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

  2. CA-Gov: OK, so DiFi’s out… The race is now WIDE OPEN! So far, SF Mayor Gavin Newsom & Lt. Gov. John Garamendi have already announced they’re running. Meanwhile, nearly everyone expects (Fmr. Gov. &) Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown & LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to announce soon. Get the popcorn out, ‘cuz this primary should be oodles of fun to watch!

    CA-Supreme Court: Speaking of Jerry Brown, I’m still waiting for his legal brief to the court on his position on Prop H8’s legality. This not only can affect what happens when oral arguments begin in March, but also whatever campaign we wage on marriage equality in 2010 (depending on what happens in court) as well as Brown’s own political future (whether or not he pisses away whatever LGBT support he had). This is also quite interesting.

    CA-Sen: Seen Chuckie DeVore’s online ad yet? Barbara Boxer will win in a landslide if he’s the GOP nominee, but it’ll still be fun to watch DeVore’s public mental breakdowns. 😉

  3. Why don’t you have current updates on the Senate recount in Minnesota.  I think Al Franken leads now by about 263 votes but lots of ballots yet to fight over.

    What’s your opinion?

  4. NV-Gov: If it weren’t for the continued freak show known as the Rod Blagojevich case in IL, we’d still be talking about “America’s Worst Governor” wreaking havoc in Nevada. It’s still unclear if Jim Gibbons even realizes how severe Nevada’s budget crisis is! This is the time for real solutions, not Club for Growth BS. Now’s the time for Democrats to come out & call Gibbons’ insanity what it really is.

    NV-Sen: I’m still waiting to see if Krooklicki wants to be slaughtered by Reid.

  5. before the 2008 class is even sworn in, but I can’t help it.  We’re on track for major gains.  It seems likely we’ll go another Senate cycle without losing a seat, and with several easy targets to go after (KY, FL, NC, NH, OH, PA), and plenty of sleeper races that could blow wide open depending on retirements and/or recruitments (MO, TX, LA, IA, KS), I’d say it’s almost certain we’ll have 60, and very possible we’ll have in the neighborhood of 63-65 seats after 2010, and won’t have to worry about people like the Arkansas senators, Landrieu, and Ben and Bill Nelson.

  6. Jerry Brown just asked the California Supreme Court to overturn Prop 8 using basically the same arguments as the people who filed the suit. He had originally said he would defend it. This is pretty big news, if the Court overturns it that Brown’s the frontrunner and will get a lot of cred on this issue.

  7. I’d like to see us identify some strong progressive candidates for the races that are coming up sooner–legislative races in Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, Virginia and Kentucky, and local races in many other state.  I know in Washington we will have many county and city elections in 2009.  It would be great if we could adopt one legislative candidate in each of those 5 states, either a progressive in a contested primary or a Dem challenging an R, and focus a lot of attention on that race early on.  Legislative races far too often fly under the radar.

  8. Andgarden,

    I noticed seven Repubicans from the Philly suburbs up for election in 2010.  Who do we have running in them?

    Edwin Erickson, Stewert Greenleaf, Charles T. McIlhinney Jr., John C. Rafferty Jr., Robert Tomlinson, Robert C. Wonderling, and Michael Brubaker.

    I also see Patrick Browne from the Lehigh Valley and Lisa Baker from somewhere up by Scranton are up.  Who do we have there?

    Jake Corman and Jane Orie are the two (besides Greenleaf) I would love to see go the most, but I do not know anything about either race.

    We seem to have a number of Republican seats up in friendly territory.

    Why can’t we take back the state senate this next election?

  9. Looks like Putnam will be moving on and making a run for state office. In the first paragraph below, that is former Republican state Rep. Dennis Ross considering a run for Putnam’s seat.

    “I did e-mail him (Bush) after I heard that he might run and told him I would support him,” said Ross, who appears to be leaning more toward a run for the congressional seat likely to be vacated by U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Bartow, that year.

    Putnam, who supporters and consultants have said never considered a Senate run himself in 2010, is expected to announce next year that he will run for Florida Commissioner of Agriculture.

    If the seat opens up, I would hope Democrats could convince Democratic County Commissioner (and the only Democrat on the 5-seat Commission) Jean Reed to run. No other obvious candidates come to my mind.

  10. Cooks initial house rundown =

    257 Democrats

    207 Safe D

    29 Likely D

    18 Lean D

    3 Toss Up

    178 Republicans

    1 Likely D

    6 Lean R

    25 Likely R

    146 Safe R

    Cook adequately highlights our weak spots… ID-01 being the biggest target.  Same with the Republicans, LA-02, PA-06, MI-11, AK-AL, etc.

    Although the big question that will fundamentally shift the map before 2010 is retirements.  Lincoln in Tennessee, King in New York, Castle in Deleware, Young in Florida are probably the most talked up people who would bring up a seat that has a great chance to flip without incumbents.  

