We didn’t see any true freak shocks last night, but this one came pretty damn close:
CA-44 (100% of precincts reporting):
Ken Calvert (R-inc): 89,679 (51%)
Bill Hedrick (D): 85,039 (49%)
This was an R+6 district that Bush won by 59-40 in 2004.
UPDATE: Bill Hedrick raised about $150K, while Calvert hauled in a mil.
Crisitunity adds some color:
One, Ken Calvert is one of those scandal-plagued Inland Empire GOPers, like his neighbors Jerry Lewis and Gary Miller. It’s mostly penny ante corruption, but he was also picked up with a prostitute in his car back when he was a freshman rep in the mid 90s. So although nothing new came out about him lately, maybe there’s some cumulative distaste with him.
And two, this is the second fastest growing district in California population-wise. The majority of that growth is Hispanic. I don’t know how many of them are actual voters, but I suspect the number of Democrats in the district is going up sharply. Riverside County in general went for Obama, and I don’t think it’s gone Dem since 1992.
I just commented on this on another thread. Do we know why this happened? Too bad we didn’t know earlier, we could’ve made a play here.
Did Obama win here? He did surprisingly well in Orange County and won Riverside County.
Everyone thought Gerlach would be sitting pretty, but he only won by 4%.
Arcuri only won 51-49 there, despite all prognosticators having him at “likely democratic” for the entire election.
This guy knows that redistricting is around the corner and you better believe that his district is going to become more Montgomery County and less Berks County. Democrats are going to want all of Lehigh County for Tim Holden. Holden currently represents a conservative area of Pennsylvania, yet his district only includes half of Reading (a minority majority city) in Berks County.
Therefore, since PA is likely to lose one and possibly two seats come 2010 Redistricting, Montgomery County parts of the district are going to move into a district favorable to Setak and the Chester County parts of the district will move into the Lancaster County based seat of Joe Pitts.
Gerlach is definately a possible party switcher, along with Mark Kirk and Charlie Dent.
Thaddeus McCotter is a terrible and weak GOP Congressman, but we didn’t recruit a strong opponent, despite that, he only got 51%. Plus, he didn’t perform well last time for an inc either. We dropped the ball on this one.
We should also target Mike Rogers in MI 08 because his support is soft too–though he did pull 57% this year.
A few CA races were extremely close. Ultimately these ones, the MI race, and the PA one were just missed with polling. Overall a good job with the DCCC. They spent as much as possible in the likeliest wins and it still wasn’t enough for whatever reason.
Unfortunately that’s just because King is counting quicker than Pierce. She’s about 600 votes down now. She’s winning 51-49 in King, but she probably needs that to be 52-48 (maybe 51.5-48.5) if she continues to lose Pearce by 10 points. My estimates are that King will ultimately produce 4 times as many votes as Pearce County. So if she can net 7,000 or so votes in King and lose Pearce by less than 7,000 than she can win.
Hope he runs again in 2010 and gets the help he deserves. With that fundraising discrepancy, clearly he can win this seat next time.
One, Ken Calvert is one of those scandal-plagued Inland Empire GOPers, like his neighbors Jerry Lewis and Gary Miller. It’s mostly penny ante corruption, but he was also picked up with a prostitute in his car back when he was a freshman rep in the mid 90s. So although nothing new came out about him lately, maybe there’s some cumulative distaste with him.
And two, this is the second fastest growing district in California population-wise. The majority of that growth is Hispanic. I don’t know how many of them are actual voters, but I suspect the number of Democrats in the district is going up sharply. Riverside County in general went for Obama, and I don’t think it’s gone Dem since 1992.