Weekly Open Thread: What Races Are You Interested In?

UPDATE (David): I know the healthcare reform bill is a hot topic. But as always, I want to remind people to limit any discussion here to the electoral effects of how members vote. We will also post a diary as soon as there is an actual vote. In the meantime, if you are interested in whip counts, I suggest using Twitter or checking out David Dayen’s updates.

96 thoughts on “Weekly Open Thread: What Races Are You Interested In?”

  1. It’s been a given fact that competitive primaries are something to be avoided.  There are many cases of candidates being weakened from tough nasty primaries (Phil Angelides for CA-GOV, Jay Love for AL-2,  Chris Myers in NJ-3 to name a few recent examples).  But what candidates emerged much stronger from being battle tested?  I don’t mean what candidates slipped through because of a crowded primary: I;m asking what candidates were stronger in the general election because they faced a primary?

    Off the top of my head Barack Obama in 2008 is a great example.  He still would have become President if he had beaten Hillary early but the long protracted campaign let him build up an infrastructure early in states like Indiana and north Carolina, and also made him a stronger candidate overall.

    What other example can people think of?

  2. I just looked up funding raising numbers, and Conway is smoking everyone.

    My question is why is he going to loose to Dr. Dan, especially when Conway looks more electable.

  3. won the 1998 Democratic primary convincingly in a three-way race after being in third against two well-funded and rich opponents. He then went on to crush the state attorney general for CA governor.

    Jon Tester beating the better fundraiser and more well known John Morrison in MT Democratic 2006 Primary.

    To a lesser extent Bill Foster in IL, Jerry McNerney in CA, and Carol Shea-Porter all beat better funded and establishment preferred primary challengers and went on to get a lot more “grassroots” actblue support and win in the general.  

  4. feel that someone should create a HCR diary. We are so close to the Sunday vote and new information is constantly breaking. It would be a nice place to talk about the political side of it as well.  Is this within the SSP guidelines? I personally don’t have the time to do it (got a busy weekend and couldn’t keep up with the changing info and votes) but I think it would be nice if someone did.  

  5. http://www.surveyusa.com/50Sta…

    The stats most relevant to this cycle…

    Barbara Boxer – 40/50 (very underwhelming, although the internals tell a scarier story – she’s down to a 54% approval among Democrats; if this is true, I could see the Boxer/Brown ticket bleeding some 15%+ Dems in November; Toss-up against Campbell, Lean Dem against Fiorina)

    Ted Strickland – 40/54 (same; he’s at a 57% approval among Dems; I think unless Strickland runs a stellar campaign, this might be Lean GOP)

    Ron Wyden – 49/41 (eerily confirms that Rass poll with him at 49%, but that’s still not the worst place to be; 32% approval among Republicans is impressive; should be Likely-to-Solid Dem against Huffman)

    Patty Murray – 42/45 (not great, but better than Boxer; she’s got 65% approval among Dems, and she’s very popular among older voters; if Rossi doesn’t get in, this should be Lean-to-Likely Dem)

  6. John Deeth has been on this beat for the last three weeks. I covered some of the highlights at Bleeding Heartland.

    Contrary to rumors, there will be a three-way Democratic U.S. Senate primary after all. Four Republicans each filed against Bruce Braley in IA-01 and Dave Loebsack in IA-02. Seven, yes seven, Republicans filed against Leonard Boswell in IA-03. If no one gets 35 percent in the June primary, the nominee will be selected at a district convention.

  8. of California, Meg Whitman’s decided Poizner’s not worth her time anymore. She’s said no to anymore debates, but just to be sure, she’s dropping 700,000 attack mailers in order to finish off Poizner once and for all. Poor guy…DGA, Jerry Brown, start attacking Whitman now!

    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/…

  9. it should prove interesting for gubernatorial candidates running on doing their own health care plan.  specifically Doug Racine in the VT-GOV race is trying to push for single payer as his issue in the primary.  with increased coverage under the new bill will the issue deflate, or intensify as other are still left out?  considering vermont doesn’t even have money for a committee to study the issue, the price of single payer would hurt him if he made it to the general.

  10. I’m curious about the polls that show Tom Campbell running essentially even with Barbara Boxer. I know he got his ass handed to him when he ran against Feinstein for Senate previously, but that was almost a decade ago. One thing I think will help us in this race if he is the nominee is that he has a reputation for being a crappy fundraiser and he doesn’t have the personal wealth or teabagger cache that could inject millions into the race at a moment’s notice.

  11. Seems like it takes 3-4 minutes for SSP to load – and once it does, I try to post something, and still get timeout messages. (I have a cable modem that can download DVD-sized [4GB] files in under an hour)

    I realize my Firefox on (Ubuntu) Linux setup is not standard, but I’d be disappointed if SSP doesn’t support open source solutions.

    I’m guessing the load process is borking with some of the ads – this kind of behavior happens to me now and then with cnn.com too.

  12. http://www.startribune.com/pol…

    State Sen. Tom Bakk dropped his bid for Minnesota governor on Saturday, saying his chances of winning the Democratic nomination were slim.

    Bakk, 55, of Cook, on the Iron Range, made the announcement Saturday morning at the St. Louis County DFL Convention in Duluth

  13. It really makes it apparent that Lipinski needs to go down.  Lynch is doing whatever he is doing and trying to be from the left or something, I dunno.  But Lipinski, just ugh.  And he may be there for decades.  Im hoping that the threat of primary challenges and such really pans out with him, he’s one Id send money to.

