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

  1. Gordon Smith ran pro Gay Rights ads early last cycle – to insulate himself and look progressive.

    Now he is against the Iraq War early this cycle.

    Big liar.

    Good politician.

    If we get rid of him – like Senators in Maine (and NH recently), Dems will hold that seat forever.

    I want him gone.

  2. There are a lot of mayor’s races up on 2007, and I’m interested to see how they turn out.  We need to win more of these races if we expect to win upticket races.  This is where parties are built, from the ground up. Looking to 2008, one of our principal recruiting grounds should be in the mayor’s offices and state legislatures where you have people who have aleady represented part of the district as an elected official.

  3. Is there any chance that we could get 2007 mayor and state races added to the wiki?

    I’d like to try to do a series focusing on what mayors are up in 2007, and try to lay out the challenge fo people to run for office.  The old 50 State page did one hell of a job  the Congress, and many of these smaller mayor’s races are much more reasonable to expect folks to run for, and of course win.

  4. We need to look at districts that are held by a Republican but where Bush got 60% of the vote or less in 2004.  This means that we would have to convince no more than 17% of the districts 2004 Bush voters to vote Democratic.  Any of those districts should be in play now and seems likely that they would be open to a populist Democrat.  These are the kind of seats that we are going to have to get to become a solid House majority.  Here is my list of what we should target in 2008:

    AL-03(Rogers) 58%
    AZ-01(Renzi) 53%
    AZ-03(Shaddag)58%
    CA-03(Lungren)58%
    CA-24(Gallegly) 56%
    CA-45(Bono) 56%
    CA-50(Bilbray) 55% We need a better candidate here.
    CO-04(Musgrave) 58%
    CT-04(Shays) 46%
    DE-AL(Castle) 45%
    FL-05(Waite-Brown) 58%
    FL-07(Mica) 57%
    FL-08(Keller) 55%
    FL-09(Bilrakis) 57%
    FL-10(Young) 51%
    FL-12(Putnam)58%
    FL-13(Buchanan) 55%
    FL-15(Weldon) 57%
    FL-18(Ros-Lehtinen) 54%
    FL-21(Diaz-Balart) 57%
    FL-24(Feeney) 56%
    FL-25(Diaz-Balart) 56%
    IL-06(Roskam) 53%
    IL-10(Kirk) 46%
    IL-11(Weller) 53%
    IL-13(Biggert) 55%
    IL-14(Hastert) 55%
    IL-15(Johnson) 58%
    IL-16(Manzullo) 55%
    IL-18(Lahood) 58%
    LA-04(McCrery) 59%
    LA-06(Baker) 59%
    LA-07(Boustany) 60%
    MO-02(Akin) 60%
    MO-06(Graves) 57%
    MO-09(Hulshof) 59%
    NC-08(Hayes) 54%
    NJ-02(LoBiondo) 50%
    NJ-03(Saxton) 51%
    NJ-04(Smith) 56%
    NY-03(King) 52%
    NY-13(Fosella) 55%
    NY-23(McHugh) 51%
    NY-25(Walsh) 48%
    NY-26(Reynolds) 55%
    NY-29(Kuhl) 56%
    WV-02(Capito) 56%

    These are just some of many that we could potentially win with the right, populist message.

    1. In 2007 there will be state legislative races in LA, KY, and MS. There are many opportunities to contest GOP held seats especially those where past elections have been close.

  5. District:Bush in ’04

    IA-05(King) 60%
    MN-02(Kline) 54%
    MN-03(Ramstad) 51%
    NM-01(Pearce) 58%
    PA-03(English) 52%
    WI-06(Petri) 56%

    We need to start looking for candidates now.

  6. I doubt it.  He seems pretty firmly entrenched in the district which went for Bush by 58-41.  It was very competitive in 2002 when Joe Skeen retired, but we fell about 10 points short.  That was probably our best chance in a long time to pick up that seat.

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