Month: November 2006

Good news out of TX-23. As of today, all of Ciro Rodriguez’s former Democratic challengers in the open primary for TX-23 have now endorsed his campaign. Third place finisher Lukin Gilliland has offered up his northside campaign headquarters and staff.

“Henry Bonilla simply hasn’t done his job to provide fresh ideas on how to protect our troops and bring an honorable peace to the war in Iraq. This runoff represents the people’s chance to make changes in our Iraq policy and bring our troops home. Bonilla continues claiming to support our troops and yet he continues to send them into harm’s way,” said Albert Uresti.

“The Republican leadership has failed, as signaled by the November elections. Uniting the Democrats behind one democrat in this Congressional election is important so that we may continue the change of direction in our country,” said Uresti.

The Urestis’ endorsement is an important lynchpin in Rodriguez’s plan to unite Democrats to defeat Republican Congressman Henry Bonilla. Senator Carlos Uresti represents a district that mirrors the boundaries of the 23rd Congressional District and Albert Uresti garnered the second most votes among Democrats in the special election contest that ended November 7, 2006.

Both brothers declare that Bonilla has not represented the concerns of the people of the 23rd Congressional District and believe Rodriguez provides an opportunity toward a new direction that puts people above the powerful special interests that have created a failed Republican government in Washington.

(I agree with Karl’s correspondent – the way to win here is to let the DCCC do it’s thing. I never like to knock a fellow Dem, but it’s clear that Ciro ran a less-than-great campaign in his primary against Cuellar. So the outside help is welcome. – promoted by DavidNYC)

Another update on this race is here.

Below is an update from a friend in the know down in San Antonio.

Here’s the lowdown as of sometime today… DCCC people were flying into town today to tell Ciro’s what’s going down.  If he liked it and was willing to play by the rules, fine.  If not, they’re gonna pack it up.  I’ll probably have more information on this meeting sometime later on this week.

From what I hear, the D-trip might just run this entire campaign as an independent expenditure.  Let Ciro try and raise some money so he can do his own thing, but run mail, field (the real field program) and any other media stuff through the d-trip. The DCCC is bringing in a top notch field person to run their show and that’ll be that.  If there is one way to win this district with Ciro at the helm, this is basically the way to do it.

Additionally, our statewide Democratic candidates are coming together to help Ciro out either way, as our state party does little. From David Van Os, former Attorney General candidate (below the fold):

All the recent statewide candidates are coming together to join Barbara Radnofsky as co-hosts of a luncheon fundraiser for Ciro Rodriguez in Houston on Monday (November 20, details to follow). We are all standing together to demonstrate our determination that the Democratic community must come together and go all out for this opportunity to get rid of Henry Bonilla and replace him with a true representative of the people, Ciro Rodriguez.

Further, tonight at the Bexar County Democratic Executive Committee meeting, John Courage publicly donated $2,000 to Ciro’s campaign.

The Texas Democratic Party, to no surprise, is dragging its feet. But we statewide candidates are plenty used to that because we all experienced the TDP’s inertia over the past year. So we are not waiting around for the TDP and I encourage all of you to join us and make Ciro’s campaign your #1 political priority for the next month. Please right now set aside the runoff election day as a day that you are going to be in the 23rd congressional district knocking on doors all day getting the Democratic vote out.

Go to Ciro’s website and contact the campaign to find out the other different ways you can help. Also please call and write the State Party Chair, Boyd Richie, and insist that the large paid staff in the party office all be sent out to the field in the 23rd to help win this election behind our candidate, Ciro Rodriguez.

In my recent race for Texas Attorney General the voters honored me by giving me majorities in some of the rural west Texas counties that are in the new district with which Ciro is not familiar. I am fortunate to enjoy some good support networks in those counties and I have offered to travel to the area with Ciro and introduce him to my supporters and ask them to exert maximum effort to get out the votes for his candidacy. Ciro’s campaign manager accepted my offer on the spot at the Bexar County CEC meeting tonight. I look forward to doing whatever I can to help pull this one out. I believe that other recent statewide candidates are going to do so also. Several of us will be with Ciro Monday at the Houston fundraiser and will be discussing plans with him and his campaign manager for campaigning for him.

The parts of southwest and west Texas that are in the reconfigured 23rd are Democratic country. Henry Bonilla has been lying his way into people’s votes for much too long. Ya basta!