  14. DavidNYC has correctly pointed out that pundits, without any sourcing to back it up, have been characterizing any yes vote for HCR from a vulnerable Democrat as something close to political suicide.  I’ll admit the chatter has been a little infectious: my first reactions to Ellsworth and Markley’s yes votes was that they were at best taking a massive risk.

    So, in the absence of polling, how can we figure out which Democrats are taking the biggest risks from a yes vote and which ones aren’t?  I posted something of an answer to this earlier in this thread but have a handy link now: this is the percentage of uninsured per district.  http://ow.ly/1ldAp

    I think it’s fair to say that the more the district is uninsured the more quickly the benefits of HCR will be tangible.  For instance Ann Kirkpatrick of AZ-1 has 26% of her district uninsured, while Jason Altmire of PA-4 has “only” 8.6% uninsured.  So even though both represent R+6 districts from a purely electoral perspective both made the correct calls with their votes.  

    OH-16 has 14% uninsured which looks like it’s about at the median.  CO-4 has 17.8% uninsured (a lot more than I initially guessed) while FL-24 has 20.3%.  I’m guessing HCR will produce some tangible benefits in the short term for their districts and possibly help them a little in November.  A representative who may well be walking the plank is Steve Kagen: WI-8 is “only” 9.9% uninsured.  

  15. Scanning the write-up of yesterday’s KY-Sen R2K poll on Dailykos, this comment caught my eye: http://www.dailykos.com/commen…

    Sadly …. Swing State project is one of those websites that doesn’t load well for those of us trapped in rural dialup ghettoes.

    Is that true? that SSP loads worse than the average?  It’s been ages since I’ve had to dial-up, but this coming summer that may change…

  16. Press release from Tom Udall’s Senatorial page:

    Former Interior Secretary Stewart Lee Udall, 90, father of Senator Tom Udall, D-N.M., passed away peacefully this morning at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, surrounded by family.

    Following a fall last week, Udall, who had been in failing health, was confined to his bed and died of natural causes.

    Stewart Udall was preceded in death by his wife of 55 years, Erma Lee Udall. He is survived by their six children; Tom, Scott, Lynn, Lori, Denis and Jay, and their families, including eight grandchildren.

    A “Celebration of Life” memorial will be held later this year in Santa Fe. In lieu of flowers, contributions in his memory may be made to the following organizations: Santa Fe Pro Musica, Santa Fe Conservation Trust, and Think New Mexico.

    Stewart L. Udall was born in St. John’s, Arizona on January 31, 1920 to former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Levi S. Udall and Louise Lee Udall. He attended the University of Arizona where he earned undergraduate and law degrees.

    During World War II, Stewart served four years in the United States Air Force as a gunner. He flew fifty missions over Western Europe for which he received the Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters.

    In 1954, Stewart was elected to serve Arizona’s second district in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was elected to serve four terms in the Congress.

    In 1960, he proved instrumental in helping persuade Arizona Democrats to support then-Senator John F. Kennedy during the Democratic Nomination Convention. Upon election in 1960, President Kennedy appointed Stewart Udall Secretary of Interior, where his accomplishments under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson made him an icon in the environmental and conservation communities.

    Legislative achievements from Secretary Udall’s cabinet career include The Wilderness Act of 1964, The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the expansion of the National Park System and the creation of The Land and Water Conservation Fund.

    Until his passing, Stewart Udall continued his devotion to public service as an author, historian, scholar, lecturer, environmental activist, lawyer and citizen of the outdoors. He was the last surviving member of President Kennedy’s original cabinet.

    RIP.

  17. SEIU/1199 political director Kevin Finnegan called to confirm that the union is indeed “rethinking” its approach to McMahon.

    “The circumstances have changed,” Finnegan said. “The institutions in his district will no longer be disadvantaged by the health care reforms. In fact, they will be doing better…If he follows his own arguments to their logical conclusions; he’s going to be supporting the bill rather than opposing it.”

    The union is still directing calls into McMahon’s district, but isn’t running TV ads there. (It never did, actually, opting instead for the lower-budget newspaper ad route, which at least one 1199 source said was due in part to a belief that McMahon was not moveable).

    http://www.nydailynews.com/blo…

  18. anyone checked out Tracy Potter’s Senate website? My first reaction was, did he pay his 13 year old nephew to make this or what. He should really spend the extra couple of hundred bucks and get a decent looking site up. However when you actually read all of the information he put there, it’s kind of interesting. He says that Hoeven is a great Governor, and he has supported him as Governor, he actually says that he supported Hoeven more than the states GOP does. Could be true, I really don’t know. I think that he may be aiming for Hoeven to get teabagged because he basically calls him a faux conservative. Are there still any other republicans in the primary? Listen to what Potter says.

    I generally like the policies John has pursued as governor. He was a Democrat before he decided to run for governor as a Republican. As governor, he often pushed a Democratic agenda that was better supported by Senate Democrats like me, than by House Republican leaders.

    http://tracypotterforsenate.com/

  20. From The Daily Reflector:

    Frederick Heineman, a law enforcement veteran who served as Raleigh’s police chief for 15 years before being elected to Congress, has died. He was 80.

    Raleigh police spokesman Jim Sughrue announced Heineman’s death in a news release Sunday morning. Heineman’s congressional biography says he is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served on the New York City police force for a quarter-century before becoming police chief in 1979.

    Heineman retired as chief in 1994 to run for the 4th District House seat. The Republican won, squeaking past four-term Democratic Rep. David Price by a mere 1,215 votes. However, Price ultimately won back his seat in the well-educated, Democratic-leaning district in 1996.

    RIP.

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