(Bumped – promoted by James L.)
A quieter week than last, but the nerds were out in full force (hey, I’m one, too!) in a couple of redistricting threads featured on SSP. DavidNYC also launched our very cool sortable Congressional filing deadline/primary calendar chart in the “Resources” section.
Don’t forget: run-offs in Louisiana state House and Senate races are tomorrow. Also, the race for state Attorney General will be decided. We’ll do our best to give you the full rundown tomorrow.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to introduce a new feature here at Swing State. Each week, we plan to highlight interesting user diaries that we feel are worth a look. For our first installment, take a gander at these.
Notable User Diaries:
- Democraticavenger walks us through 80 GOP House districts that he thinks should be targeted next year.
- Benawu gives us his latest exhaustive update on the number of House races with announced Democratic candidates.
Also, while you’re at it, click here or go below the fold to cast your vote in our NM-Sen GOP primary prediction poll.
As a chief purveyor of Administration “happy talk”, particularly on the Iraq war, Cornyn demonstrates his gift to “blow sunshine up your ass until the cows come home.” His physical features are more fitting of a lawyer plying his trade on the Westside of Los Angeles not in rough and tumble Texas. Politics is somewhat like ice skating with a technical score (issues) and a presentation score (style). Of all places – style really matters in Texas. What is the style prescription we can give our candidate, Rick Noriega, to draw a clear distinction with Cornyn and to facilitate winning in 2008?
It really is true: “All politics ARE local.”
And I appreciate that compiling these lists takes a HECK of a lot of work. Really, I do.
However,
Is it possible to derive an objective answer to the subjective question “Who is a credible Congressional candidate?”
There are districts in my state which are shown by both of these lists as having candidates, but the people running are (in reality) worse than laughable. I can think of one candidate in particular who meets all of benawu’s listing criteria, but who couldn’t get elected third grade milk monitor.
On the other hand, I grasp that to go through all 435 districts and make a judgment on each would be exhausting and in the end would be personal and subjective.
Our state is short about three quality US House candidates but after 12 years of the Voinivich/Taft scorched earth pogrom, there are regions where our bench is worse than pathetic.
Word: Run for township trustee, school board, village council, board of education- ANYTHING. What you will learn cannot be had from any weekend “boot camp”. Then get back to me.
Think BIG PICTURE AND LONG TERM.
“Benawu gives us his latest exhaustive update on the number of House races with announced Democratic candidates.”
Is there a site with a comprehensive breakdown like this, but for Republicans? I would like to compare the number of Republican candidates and see if there are many close races where Democrats are running uncontested.
Granted, there’s still a year, but I would like to keep track of progress.
Thanks.
do we have a good candidate in the 09 VA-gov race? we’re going to need more than just the senate if we really want to change the map in virginia come redistricting, and i was wondering about our chances of keeping the governorship.
the current virginia senate minority leader and expected future president pro temp dick saslaw might be a good candidate, but he’d be almost seventy when inaugerated. is there anyone else, would saslaw even get the pro temp position and if so would he be interested in running for governor?