For those watching the 4th CD race for signs of that Chris Shays can be defeated next year, look no farther than Bridgeport’s mayoral primary. The Democratic voters have spoken and they have said, “we’re staying home.” The signs were there if you knew where to look. The liberal-er candidate, Chris Caruso was backed by the chair of the Bridgeport Republican party. I should say, former chair, because Torres’ stunt of encouraging Republicans to switch parties cost him is chairmanship after he ran a registration drive in his Harborview Market for Caruso.
So what did Torres know that even Caruso and Finch didn’t? That Bridgeport’s Democrats weren’t going to come out and vote. Which was evident when in August of 2006, Bridgeport’s Democrats narrowly, by about 300 votes, picked Lieberman over Lamont.

It’s a story Diane Farrell learned in 2006 as well too. While she won Bridgeport 13,351 to Shays’ 6,400, she lost the election by less than 3%. She needed a big Democratic turn out in Bridgeport and Norwalk, which she didn’t get.

I’ll put this in perspective. Bridgeport, as of October 2006, has only:

4,869 Republicans
34,847 Democrats
18,386 Unaffiliated

Add the turnout for the Finch Caruso primary and you get 8,684 Democratic voters. Slightly less than the total voters in the August 2006 primary between Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont which was 8,790.

Call the base Democratic vote 9k, in Bridgeport for 2008 and you get a realistic look at the current problem. In 2004, which was a presidential election year, Farrell’s result was 23,760 and Shays 9,946. The Presidential candidates, Kerry and Bush results was 26,280 and 10,326.

The drop off in voter turn out (from presidential years), for Shays has never been as severe as it has been for Democratic challengers. Farrell’s campaigns were well financed, so its not a question of the incumbent holding a big fund raising edge. I suspect that its all down to the strategy. While Presidential candidates grapple with how much of the middle ground of any position they can hold, down ballot candidates tend to want to court the base, instead of running more centrist. Shays has had years of experience running back to the “middle” around election time while waging his internal battles with adhering to the Republican agenda in Congress. With the house in Democratic control, he is freeer to start that middle campaign earlier, although he hasn’t exactly dusted off those centrist statements just yet.

Unless Jim Himes becomes more centrist than Shays, the race will turn out to be all too predictable. Shays in a 10% margin of victory, as Bridgeport’s unaffiliated split their vote.