Who’s the DCCC Missing?

In the list of last week’s DCCC independent expenditures posted by James this weekend, the comments section contains, well, let’s just say “scattered boos” concerning the money the DCCC is spending on incumbent defense instead of long-shot pickups. To give that discussion a little more form and focus, I thought I’d put together a table listing the races that are on SSP’s competitive house ratings chart but aren’t getting DCCC independent expenditures… and order them according to their position on SSP’s Bang for the Buck index, which is an approximate measure of how expensive it is to advertise on broadcast media in that district (smaller numbers are cheaper).

Got a race on there that you like that isn’t getting DCCC IE support? There’s still a week left, so contact the DCCC and ask… or better yet, give directly to the candidate and hope they can sneak a last minute media buy in.

Turning to SSP’s House Ratings, every race where we’re on offense that’s rated Likely D or Lean D is getting DCCC expenditures. Of the tossups, only 2 out of 23 are not receiving DCCC expenditures, and in neither case is that a problem: LA-04, where the primary runoff hasn’t even happened yet and all the action is going to happen after Nov. 4, and FL-08, where Alan Grayson seems intent on self-funding and doing things his way.

Of the 12 races currently rated Lean R, only 1 is not receiving DCCC expenditures: NV-02. This one is kind a puzzle, as Jill Derby has been hanging around within the single digits, and Nevada, especially Washoe County, has been seeing a Democratic surge. This may be one of those cases where both candidate and DCCC agree that a DCCC-branded campaign wouldn’t really fit the district’s still-sagebrushy nature.

When you drop down to Likely R, though, only 4 of the 19 races are receiving DCCC expenditures: SC-01, VA-05, WV-02, and WY-AL. (And bear in mind that some of these four races may get upgraded to Lean R soon… not that we specifically base our upgrades on DCCC decisions; after all, we see many of the same polls that the DCCC does.) The rest of the Likely Rs should be considered the true long-shots, but remember that in 2006 we did score a couple victories out of that pool (Loebsack and Shea-Porter).

Here are the non-DCCC-funded races, in order of expense: