Author: DavidNYC

The first primaries are just a month away! I’m talking, of course, about the Illinois congressional primaries, which feature a marquee matchup between netroots-backed Mark Pera and out-of-touch incumbent Dan Lipinski.

What races are you looking at?

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Notable User Diaries

Ton of great diaries this week.

• Glacial Erratic updates us on the Republican field in PA-05, where Rep. John Peterson (R) is the latest GOPer to announce his retirement.

• Skywrnchsr509 surveys competitive House races in the states with early filing deadlines: Ohio, Texas, Illinois, and Maryland.

• Plf515‘s series on House races continues, with looks at MS, KY & WV, MD , and PA.

• Fbihop tells us about a move to liberalize ballot access requirements in New Mexico, which could make an already wide-open campaign season even more boisterous.

• Some good news on the state level in Mississippi: Mississippiboy passes along word that Democrat Billy McCoy was narrowly re-elected speaker of the MS House over Barbour ally (and DINO) Jeff Smith.

Republicans, Democrats, predictions, results. It’s all yours.

Or will you prove countmippipopolous right?

UPDATE: Wow. Was there a soul alive who called this one for Clinton? This is turning out to be the greatest horserace of all time. I hereby dub it “The Geakness Stakes.”

Some early numbers are trickling in here and there. NB: Campaigns have until Jan. 31st to get their reports in to the FEC. (Usually they are due on the 15th.)

John Hall (D), NY-19 (via e-mail):

Although the final tabulation isn’t due at the Federal Election Commission until January 15th, I want you to know today that with your support the John Hall for Congress campaign will report more than $1 million cash on hand at the end of 2007 – exceeding our goal for the first year!  To do this, we raised over $300,000 in the fourth quarter alone.

Larry Joe Doherty (D), TX-10:

Democrat Larry Joe Doherty will report over $150,000 raised in his fourth quarter FEC report, bringing his total raised to nearly $380,000 since starting his campaign early summer.

“Checks are still coming in,” noted Campaign Manager Andy Kabza, suggesting that the total will be higher by the time the final report is submitted to the FEC on January 15th.  “And with cash-on-hand of over $250,000, we’re ready to take Larry Joe’s message to Democratic primary voters.”

Mitch McConnell (R), KY-Sen:

McConnell announced he raised $1.7 million in the quarter, and has banked $7.3 million in his campaign account at the end of the year. His cash-on-hand figures are poised to be near the top of all senators facing serious reelection challenges.

Roy Brown (R), MT-Gov:

But Republican candidate Roy Brown has already told KTVQ-TV that he’s raised more than $154,000 since his campaign started eight weeks ago. And he says he’s spent just under $8,000 of that — leaving his campaign with about $146,000 in cash on hand.

Linda Stender (D), NJ-07:

Stender would not say how much she raised in 2007, but a source close to her said that the campaign has approximately $500,000 in the bank.

Kate Whitman (R), NJ-07:

Thirty-year-old former gubernatorial daughter Kate Whitman announced her bid for the seventh congressional district Republican nomination barely a month ago, but her fledgling congressional campaign already has $190,000 in the bank. By the time the last checks are cashed and her quarterly papers are filed, she expects to have raised almost $200,000 for 2007.

Steve Novick (D), OR-Sen:

The U.S. Senate campaign for Democrat Steve Novick tells PolitickerOR.com Tuesday that it raised about $210,000 in the fourth quarter, bringing the campaign’s total raised to date to over $500,000.

Mary Landrieu (D), LA-Sen:

U.S. Senator Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., will kick off the New Year with more than $4 million in the bank for her reelection effort — double the net cash-on-hand she reported at this point in her last race. When official reports are filed later this month, she expects to report more than $1.1 million in fundraising for the last three months of 2007 alone.

John Kennedy (R), LA-Sen:

Republican state Treasurer John Kennedy, who announced in November he would run against Landrieu, raised about $500,000 for the final quarter of 2007 and has about $450,000 in the bank, a campaign official said.