(cross-posted from Daily Kos)

A couple days ago, I posted about a new blog I am starting with the help of others. It’s called Progressive Wave, and our stated goal is clear: we will be blogging about, in the form of primarily citizen journalism with some traditional blogging (hard to make it down to Washington, D.C., for example), our new representatives and senators in Congress. As of right now, we have people who will be blogging for us in the following districts and states: AZ-08, PA-07, PA-08, CA-11, KY-03, NY-19, NY-20, and VA-Sen. We have had others express interest in IA-01 and CT-02 as well, but I do not have concrete commitments for them. Even if your district (or one you’d be interested in) is already covered, please feel free to blog for us – the more we can spread the load around within a district, the better it works out for all of us.

Below, you’ll find a general description of what Progressive Wave is all about. I hope you can help us out. Thanks!

It’s great to see citizen journalism in action. A project here at Daily Kos is picking up steam – where we ‘adopt’ a congressional committee and keep tabs on their progress. It’s a great idea, and by all means one that we should encourage; after all, a democracy thrives when its citizens participate actively within it.

Before the election I was thinking of taking a similar principle and applying it to our newly-elected Congresspersons and Senators in the U.S. Congress. Many of our newly-elected representatives come from extremely close races (such as Patrick Murphy in PA-08 or Joe Courtney in CT-02), or they are in areas that will make it a challenge for them to be re-elected every time they are up (Nick Lampson in TX-22 or Nancy Boyda in KS-02). While the Netroots-endorsed list has only included challengers, it’s inevitable that we will have to begin defending our incumbents, beginning in 2008.

And that’s where we come in.

The project I’ve been working on is entitled The Progressive Wave. Our slogan is ‘Not left, not right, but forward’. In the end, progressives of any stripe are about progress, and that is what our new representatives have a chance to do in Washington. In a sense, I view TPW as a step forward for the blogosphere as well. One of the things I learned about blogging firsthand about the CT-Sen race and the PA-08 race is that citizen journalism is incredibly useful tool for informing the blogosphere at large about the actual circumstances on the ground as it pertains to a race. No longer do we have to rely on traditional media sources for our information, but we can get an unfiltered view of what is occurring directly from the source.

What do I hope to accomplish with TPW? One thing I hope is that we can keep track of all our newly-elected representatives in their travails – whether it be those who held safe seats for us, such as Amy Klobachar in MN-Sen, or those who won by squeakers, such as Jon Tester in MT-Sen. We’ll be keeping a birds-eye view of the legislation they support, critiquing the speeches they give, and also acting as a sort of ‘accountability’ check on Democratic politicians. We don’t want to see those who represent the best and brightest of our future to become disappointments (a junior senator from Illinois comes to mind, at least for me). By informally tracking what they do – as well as attending events when they are in-state and writing about it – you have the power to keep the rest of us up to date. And come campaign time, we will be a veritable source of firsthand information from the ground about the race. Especially for House races, which occur every 2 years, it is paramount that we can report back what is occurring within the district.

What does it require from any of you? Not much, aside from a little of your time. I am aiming to have as many bloggers as possible join the project; we have somewhere around 35-40 House districts that need to be covered, as well as 8 senators (PA, RI, MT, MN, MD, OH, MO, VA) that will also need to be written about. After that, how much participation you’d like to put in is completely up to you. Personally, as I was quite involved in the PA-08 race, I will be attempting to speak with Congressman Murphy occasionally about the latest from Washington. I also hope to speak to some of his staff from the campaign about the field operation and the communications department. I consider this to be an ‘open-source’ blogging project in that there is no set or defined style one has to go about covering their representatives. You make the blog in your image.

That being said, we still need a lot of bloggers. I currently have a few people lined up so far for the following: NY-19, NY-20, AZ-05, AZ-08, VA-Sen, and CA-11. That being said, you can definitely blog those, along with any others you may be interested in. The only requirement of sorts is that it would be preferable that you live in-district, or if not, live within a reasonable distance such that you are not blogging about an area which you are unfamiliar with. If you are interested, please join our group over at DFALink. Our current working comments section can be found here. If you are unable to blog about the races, I’d appreciate any sort of technical support, particularly in the area of graphic design.

Ultimately, this is a project that, at its core, is about local politics. But in the age of the blogosphere, being connected to the Internet is incredibly important. The Progressive Wave is all about supporting our politicians who will move us forward in D.C., but it’s also about taking the blogosphere to the next level – citizen journalism. I hope you’ll join me for the ride.

