Mortgage woes might hurt John Kline’s reelection chances

Conventional wisdom has been that Republican John Kline won’t give up his U.S. House seat to opponent Democrat Steve Sarvi, despite the fact that Barack Obama now holds a double-digit lead in Minnesota and the state’s dark-blue center is beginning to grow. If the last few months of campaign fundraising are any indication of voter support, retired marine Kline is leading in the 2nd Congressional District race by continuing to outraise Iraq War vet Sarvi nearly three to one, with his biggest supporter being Target Corp.

Yet a story in Monday’s Washington Post reveals that the recent economic downturn, particularly in the suburbs  and exurbs, could spell trouble for Republican incumbents like Kline.

For one thing, the story notes, the housing collapse has been most acute in the suburban fringe. That much is true here in Minnesota, where the outer-ring suburbs, particularly in the districts of Michele Bachmann and Kline, have a higher rate of foreclosures than Hennepin County, which has been decimated by the housing collapse. In Minneapolis, for example, more than 1,000 homes are on the city’s vacant-properties list. Yet because of subprime and Alt-A loans, higher gas prices and a community literally living on the edge of debt, the outer-ring suburbs are surpassing the Twin Cities in foreclosures per housing units.

Nationally, the foreclosure rate hovers at about 1 percent, that is, one in every 100 mortgages results in foreclosures. In Kline’s district, which includes Carver, Scott, Le Sueur, Dakota, Rice and Goodhue counties, all but Goodhue and Carver are experiencing above-average foreclosures. In fact, for Scott and Le Sueur, foreclosure rates are expected to spike to more than 2 percent this year, according to a report by Minnesota’s Housing Link. And Dakota County will see foreclosure rates rise to more than 1.5 percent.

To put it into perspective, Le Sueur and Carver each saw foreclosures spike by more than 140 percent last year. Hennepin County, which suffered from more than 5,000 foreclosures last year, saw its foreclosures rise by 83 percent. In other words, while 2nd District voters might be wealthier, they aren’t immune to the crash and are in fact living close to the edge with expensive Alt-A mortgages (no-doc loans) they can’t afford.

The outer-ring suburbs are also hardest hit by the spike in gas prices. A majority of the voters in the 2nd District are commuters, some of whom travel 50 miles and more into the city. The increase at the pump affects their pocketbooks more than than any other voter in Minnesota. As the Washington Post notes, despite their predominantly conservative bent, voters in these afflicted regions might be so fed up with years of a declining economy and stagnant wages they vote out the incumbent.

As an added obstacle for Kline, the three-term Republican hasn’t been a defender of the strapped homeowner, despite the abundance of foreclosures in his district. In July, along with Bachmann, Kline voted against the American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act, which was created to, among other things, help 400,000 homeowners in crisis and enhance mortgage disclosure requirements. He also voted against the Neighborhood Stabalization Act, which would supply funds to states like Minnesota to purchase and rehab foreclosed and abandoned homes adding to blight, crime and plummeting home values across the country.

MiddleClass.org, a nonpartisan organization tracking and rating congressional votes and their support for the middle class, has given Kline an “F” since his first term in office in 2003. He currently has a 41 percent, according to the web site, or a low “F” in his support of the middle class.