On Tuesday, voters in Kentucky, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia will head the polls to decide a number of hot gubernatorial and state legislative races. Which races are you looking at, and what are you looking for next week? I’m sure that the national party committees will be reading some of these results like tea leaves as we gear up for another bruising round of House and Senate battles in ’08.
Roll Call offers their comprehensive rundown here. Share your take in the comments.
Here in PA we have local, county, and judicial elections. The Dems can take over the state supreme court if they win both elections there. Personally, although I don’t live in the county, right next to it actually, I am most interested in the race for the Montgomery County Courthouse, right outside Philadelphia. If my facts are right it is the 3rd largest county by population in the state and has the most registered Republican voters by sheer numbers, not percentage. I would put the chances at about 45% of the Dems doing it. Here in Chester county I don’t have much hope, maybe 5-10% but I think the Dems can win the majority on some of the township boards.
This is what I know.
Kentucky = State government administration/executive positions, including the governors race.
Virginia = State Legislative races.
Mississippi = State positions and legislative races
New Jersey = State legislative races
With that said. Here we go.
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Kentucky
Governor: Republican
House: Democrats (61-39)
Senate: Republicans (21-16-1)
Conclusion: In 2008, Democrats could take control of the senate and have full control of the state government assuming they campaign hard. We will pick up the governors seat in 2007.
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Virginia
Governor: Democrat
House: Republican (57-40-3)
Senate: Republican (23-17)
Conclusion: Democrats are expected to gain the state senate, and if they run the tables, they could take control of the house, giving Democrats control of the state legislature. Giving them the advantage in regards to redistricting as it comes closer and closer.
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Missippi
Governor: Republican
House: Democrat (74-47) (1 Vacated)
Senate: Republican (27-25)
Conclusion: We’re expected to lose out some here. Clearly it is expected, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Georgia are the three states that have continued to redden over the past couple of years. We will hold the house though. So no significant changes.
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New Jersey
Governor: Democrat
House: Democrat (49-31)
Senate: Democrat (22-18)
Conclusion: I think New Jersey has their legislative elections, not sure. I haven’t even seen predictions at all. So who knows. I doubt we will lose our majority, if anything we will probably pick up seats and start pushing towards 2008.
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Democrats are winning out in three of the four states mentioned. Thats a plus. Can’t wait to hear the results for Kentucky and Virginia especially.
House District 97, incumbent Republican Anna Mowery resigned several months ago and the free for all election is Tuesday. Dan Barrett is the only Democrat in the race and he is up against 6 Republicans. If Dan can get 50%+1 he will take another seat away from the Republicans in Texas bringing the Democrats up to 71 out of 150 seats.
Dan told me that when he ran in 2006 for the seat, he was told to give up and not to expect more than 35%, Dan got 41% on election day with no establishment backing. As of right now, the state party is heavily backing Dan, because they know they can win with him. I have gone block walking for Dan, and I will be going again tomorrow, and the reactions from all camps last week was Dan is dominating the yard sign war by large margins.
I’m expecting Dan to easily get 45%, if things work right he should be able to get the 50% needed to win the election. There is also a state wide vote for cancer funding, Fort Worth School bond elections, and a special election for a Fort Worth City Council race in a strongly democratic area. Dan has every advantage he needs to win right out on Nov. 6. Wish us Texas Dems luck, or please donate some coin. 🙂
On the Web: http://www.danbarret…
We’re electing a mayor and city-county council, and next Tuesday could be a really bad night for Democrats, all due to local issues. There is a very real chance we could lose the council majority, and something that was unthinkable even a few months ago — there is an unlikely but very real possibility that Bart Peterson could lose the mayoral race. A lot of people here are PISSED OFF about property taxes (a long and complicated story here that’s not the mayor’s fault, but it happened on his watch). There also has been a Democrat or two here that have been shall we say ethically challenged. It’s always really hard to predict who will win a local level race with low turnout. The Indianapolis Star (which endorsed Peterson for a third term) published a poll a week ago saying the race was within 3 points, with a lot of undecideds. I don’t think it is that close, but it could be.
Two advantages Peterson has are: 1) Greg Ballard, the Republican candidate, is a completely inexperienced, second-tier candidate who has looked really in-over-his-head at times, and 2) Peterson has a ton of money, and running quite good TV ads (both positive and negative) all the time. My guess is that Bart limps into a third term, and probably faces a Republican-controlled council.
Hanging over all of this is the quesion no one here seems to know the answer to — “How sick is Julia?” Congresswoman Carson has been away from Washington for several weeks now, and her camp has not given really any specific information on her health. It’s frustrating her supporters and fueling conspiracy theories among many of her opponents. I really get the growing sense that she will change her mind and not run again next fall — but she’s suprised me before.
This is my first post on this site. First, let me say this is an awesome site and I look forward to the year ahead on here. I have been a political junkie since 1980, when I was 17.
I consider myself an independent and a moderate, but am very anti-W. He has made it very hard for me to support any Repubs of late. That is difficult, as I live in the largest GOP county (by total numbers, not percentage) in SC (Greenville). Needless to say, not many Dems run here.
My primary interest at the moment (besides Presidential primaries of course), are the ’08 Senate races. However, I am very interested in Tuesday’s results.
I would love a statewide office listing for Mississippi and Kentucky, similiar to that posted for the legislature.
Big thanks for posting the legislative numbers, I thought I was going to have to dig them up myself.
We have all of our city council up for grabs and we are on the verge of ousting our two more conservative DFL city council members. One of them was defeated for the DFL endorsement but she is a brute when it comes to fundraising. She has more COH than the other guy has raised in his whole campaign. But the endorsement should go a decent amount of way.
