In our series of SSP Cash Power Rankings, we previously looked at House challengers running against incumbents and the most competitive Senate races. Now it’s time to close the triangle and look at the cash-on-hand competitiveness of candidates running in open seat House races.
The one race that we’ve left out is MO-09. Due to a large primary field without a clear front-runner on both sides, that race would be difficult to place on our chart. In other races with undecided primaries, we’ve either included multiple candidates (e.g. WY-AL, NY-26, LA-04), or have decided to go with the clear front-runner only. The top-ranked race here is a special case, as Jamshad Wyne is the only GOP candidate to file a fundraising report in NY-13 so far — we don’t consider him to be the front-runner of anything (except for the loser’s sweepstakes, perhaps), but he was our only choice.
| Cash Power Rank | District | Challenger | Party | CoH | Defender | Party | CoH | Cash Power Index |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NY-13 | McMahon | D | $471 | Wyne | R | $10 | 4710% |
| 2 | NJ-07 | Stender | D | $1,200 | Lance | R | $81 | 1481% |
| 3 | WY-AL | Trauner | D | $702 | Gordon | R | $69 | 1017% |
| 4 | NJ-03 | Adler | D | $1,464 | Myers | R | $155 | 945% |
| 5 | NY-25 | Maffei | D | $962 | Sweetland | R | $108 | 891% |
| 6 | CA-04 | Brown | D | $675 | McClintock | R | $117 | 577% |
| 7 | AL-02 | Bright | D | $281 | Love | R | $91 | 309% |
| 8 | WY-AL | Trauner | D | $702 | Lummis | R | $247 | 284% |
| 9 | AZ-01 | Kirkpatrick | D | $668 | Hay | R | $257 | 260% |
| 10 | LA-04 | Carmouche | D | $389 | Thompson | R | $200 | 195% |
| 11 | OR-05 | Erickson | R | $400 | Schrader | D | $231 | 173% |
| 12 | OH-16 | Boccieri | D | $531 | Schuring | R | $349 | 152% |
| 13 | IL-11 | Halvorson | D | $917 | Ozinga | R | $670 | 137% |
| 14 | OH-15 | Kilroy | D | $1,163 | Stivers | R | $880 | 132% |
| 15 | LA-04 | Carmouche | D | $389 | Gorman | R | $352 | 111% |
| 16 | LA-04 | Carmouche | D | $389 | Fleming | R | $359 | 108% |
| 17 | NY-26 | Powers | D | $489 | Lee | R | $636 | 77% |
| 18 | MD-01 | Kratovil | D | $454 | Harris | R | $609 | 75% |
| 19 | NM-02 | Teague | D | $75 | Tinsley | R | $112 | 67% |
| 20 | MN-03 | Madia | D | $738 | Paulsen | R | $1,124 | 66% |
| 21 | NM-01 | Heinrich | D | $354 | White | R | $634 | 56% |
| 22 | IL-18 | Callahan | D | $155 | Schock | R | $299 | 52% |
| 23 | NY-26 | Kryzan | D | $247 | Lee | R | $636 | 39% |
| 24 | OH-07 | Neuhardt | D | $108 | Austria | R | $361 | 30% |
| 25 | CA-52 | Lumpkin | D | $54 | Hunter | R | $198 | 27% |
| 26 | VA-11 | Connolly | D | $275 | Fimian | R | $1,039 | 26% |
| 27 | AL-05 | Parker | R | $73 | Griffith | D | $352 | 21% |
| 28 | PA-05 | McCracken | D | $8 | Thompson | R | $84 | 10% |
| 29 | KY-02 | Boswell | D | $45 | Guthrie | R | $661 | 7% |
They’re so fucked. Between open seats and not, if COH is the only metric, that’s a 22 seat pickup. And there’s a few months to go. And there’s the ridiculously gargantuan DCCC advantage.
LA-04 is on there 3 times, NY-26 is on there twice, WY-AL is on there twice, and AL-05 and OR-05 are both Democratic held open seats.
I think 12-18 of our pickups will be from this list, given the DCCC advantage, and depending on how big a wave comes from the 2008 elections.
Good deal.
Hey James (or anyone else), how did you guys calculate the Q2 fundraising numbers? I tried doing one of these tables for just the California races, but a lot of these people (Brian Bilbray was my example) don’t seem to have any fundraising reports for the first half of Q2 at all.
And what’s with some candidates not even being listed in the FEC database?
This is a rural PA district that hasn’t seen much in way of strong Democratic candidates, especially for Congress.
This year however is different. Mark B. McCracken is an experienced politicians who has experience working on both sides of the political system in order to get things done in Clearfield County.
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Mark has the experience to work for change and the results to prove it. You can visit his website at http://www.mccrackenforcongres…
I urge to look into Mark B. McCracken’s campaign, contribute to him whenever possible, and help send another strong Democratic voice to Washington.