The last thing I want to do right now is shut down and take break from blogging, especially with tumultuous recount situations in FL-13 and NC-08, where the very sanctity of voting rights is being put at risk by faulty technology and self-serving motives.  But I have no choice.  I have a mountain of work to finish in the next few weeks, so I’m going to have to take a break from the Swing State Project for a while.  I’d like to again thank David for letting me handle the ropes here over the past half-year, and to all of SSP’s readers for bearing with me.  This was an election cycle that none of us will soon forget, and I’m looking forward to charting a course with you over the next two years for even greater things.

See you sometime in December.

From the invaluable TPM Muckraker:

Lawyers for Democratic House candidate Christine Jennings threw down the gauntlet yesterday, asking a state court to secure electronic voting machines and data used in the election.

The move would preserve the equipment in Florida’s Sarasota County for scrutiny by Jennings’ legal team. A hearing on the suit is scheduled for this afternoon. [Update: The judge granted the Jennings campaign’s request to secure the voting machines today.]

It’s just the first step of what is likely to be a litigious aftermath to a close and ugly election (thanks in part to the NRCC’s rampant robo calling in the district). The state began a recount and audit of the election yesterday. Once the audit and second recount is completed and the results certified on November 20th, the Jennings campaign has ten days to contest the results of the election if they still show Jennings down. Before the recounting began, she was down 386 votes.

The fight will center around the district’s Sarasota County, where the electronic machines did not register a vote in the Congressional race for 18,000 voters (13%) – what’s called an “undervote.” That’s compared to only 2.53% of voters who did not vote in the race via absentee ballots.

A study by the local paper, The Herald Tribune, found that one in three of Sarasota election officials “had general complaints from voters about having trouble getting votes to record” on the electronic machines for the Congressional race. Since 53% of voters in Sarasota County picked Jennings over the Republican Vern Buchanan, those missed votes would likely have put Jennings in front.

Needless to say, this is a very serious matter. It’s also going to get very expensive, which is why we’ve added the special FL-13 recount fund to the Blue Majority ActBlue page. And this is not just a chance to add to our majority. For those of you who have expressed concerns about the integrity of electronic voting machines, this is an important showcase for that issue. If you want to help make sure that voting technology is scrutinized under a bright spotlight, then it’s time to back up words with deeds.

I just tossed in $100 earlier today. I urge you to please give as well. And there’s an extra bonus: This is none other than Katherine Harris’s old seat!

From the AP:

A roller-coaster recount that stretched nearly a week and uncovered significant vote-counting flaws in at least three communities came to an end Tuesday night, confirming [Democrat] Courtney’s general election victory over Rep. Rob Simmons.

Recounts in each of the district’s 65 towns gave Courtney the nod, although his election-night margin of 167 votes narrowed to 91, according to results tabulated by town clerks. Nearly 250,000 votes were cast.

God, it feels to do this again: add CT-02 to the big board, Johnny!

Says the AP:

Republican Rep. Dave Reichert survived a strong challenge from Democratic newcomer Darcy Burner, winning a second term in this historically slow-counting suburban Seattle district.

Reichert, best known as the sheriff who nabbed the Green River Killer, retained his seat after new returns were posted Monday night from King County. His lead stood at 4,727 votes, or 51.1 percent to Burner’s 48.9 percent. Overall, 208,225 votes had been counted in the race.

Washington’s 8th has yet to elect a Democrat since its creation in the early 80s.  We’ll get to this one yet, but regrettably not this year.

Cross-posted from MN Campaign Report – now with even more snarky wonkishness!

U.S. Senator Norm Coleman has made it clear that his vote is available to prevent deadlock in the Senate once Democrats take control in January.  The writing is on the wall – Coleman is vulnerable in 2008, representing a state that kicked out Republican officials up and down the ticket and didn’t give him 50% of the vote against a dead incumbent and a former VP thrown into the race at the last moment.  In light of these factors, Coleman has flip-flopped on his party – all too happy to go with the flow when the Republicans have a majority, his vote is available to the Democrats when it’s their turn in charge.

I’ve written before about some of the factors affecting this race before it begins – the 2008 Republican National Convention will be held in the Twin Cities, perhaps seeking to bolster Coleman’s vulnerable profile.  2002 was an up year for the Republican Party in general, and if the 2006 winds stay at the Democrats’ backs, 2008 promises to be a dangerous year indeed for Coleman.

Coleman has called the new Democratic majority an “opportunity” for him to extract gains for Minnesota.  An “opportunity” indeed.  Much like the “opportunity” that presented itself in the late 1990s to switch his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican for a gubernatorial run, and the “opportunity” to play the blame game with Michael Brown over the FEMA/Katrina debacle, Coleman’s career is full of opportunistic moves that betray a lack of conviction on important issues facing our nation today.