Rick Noriega (D), TX-Sen:

As of December 31, 2007, Noriega raised more than $968,000, 85 percent of which was from Texas residents. In the fourth quarter, Noriega increased his donor base by more than 50 percent over the number of third quarter donors, and overall has raised money from more than 3,000 individuals.

Important note: That $968K figure is Noriega’s total for the cycle-to-date. He raised about $581K through the end of Q3, which means he pulled in about $387K in Q4.

What have you seen so far?

Texas is on track to pick up four House seats after the next round of Congressional re-apportionment. Matt Glazer explains what this means:

In any case, these 4 seats could mean big gains for us if Democrats have a say in how the new map is drawn.

It is easy to see a situation where Republicans gerrymander a map and solidify some Democratic seats but at the same time make current seats either more competitive or flip[] them completely.  This is the exactly what Tom DeLay, Tom Craddick, and David Dewhurst did in 2003 with their unconstitutional map.

There is one way to have a say in the process and prevent another purely partisan map.  A constitutional amendment in 1951 established the redistricting process and established the Legislative Redistricting Board (LRB).  The board is composed of the lieutenant governor, speaker of the house, attorney general, comptroller, and land commissioner.  Let’s go through this really quickly; David Dewhurst, Tom Craddick, Greg Abbott, Susan Combs, and Jerry Patterson will determine the fate of these 4 new seats along with the 32.

All five of these folks are Republicans. Without a voice at the table, we’ll surely get railroaded once more. But there is hope:

We currently have 71 Democrats in the state house.  If we can win back the House this cycle (pick up 5 more seats) we will have taken 1 of the 5 seats on the redistricting board.

Indeed, the TX House situation is already vastly improved from just a few years ago – it was 88-62 in the GOP’s favor after 2002. What’s more, the momentum is ours – we just won a special election last month in heavily Republican territory. Taking the House back this cycle would undoubtedly be very energizing. Should we fall just short, though, we’ll still have a second bite in 2010. That’s also when Texas will have statewide elections once more, which will give us an opportunity to contest some of the other offices which get a seat on the redistricting commission.

Nonetheless, while several other key legislatures (such as the NY Senate) are also on the verge of changing hands in our favor, I think Texas House may be the number one body to keep our eyes on this year.

UPDATE: Read this important comment from DCal, which clarifies the LRB’s role in redistricting. Bottom line: It’s not involved in federal map-drawing – just state. Still, federal redistricting plans must be approved by the legislature, which means the TX House will have a say along with the Senate and Governor. So taking it back is probably even more crucial than I originally understood it to be.

From the Clarion Ledger:

Former U.S. Rep. Ronnie Shows told The Associated Press on Saturday that he will run for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Trent Lott.

Shows, a Democrat who was ousted from Congress by Republican Rep. Chip Pickering in 2002 after Mississippi lost a House seat, joins former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove and U.S. Rep. Roger Wicker in the race.

Shows said Pickering’s decision not to run for the Senate seat pushed him into re-entering political life.

“It just opened the door for me that I didn’t think was there before,” Shows said. “I think this opportunity doesn’t come by very often – to have an open Senate seat – and it’s something I feel ready to do. And I think I can win.”

As you might know, Shows lost his seat due to redistricting. I have to say that I wish he’d seek his old seat again, given that Pickering is now retiring.

Of greater concern, though, is the fact that the MS-Sen-B special will be a Louisiana-style jungle election (ie, all candidates run together in a single race, with, I believe, the top two vote-getters going into a runoff if a certain threshold is not met by the first-place finisher). With two Dems vs. one Republican, it seems like this race just got a lot harder to pull off. At the very least, we now certainly can’t win in the first round. We need to hope that either a bunch more Republicans get in, or that Shows or Musgrove changes his mind.

Best comment ever on SSP?

SSP is my favorite blog because their primary open thread has no comments :-).

I love it. This open thread is a primary-free zone.