I am personally working on the race on the East Side of Saint Paul which has the largest Hmong population in the country, if not the world outside of Laos. My candidate, Pakou Hang, was able to block the DFL endorsement and it has been a hell of a race. We are running the largest GOTV operation ever in the history of any city council race in the country apparently.
And if both of our candidates win (plus one other kind of tough race) we will have the most progressive city council in the country. Wish us luck!
In Ohio, anyone with $85 and fifty signatures can get on the primary ballot. And in this case, the signatures don’t even have to be from Democrats. As a result, Robin Weirauch faces a meaningless challenger in the Democratic primary to replace the late Paul Gillmor.
For her, the real fight will be in the Special Election on December 11, 2007.
For this Tuesday’s voting, all of the action has been on the Republican side where the Glub of Growths has been pouring gazzillions of dollars into an INCREDIBLY gory GOP primary. Basically, the CTG is trying to insert their ultra-right wing choice (Steve Buehrer) over another ultra-right winger (Bob Latta.)
Latta is the presumptive nominee but,as would be expected, the gruesome mud-slinging is driving voters away from the race, has driven up the undecideds (on the GOP side, that is) and has sent the “negatives” for both idiots through the roof.
Astoundingly, neither GOP camp has mounted ANY “ground game.” I mean seriously. Relying on Toledo TV (which is, in fact, north of the District is like paying for a shotgun shell where half of the pellets are guaranteed to miss their intended target.
Rational observers would note that there isn’t a lick of difference between these two reactionary knuckledraggers. Each camp has filed claim and counterclaim with the state election commission. The most important complaint, which was just filed, alleges illegal coordination between the CTG and Buehrer. The first hearing on the charges will be the day after the election.
All of the spending (and we’re talking a LOT of money) has gone into TV attack ads. And I do mean “attack.” One of the ads calls Latta a liberal (three times!) which is just plain sheer insanity. BOTH of these guys are so far right that they would make Barry Goldwater blush.
Weirauch ran against Paul Gillmor in 2004 and received about 40% of the vote in this extremely gerrymandered district. In 2006, she improved to about 47%. Weirauch is pro-choice and antiwar. She’s struggling to build a campaign in a District where in some of the 16 counties, the Demcratic Party doesn’t exist. And yet, in 2006 both Sherrod Brown and Ted Stricklnad did well here. And this District isn’t much more conservative than OH-02 where Paul Hackett made a good run in another special election vs. Mean Jean Schmidt.
This is a “cheap” District. After what the CTG has done, a little progressive support would make the election in December VERY interesting.
Tuesday will be a Special Election primary which is being held at the same time as our usual township and small town elections. There is a desperate shortage of poll workers, especially Democrats. As a special election, this is NOT just an additonal question on the regular ballot. Instead, it requires dual election staffing and procedures. Voters have been told to expect long lines and there could be huge problems.
In the unlikely event that Buehrer gets close enough to require a recount it could be a huge snafu getting it completed in time for the December election. A recount would prevent either camp from knowing if they are the nominee until DAYS before the election.
The more this goes on, the more that I feel as if progressive advocacy groups are really missing the chance to steal a march on the neo-cons. Those who are concerned about electing “good Democrats” should certainly support Robin’s ideology. And given what the reactionaries are doing to themselves there COULD be a real opening here.
As James Carville once said “If your enemy is drowning, throw him an anchor.” (h/t to Jerid.)
Of course, the Ohio blogs are you’re best source of information, check out the OhioDailyBlog or the BuckeyeStateBlog.
Just what I was looking for. Some good background.
http://en.wikipedia….
If you’re looking for a Pro-Democrat partisan blog that focuses solely on the senate races, I would recommend senate2008guru.blogspot.com Although if you’ve been around here enough, you might have seen it around here referenced a few times.
… just get some other Indiana counties to move in the same direction!! The Indianapolis suburbs/exurbs are some of the most brutal political territory for Democrats anywhere in the country. For example, while Kerry won Marion County by about 6,000 votes or so, the four major counties bordering us (Hendricks, Hancock, Johnson, and especially Hamilton County) collectively gave Bush a margin of like 120,000. Hamilton and Hendricks Counties didn’t even vote for Evan Bayh. At least I live in the overwhelmingly liberal Democratic Old Northside downtown neighborhood!
OBAMA (THE REAL OBAMA) SAYS LIVE FROM NEW YORK!!!!
We have some local elections here in Minnesota. In my tini suburb we’re reelecting our longtime mayor and other then that I haven’t really been paying attention. City concil members for a town of 2000 aren’t very important. However we’ve got some great other races.
As Andrew said we’ve got two big opportunity’s to oust some local Bush Dogs on the St. Paul city council and move it to a more progressive majority. Melvin Carter III is a young, progressive, African American candidate who took on Chamber of Commerce-endorsed Debbie Montgomery, one of the more conservative members of the city council in St. Paul. Debbie is way outspending him but I think he has a good chance to win. I like Carter but personally I’m more exited about Pakou Hang. She was a campaign staffer for Wellstosne and a organizer for Wellstone Action. She managed fellow progressive Hmong-American Mee Moua’s campaign for State Senate and I think someday Hang could be the nations first Hmong mayor. Plus she is in a close race against a tough 3 term incumbent, Dan Bostrom. He used to be chair of the school board and will be hard to beat but Hang is running a strong Wellstone like grassroots campaign and her district has a huge Hmong population. So I think she will win.
Those are the two races I’ve been working on but for other progressive races you can check out Progressive Majority’s Minnesota page here:http://www.progressi…
I was reading in the Sunday New York Times about how the driver’s license for illegals issue is affecting local elections there. It seems (from what I’ve read) that the Democratic candidates are running away from Spitzter on this one.
Some of these elections are for county clerks and there’s a hot county legislative race in Nassau County.
Any thoughts on hoaw the results might be impacted?