Weekly Open Thread: What Races Are You Interested In?

She said that she was working for the ABC News – it was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use.

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

  1. I’m extremely interested in the upcoming battle (if Senator Sweeney isn’t too much of an a@s to not allow it) in the NJ legislature. It’s about time proponents of Same-Sex Marriage earn a victory after major defeats in California and Maine. Hopefully the NJ legislature has enough b@lls to pass it this time.        

  2. Any chance we can get Dodd to just retire and run Richard Blumenthal or Ned Lamont. I really don’t want to loose this seat because of a toxic candidate.

  8. I was a little surprised to learn that former Senate Majority leader and Iowa GOP chairman Stew Iverson is thinking about challenging a two-term Iowa House Democrat McKinley Bailey in district 9 next year. Democrat Rich Olive holds Iverson’s old Iowa Senate seat (district 5), which he won by just 62 votes in 2006 after Iverson retired.

    I assume that Iverson is thinking about the House race because he feels the GOP has virtually no chance of retaking the Iowa Senate (Dems hold a 32-18 majority in the Senate and a 56-44 majority in the House).

    Republicans threw a lot of money at Bailey’s House district in 2008, but he still won re-election with 55 percent of the vote. I think I would rather see him face off against Iverson as opposed to Olive. If Republicans can’t recruit a strong challenger against Olive next year, I feel great about our long-term prospects for holding the upper chamber. Democrats are defending 19 of the 25 Iowa Senate seats up for re-election next year, but Republicans only have three or four realistic pickup opportunities.

  10. Here’s mine: http://www.uselectionatlas.org…

    Republican pickups: Arkansas

    Democratic pickups: Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio

    Tossups: All pickups plus Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Nevada, and North Carolina.  

    Watchlist: Arizona, Florida, Georgia

  11. It’s our year, Kansas political junkies.

    Basically, all four seats in the KS delegation are pretty competitive this year. In the Big 1st, it’s only intraparty (Republican) competitive. Waiting is a seat on the Ag Committee, as current Rep. Moran is slated to win Sam Brownback’s Senate seat. Dems are unlikely to seriously contest this seat. In the 2nd, it’s freshman Lynn Jenkins (R) vs. State Sen. Laura Kelly (D) out to avenge the ghost of Nancy Boyda. And not have words literally put in her mouth by corporate interests (ahem, Lynn). In the newly-interesting 3rd, six-term guitar-strumming pro-choice, anti-gun Blue Dog Dennis Moore is retiring from a district Obama won narrowly. Will a vicious Republican primary result in a wounded wingnut? Will Dems find a quality candidate as they’ve seemed find in the other districts? And in the 4th, second-term State Rep. Raj Goyle (D) is a fundraising powerhouse who will take on the winner of a crazily competitive Republican primary in this R+14 district.

    Also! I predict Burdett Loomis will be a busy man in 2010.

    Also! Sarah Palin! Also!

  12. I’m working on a representative profile for my U.S. Congress class.  I was assigned Allen Boyd of Florida to profile (I’m being fair!).  

    One of the things we have to do is talk about the district dynamics, including its political leanings.  So, I’m looking at the state legislature delegations for the district.  I noticed the 11th State House district is represented by Debbie Boyd.  It also seems Allen Boyd used to represent this seat, too.  Are they related?

  13. RIght now the battle for TX-19 in West Texas is shaping up to be one between the unpopular far-right conservative Randy Neugebauer and moderate Democrat Andy Wilson.  These things have so far been one-sided, but Neugebauer is so far right and disliked that the Republicans are thinking of running a moderate candidate.  The demographics of the Texas 19th Congressional district are similar to those of the famous NY-23, with most residents in the middle of the spectrum and a steady, slow trend toward more Democratic voting percentages averaged over many years.

    Not so long ago (20 years) and for most of the last century, this area was strongly Democratic, with one county (Fisher) voting 100% Democratic in the 1982 primary.  If the Republicans continue to fission into 2 parties (Republican and Conservative), could we see this again in TX-19?

    Web sites of interest: Texas State Historical Association: http://www.tshaonline.org/hand… ; article on Fisher County: http://www.tshaonline.org/hand… ; TX-19 Democratic candidate web site: http://www.istandwithandy.com

  16. Found this story interesting.  Swiss voters passed a referendum to ban construction of minarets by a wide margin.  This was pushed by the far-right nationalists.  It does seem as though the far-right parties are making a bit of a comeback in Europe unfortunately.

    GENEVA (Nov. 27) — Swiss voters approved a move to ban the construction of minarets in a Sunday vote on a right-wing initiative that labeled the mosque towers as symbols of militant Islam, projections by a widely respected polling institute showed.

    The projections based on partial returns say Swiss swung from only 37 percent supporting the proposal a week ago to 59 percent in the actual voting.

    “Forced marriages and other things like cemeteries separating the pure and impure – we don’t have that in Switzerland, and we do not want to introduce it” said Ulrich Schlueer, co-president of the Initiative Committee to ban minarets.

  17. He’s Safe.

    State Sen. Steve Ogden was the one Republican who could have beaten him. Ogden had announced his retirement from the State Senate but it appears he’s now going back to run for re-election after all. Besides Ogden, there are no other office holders even thinking about the race, everyone else is gadfly candidates.

    Go Texas Dems, go!

    http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-…

    http://www.marshallnewsmesseng…

  18. I have a thing for deep south Dems!

    MS-1: Will having a rural GOP nominee who shares a regional base with Childers make the difference? Will another round of Obama-Pelosi-Childers do the trick this time?

    MS-4: Will Taylor have his closest margin since coming to office in 1989? He tends to personally insult his GOP opponents who are already nobodies.

    AL-2: I still think Bright is stronger than he looks but could I be wrong? His reputation has always been pretty much an indie

    AL-5: Griffith is personally loaded, so funding won’t be a problem but does a Cramer/Browder/Bevill type he is not.

    AL-7: Another unaccomplished state senator trading on his father’s name (Hillard) to become a nobody in Congress, when AL-7 (such a poor district) needs a Steve Cohen like fighter.

    GA-8: Will Marshall finally become entrenched?

    GA-12: Will Barrow grow a pair and stop voting like a coward!

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