Having betrayed the DFL once before, and now betraying the Senate Republican caucus for political gain, Coleman’s latest move begs us to ask, “who’s expected to vote for you in 2008?”

It is nice to be the Majority again. One of the main reasons Democrats are back in the Majority is that they were able to put a lot more races into contention then were the Republicans.  It is vitally important that we keep this playing field imbalance, so that we can continue to be in and expand our Majority. It is my contention, that at least one quarter of House Republicans remain vulnerable today.  This statement is even truer if the Republicans were to nominate a true social conservative for President in 2008.  Democrats need to compete as if we were behind rather than ahead 15 seats. Being in the Majority makes everything easier for us, and everything harder for them. We also may see a large group of retirements, none of which should catch us off guard. Which is why the advantage must be pressed. It is also important to note that challengers help force legislators to vote with their constituencies on the hopefully popular Democratic legislation we put forward. Rather than having to water down our legislation for Bipartisanship, we can threaten defeat to those members who go against popular sentiment in their districts.  Here is my comprehensive list of seats Democrats could still gain as well, as the criteria by which the decisions were reached.  Also the currently uncalled races are omitted.

Under 55
All Republican members of Congress who received 55% or of their vote must be consider vulnerable they are listed by How Democratic the District voted in 2004 Presidential race.  Those that were not targeted this time receive a *
CT 4 Chris Shays
IL 10  Mark Kirk
PA 6 Jim Gerlach
NY 25 Jim Walsh
PA 15  Charlie Dent  *
VA 11 Tom Davis*
OH 1 Steve Chabot
MI 9  Joe Knollenberg *
NV 3  Jon Porter
PA 3 Phil English*
MI 11 Thaddeus McCotter *
NJ 7 Mike Ferguson
IL 6 Peter Roskam
AZ 1 Rick Renzi
MI 8 Mike Rogers
MI 7  Tim Walberg*
IL 11 Jerry Weller *
CA 50 Brain Bilbray
NY 26 Tom Reynolds
NY 29 Randy Kuhl
NJ 5 Scott Garrett  *
MN 6 Michelle Bachmann
NV 2 Dean Heller
VA 2 Thelma Drake
CO 4 Marilyn Musgrave
NE 2  Lee Terry *
CA 4 John Doolittle
KY 4 Geoff Davis
KY 2 Ron Lewis
IN 3 Mark Souder
ID 1 Bill Sali
NE 3 Adrian Smith

All Republicans from district Where John Kerry got 45% of the vote or More [listed by State excluding those were a Democrat held the Republican to less than 55%] Their Re-election Percent next to name
DE AL  Mike Castle  57%
FL 10  Bill Young  66%
FL 18  Ileana Ros-Lehtinen 62%
FL 24 Tom Feeney  58%
IA 4  Tom Latham  57%
MI 6  Fred Upton  61%
MN 3 Jim  Ramstad  65%
NJ 2 Frank LoBiondo  65 %
NJ 3 Jim Saxton 59%
NY 3 Peter King 56%
NY 13 Vito Fossella  57%
NY 23  Bob McHugh  63%
OH 3 Mike Turner 59%
OH 12 Pat Tiberi 58%
OH 14  Steve  LaTourette
OH 16 Ralph Regula 59%
PA 18  Tim Murphy 58%
WI 1  Paul Ryan 63%

Others, The members of Congress who are potentially vulnerable for other reasons:

AK AL  Don Young
MT AL  Dennis Rehberg
CO 6  Tom Tancredo
VA 10 Frank Wolf [ possible retirement] 
IL 14  Dennis Hastert[Possible retirement]
CA 26  David Dreier 

(Bumped. – promoted by James L.)

From the Hotline:

In the contest between Joe Courtney (D) and Rep. Rob Simmons, new results are in:

So far today, Simmons (R) has picked up 105 votes. The gap is now about 60 votes with many more towns to compete and report. Spirits in the Simmons camp are high (Hotline sources).

Yikes.  It looks like we’ll know what happens by Wednesday.

Update: The Courant has the current margin at 66 votes.  As Samuel L. Jackson would say, hang on to your butts.

Update II: The AP has Courtney recovering slightly–to a 109 vote lead.

Update III: The Courant shows Simmons picking up a few more votes.  Now Courtney is only 82 votes ahead.  We’ll know the final score in this “stomach-churning” recount tomorrow night.