Wisconsin GOP Rep. Tom Petri's retirement is just the latest departure of a pragmatic, old-school Republican this cycle. Petri was first elected in 1979 and in 2013, National Journal ranked him the 203rd most conservative Republican out of 234 in the House. He is the fifth member of the Republican Main Street Partnership to retire in 2014. Still, this is a seat Republicans should be able to hold: although President Obama won central Wisconsin's 6th CD in 2008 by 651 votes out of 369,000 cast, 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney carried it 53 percent to 46 percent.
This is exactly the kind of seat Democrats would need to win to take back the House, but the timing for an open seat probably couldn't be worse. As in the cases of GOP Reps. Jon Runyan (NJ-03), Jim Gerlach (PA-06), and Frank Wolf (VA-10), Republicans are thankful that if a personally popular incumbent like Petri had to retire any year, it's in 2014. Not only is this year shaping up to fit the mold of a "Six Year Itch" election hurting
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