  11. It seems pretty clear that once all the withdrawn challenges are added back in Franken will have the lead. The Franken campaign says 35-50 votes, Strib says 78, 538 says 66. I say 60.

    538 also has a rundown on what could come next. Coleman could make a big fuss about duplicate ballots (all indications are that he will ). I would guess the court gives him a mildly favorable ruling on that like they did to Franken on absentee ballots and that they search for ballots until the deadline Dec 31 and the board certifies Franken as the winner on Jan 2. I don’t see how Coleman wins at this point. I wouldn’t be hugely suprised if he concedes early next week.

  13. 1. Who is succeeding Begich as Mayor?

    2. A penny (at least half a penny) for Zell Miller’s thoughts on the 2008 elections.

    3. I have raised the next question twice here and did not get any good replies. If this is not the forum, please post a link where these questions are discussed.

    (i) Who asked rhe CA supreme court to rule on gay marriage and why?

    (ii) What was there expectations – the right would just sit on its hands once the decision came out?

    (iii) Did the presence of Prop 8 make it harder for democrats to win seats like CA-04? Any quantitative estimate on this?

    (iv) What are the chances the right will use this as an edge issue to win seats at state levels? I would like to get some details on this regarding possible use in 2010 and 2012.  

    2. I am also interested in the House races in districts that Obama won: CA-03, CA-24, CA-25, CA-26, CA-4, CA-45, CA-48, CA-50. Same goes for the close Senate/Assembly races also in Obama districts. I will have a more detailed analysis up after I post presidential results for the Assembly and the even-numbered Senate districts, since those will be up in 2010 and the next time the odd-numbered Senate districts are up, they will be in new configurations.

  14. Oh Bachmann!

    I realize this story is a little old, but I just spent forever wiping vomit off my computer screen so I figured that I might as well bring it up so that others could share in my pain.  Anyway, someone relatively recently got a hold of Kissy-Monster’s ’03 Christmas Newsletter and good lord is it disturbing.  Probably the worst part is where she’s pimping out her children for potential spouses.  For example with her oldest son she composes a personal ad:

    Chick magnate (sic) needs wife to put him through med school, clean house, pay bills and run his life. Must be willing to gamble against onslaught of socialized medicine diminishing return on investment.

    You here that, ladies of SSP? Yes, even YOU could achieve your life’s dream of living completely subserviently to a man (a chick magnate, no less), managing everyone of his burdens while getting nothing in return!

    While prostituting the rest of her children, she goes on to refer to her second son as a “fantasy female treasure” (oh, so he’s gay…), possibly offers one of her daughters up for a polygamist marriage “King Henry had his 6 wives, and if our Caroline had been one of them I think she would have been called Caroline the Vibrant,” before going on to provide all interested parties with her waist size (14), and then perhaps most disturbing of all declares her youngest daughter off-limits to ever get married, “A hundred years ago families designated a sacrifice lamb that forsook marriage in favor of caring for aging parents.”  Oh, but they could never actually ask her to do that, so they’ve signed the house over to her name while they keep the master bedroom, which is totally not even creepier.  Bear in mind that this “sacrificial lamb” was all of NINE at the time, so I’m complete confident that she totally understood the implications of the fact that her mother has strongly implied that she can never ever get married, at least until her parents are gone (maybe in a few years time you should consider hiring a food taster, Michele).

    Read the whole letter on the link off of the Feministing blog I originally linked to; it’s just plain surreal in parts.

    SO getting to my point.  Please, pplleeaassee someone tell me about someone, anyone, who rid our Congress of this misogynistic embarrassment.  I really don’t see any way that we can call ourselves the greatest country on earth with her even a citizen, nonetheless a Congresswoman.

  15. Campaign Diaries has an extensive rundown of all the elected officials picked for Obama’s Cabinets and of all those who did not make the cut despite being rumored – and explains what all of this means for the electoral landscape in 2010 and beyond.

  16. Does anyone have any suggestions for how Iowa Democrats can get the right people to talk Leonard Boswell into retiring?

    He is ineffective not beloved either by the Democratic base or by the media.  

    If Boswell doesn’t retire and let some new Democrat take the seat in 2010, I’m afraid that in 2012 we’ll end up having to run Boswell against Tom Latham in the redistricted IA-03. Iowa is going to lose a district, and Latham now lives in Story County, just north of the biggest county in IA-03.

    Latham is on the Appropriations Committee and has better constituent service than Boswell. If it comes to that, I want a better Democrat to run against him.

    If Boswell retires in 2012, our Democratic nominee will probably have less name recognition.

    Ideally, Boswell would have retired in 2008 so that we would have a two-term Democratic incumbent to run in the redistricted IA-03 in 2012. But no one was able to talk Boswell into stepping aside, and Fallon got beaten soundly in the primary. No other Democrat is going to challenge Boswell in a primary. We need someone to explain to him why he needs to retire.

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