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Notable User Diaries

• Continuing a series, Progressive America brings us part two of a look at the Florida state Senate.
• The indefatigable plf515 calculates the odds of House seat turnovers in three states (so far): Ohio, Texas & Illinois.
• Robert.Harding tells us about Bob Kerrey’s endorsement of NY-26 hopeful Jon Powers. He also analyzes the irritating news that nutter millionaire Jack Davis  (D?) might try running a third time. Gah.
• And finally, in a diary that warms my nerdly heart, Doug_Tuttle asks us to compare the presidential candidates with the comic book characters they most resemble. X Stryker has an awesome comment in reply running down every single candidate, with some hilarious matchups.

Happy New Year, everyone! I can’t wait to see what 2008 has in store for us.

A company called Election Data Services has published a new study (PDF) of Congressional re-apportionment, based on newly-released Census data. EDS used three different models to project likely re-apportionment figures, which they explain as follows:

First, there is a “long-term” trend model that reflects the overall change that has occurred so far this decade; that is from 2000 to 2007, and projects it to 2010. Second, a “midterm” trend model uses the population change that has occurred from 2005 to 2007. Finally, a “short-term” trend model incorporates the change that has occurred in just the past year, from 2006 to 2007, and carries that rate of change forward to 2010.

The results:

State	Long-Term	Mid-Term	Short-Term
Arizona	2	2	2
California	0	-1	0
Florida	2	2	1
Georgia	1	1	1
Illinois	-1	-1	-1
Iowa	-1	-1	-1
Louisiana	-1	-1	-1
Massachusetts	-1	-1	-1
Michigan	-1	-1	-1
Minnesota	0	-1	-1
Missouri	-1	-1	-1
Nevada	1	1	1
New Jersey	-1	-1	-1
New York	-2	-2	-2
North Carolina	0	1	1
Ohio	-2	-2	-2
Oregon	1	1	1
Pennsylvania	-1	-1	-1
South Carolina	0	1	1
Texas	4	4	4
Utah	1	1	1

When it comes to matters of re-apportionment and re-districting, I know that Swing State readers don’t need any commentary from me about what this all might mean. So have at it!

So says Clarion Ledger columnist and blogger Sid Salter. The N.E. Miss. Daily Journal also notes that Wicker & his wife met with Barbour yesterday.

Despite MS-01 being an R+10 district, Salter thinks that the open-seat race here (should Wicker get tapped) would be a “spirited” one. And though I haven’t delved into the numbers myself, I’m told that this area is considered competitive, at least on a state & local level.

But at least for another day or so, this is all in the realm of speculation.

Ed Fallon, a liberal former state representative, might be getting ready to challenge Rep. Leonard Boswell in IA-03, according to the Iowa Independent. Right now, the only tea leaves are a handful of “Fallon for Congress” domain names that were recently registered (the admin contact is Fallon’s home address).

Boswell is a fairly conservative Dem who seems to be perennially endangered despite the fact that he sits in a 50-50 district. Health troubles have also plagued him in recent years. The Independent contrasts the two men:

Fallon, who represented a Des Moines state house district from 1992 to 2006, finished an unexpectedly strong third in the 2006 gubernatorial primary with 26 percent.  He led the field in the 3rd Congressional District.  Fallon was seen as one of the most liberal members of the Iowa House, and if there was a 99 to 1 or 97 to 2 roll calls, Fallon was usually on the short end.

Boswell, on the other hand, is one of the more conservative Democrats in Congress.  Rankings at Progressive Punch show Boswell as the 214th most liberal of 233 Democrats in Congress, and actually had him behind Republican Jim Leach for 2006.  Boswell’s Progressive Punch score moves up to 170th when only this year’s votes are included. He recently voted with fellow Iowa Democrats Bruce Braley and Dave Loebsack in a failed effort to block $70 billion in funds for the Iraq war, in contract to earlier votes for war funding.

I’m inclined to think this could be a fairly serious challenge, if Fallon does indeed pull the trigger. You don’t often see former state legislators jump into primaries like this, and if Fallon can successfully argue that Boswell is out-of-step with his district, he might gain traction. However, Iowa’s primary is just six months away, so Fallon would have precious little time to seal the deal in what will already be an uphill battle.

Personally, I’m going to reserve judgment here, but this could be a compelling race.