Weekly Open Thread: What Races Are You Interested In?

The results for Alaska’s at-large primary are due tonight, and will be announced sometime after 5pm Alaska Time. Stay tuned! (Hat-tip: WestCoastMC)

UPDATE (David): Young’s lead has now shrunk to 129 votes. “Absentee and questioned ballots from about a dozen House districts remain to be counted tonight, according to division director Gail Fenumiai.”

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

  2. I’m most interested to see Obama’s fundraising in August / September.  Especially now that Johnny Mac is stuck on public funding.  

  3. AZ-01: Ann Kirkpatrick

    AZ-03: Bob Lord

    CO-04: Betsy Markey

    NV-02: Jill Derby

    NV-03: Dina Titus

    ID-02: Walt Minnick

    WY-AL: Gary Trauner

    WA-08: Darcy Burner (not really Mountain West but she’s awesome!)

    NM-01: Martin Heinrich

    And incumbents:

    AZ-05: Harry Mitchell

    AZ-08: Gabrielle Giffords

  4. 1. How are we going to take care about the intense loyalty Ms Palin demands from her subordinates? Americans need to know (and understand) that this is a horrible trait.

    2. 8 yrs of Green and Republican presidency have been catastrophic. McCain-Palin sounds apocalyptic to me. What are we going to do to educate the voters?

  6. I’d probably accidently wander in, thinking they had good chicken fried steak.  I wish I had a picture of the other side of the building, that’s what I thought of when I saw that picture.

  7.   SUSA just released a poll showing that Gordon Smith’s approve-disapprove rating is 38-56.  Yeah…that’s really bad.  Chuck Schumer and the DSCC ad wizards are making some headway against fraudulent moderates.  My personal favorite is the ad which points out that Senator Smith spent $1.2 million on golf clubs.  I expect Merkley to lead in the next poll, if anyone ever does another poll.

  8. I know it’s a little early and presumptuous.  But there’s a slew of possibilities that would make Sarah Palin not run for governor in 2010.  Whether it be being VP, or unpopularity (or even impeachment).  Any ideas outside of Sean Parnell as to who might run?  I say Hollis French is positioning himself for a 2010 run on the dem side.

  9. If any of these senate seats flipped, it would be a big upset, but upsets happen.  Which of these seven potentials is most likely to actually happen?  Each is less than even money, but between all seven, one or MAYBE two could happen.

    I have listed them in the order of most likely to least likely to flip in my judgement.  What’s yours?

    GA

    OK

    ID

    KY

    TX

    NE

    KS  

  12. First of all, I’m not giving up on this race yet, but I think SSP was probably right to change this to “Likely Republican.”  Howey is pretty well respected here/knows state politics very well.  I think “what’s gone wrong” is a combo of both what Daniels is doing, and problems with JLT’s campaign as well.

    As others have mentioned, Daniels was much more unpopular a couple of years ago than today.  I think that’s due to a few factors:

    1 — The toll road issue and especially daylight saving time, and the anger those two issues caused some people, have subsided quite a bit.  And DST was not a R/D issue, but an Indianapolis/rest of the state one, but it was pushed through on Daniels’ watch, with his support (and mine, for what it’s worth), so he got the blame from those who didn’t like it.

    2 — He’s been a difficult-to-pin down governor in a lot of respects.  He’s not a right-wing nutjob at all, and really is hated by the social conservatives.  He’s done some largely non-partisan things that have been popular and, honestly, successful here in terms of reorganizing state government.  

    3 — The main pro/anti-Daniels split here seems to be more among the Indianapolis area vs. the rest of the state.  His economic policies have been very good for more educated who can take advantage of good job opportunities, while much of the rest of the state feels ignored and left behind.  That said, right now he’s doing a better job of picking up independnet and democratic support here in the Indy area than JLT has been at picking up typical Republican supporters outstate.

    4 — $10 million doesn’t hurt.  And his feel-good, self-promoting ads have gone over pretty well (God knows we’ve all seen enough of them!!).

    So far, JLT’s campaign has yet to get rolling.

    1 — She doesn’t have nearly the same amount of money, but she’s raised certainly more than a little bit, and SEIU has also already spent over $1 million for her.

    2 — The whole party has far from united behind her.  The vote I cast in the primary for Jim Schellinger is one I now largely regret, as he as not gotten fully on board in any kind of enthusiastic way here.  Same thing for parts of organized labor.  The AFL-CIO finally came on board, as they were slow in endorsing her, largely due to an internal pissing match they’ve been in with SEIU.  Organized labor plays a bigger role in Indiana than it does in most places, and she’s really going to need them to pull off an upset.

    3 — She just hasn’t really found her voice or set of issues to take Daniels on.  A centerpiece of his administration has been to privatize, well, everything.  He’s already done the toll road.  He wants to do the state lottery.  Who knows what else.  But that’s been a difficult issue to frame and latch on to.  Also, her campaign seems to be kind-of isolated, keeping their own council and not really being all that effective.

    Again, I’m not giving up yet by any means, and I’m not sure if another candidate would be doing all that much better — but if this is going to become close, it needs to get started in that direction really soon.

    1. That $1m was for the RNC. We don’t know how much Mac The Knife brought in, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it was considerable — Palin is a rally-the-fundies type of pick.

  16. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

    Segall’s message is that both parties have sent jobs overseas without any plan to replace them and that you replace them by investing in infrastructure, ala Roosevelt, not by giving everyone $600.  

    That’s an appealing national message.  

    The ad is about Rogers’ CAFTA vote which most people don’t know about.  Rogers claims he fights for jobs but his record doesn’t reflect that.  

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