Last week it was Texas, this week Ohio.
Candidate filing in Ohio closes in less than a month – 4th January – and we still don’t have confirmed candidates in a number of Congressional House districts!
Once again go and take a look at the
2008 Race Tracker Wiki.
Below the fold for details………….
Ohio has 18 Congressional House districts. 7 are held by Democrats who are all at this stage running again as follows: (Note that I have included the Cook PVI scores for each district also.)
OH-06 – D+0,
OH-09 – D+9,
OH-10 – D+6,
OH-11 – D+33,
OH-13 – D+6,
OH-17 – D+14,
OH-18 – R+6,
That leaves 11 Republican held districts.
There are confirmed challengers in 7 of those 11 districts:
OH-01 – R+1,
OH-02 – R+13,
OH-07 – R+6,
OH-12 – R+0.7,
OH-14 – R+2,
OH-15 – R+1,
OH-16 – R+4,
That leaves four districts with no confirmed candidate
And here they are:
OH-03 – R+3,
Charles Sanders, Jane Mitakides and Dave Esrati are collecting signatures but they are not yet confirmed.
OH-04 – R+14,
Not a peep no candidate here.
OH-05 – R+10,
Is Robin Weirauch running again?
OH-08 – R+12,
Not a peep no candidate here.
Less than a month to go and we need 4 candidates – do you know anyone that could run?
What’s news?
Ouch, we really need a candidate there. We had a Democrat there from 1978 until 2002 when Turner won the seat after the incumbent retired. That seat is certainly winnable with a great challenger and some campaigning, but that certainly seems unlikely if one hasn’t announced by now…
look pretty secure. The only seat where Republicans are running an even half decent challenger is OH-18. We should pick up OH-15 fairly easily in 2008. OH-01 is another one we could take, but Steve Chabot is a very tough campaigner. If Obama was at the top of the ticket, he would likely bring out a heavy turnout in Cincinatti’s black community, which could finally topple Chabot.
OH-03 is the not the same District that it was prior to reapportionment in 2002. With a sitting GOP incumbent it is not competitive. In 2004, it went for Bush 55-45.
In OH-05, to the best of my knowledge Robin Weirauch has not filed nominating petitions, nor has any other ACTUAL Democrat. Robin’s “colorful” primary opponent, however has filed… again. If no one else files, whether we like it or not, his name will appear on the May primary ballot and if he remains unopposed (at this point) he would become the nominee in the fall, even though he will never get endorsed.
However, nothing will be official until after January 4, 2008.
I would point out that District delegate selection caucuses for the convention are on the evening of January 3, 2008 which would be the ideal place to get the needed fifty signatures to file the next day.