinger of the party’s potential in 2010. As we discuss the political ramifications of Brown’s victory, however, any kind of wake-up call in Massachusetts is long overdue. Nikki Tsongas’s narrow victory is especially instructive because it asserts a set of dynamics that largely mirror the race between Scott Brown and Martha Coakley: like Coakley, Tsongas ran a largely ineffective campaign that took her predecessor’s popularity (and transitively, her own election) for granted. Henceforth, the 
experiences of Nikki Tsongas and Martha Coakley assert the omnipresent reality that the Democrats cannot even presuppose victory in America’s bluest corners.
Although it is difficult to compute a final total of a district-by-district tally, it appears that Brown won Tsongas’s district with at least 55% of the vote. In past elections, the district has helped catapult Republicans like Paul Cellucci and Mitt Romney to the state’s governorship. Additionally, some of history’s most prominent Republicans have hailed from the Bay State. From Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and Sr. to more recent men like Mitt Romney and Bill Weld, the state’s Republican roots run deep. Although they have dissipated as the state has realigned with the Democratic Party, Jim Ogonowski’s strong showing against Nikki Tsongas exemplifies how Republicans can be competitive in even the most negative environments.
The Republican exaggeration of Scott Brown’s victory begins with an ill-conceived notion of geographic polarization that plagues both parties. As a Democratic realignment takes hold in the Northeast, an equally intense dynamic has made the South synonymous with contemporary American conservatism. Although a final analysis of any region’s political geography contains an inherent set of shortcomings, the overall trends are hard to deny.
These stark trends, however, have blinded Democrats to the reality that Republican roots still exist across the Northeast. Like it or not, Vermont and Rhode Island currently have Republican governors that stood for re-election in strong Democratic years. Further south, Connecticut also has a Republican governor and until recently, sent a Congressional delegation to Washington that was comprised of multiple Republicans.
Meanwhile, a Democratic tradition in the American South strongly persists in many corners of the region. Mississippi, a consistent stronghold for the Republican Party in Presidential elections, has more Democrats than Republicans in its U.S. House delegation. Across the Mississippi River, in the politically similar state of Louisiana, Mary Landrieu just began her third term as a Democratic Senator.
Republicans will likely dismiss this analysis as a delusional refusal to accept reality. Indeed, the perception of Democratic control at the federal level is unambiguously absolute. As the Democratic Party stays in power, it has naturally become a political piñata that even the most partisan Democrats have eagerly whacked. Nonetheless, the party’s ownership of a declining economy cannot single-handedly account for what we saw last week. As the media attempts to sell an oversimplified narrative of political transition in the Age of Obama, remember the Jim Ogonowkis and the Bill Welds of Massachusetts’ recent political memory. Without recognizing the GOP’s history in politically like-minded Northeastern states, an unwarranted panic could potentially cede an entire election year.