Month: April 2007

(Bumped. – promoted by James L.)

UPDATE: I just added new numbers for John Doolittle and Charlie Brown in CA-04. It was a pleasant surprise to see Brown pull in nearly $89,000 during the first quarter–a number made more impressive when you stack it against the totals raised by other rematch-seekers (Eric Massa, Darcy Burner, Mary Jo Kilroy, Larry Kissell, et cetera). I also added Ric Keller (FL-08), whose $27K report shouldn’t chase off a strong challenger from emerging to this underperforming incumbent. More new names: Ciro Rodriguez (TX-23), Blumenauer & DeFazio (OR-03 & OR-04), Hayes & Kissell (NC-08), and John McHugh (NY-23).

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Now that the two week deadline for House and Senate campaigns to file their first quarter fundraising reports has passed, let’s round up all reports that we’ve logged here, here, here, and here–and add a whole bunch more for good measure.

First, a few Senate numbers:

District	Candidate	Party	1Q Raised	Cash-on-Hand
CO-Sen	Mark Udall*	D	$324K	$1.54m
LA-Sen	Mary Landrieu	D-inc.	$1.02m	$1.8m
ME-Sen	Tom Allen*	D	$393K	$812K
MN-Sen	Norm Coleman	R-inc.	$1.5m	$2.8m
MN-Sen	Al Franken	D	$1.35m	$1.1m
MT-Sen	Max Baucus	D-inc.	$1.1m	$2.9m
NC-Sen	Elizabeth Dole	R-inc.	$1.7m	$1.5m
NH-Sen	Steve Marchand	D	$100k	(n/a)
NH-Sen	Katrina Swett	D	$462K	$443K
VA-Sen	John Warner	R-inc.	$500	$667K

(*Denotes numbers filed for House campaign accounts, which will be transferred over to their soon to be formed Senate accounts.)

It’s great to see Tom Allen nearly doubling his war chest during the first three months of the year, and it’s even better to know what Mark Udall’s $1.5 million must be doing to the psyche of his Republican competition in Colorado.

Next up, we have lotsa noteworthy new numbers from House incumbents and challengers (but mostly incumbents). All of these figures were taken from FEC’s E-Filing Report Retrieval page:

District	Candidate	Party	1Q Raised	Cash-on-Hand
AZ-01	Rick Renzi	R-inc.	$118K	$81K
AZ-05	Harry Mitchell	D-inc.	$235K	$223K
AZ-08	Gabby Giffords	D-inc.	$320K	$415K
CA-04	John Doolittle	R-inc.	$128K	$91K
CA-04	Charlie Brown	D	$89K	$136K
CA-11	Jerry McNerney	D-inc.	$347K	$297K
CA-11	Richard Pombo	R	-$825	$35K
CO-04	Marilyn Musgrave	R-inc.	$247K	$268K
CT-02	Joe Courtney	D-inc.	$307K	$287K
CT-05	Chris Murphy	D-inc.	$420K	$448K
DE-AL	Mike Castle	R-inc.	$96K	$1.21m
FL-08	Ric Keller	R-inc.	$27K	$153K
FL-10	Bill “C.W.” Young	R-inc.	$15K	$434K
FL-13	Vernon Buchanan	R-inc.	$462K	$280K
FL-13	Christine Jennings	D	$236K	$49K
FL-16	Tim Mahoney	D-inc.	$458K	$439K
FL-22	Ron Klein	D-inc.	$611K	$533K
GA-08	Jim Marshall	D-inc.	$125K	$353K
GA-12	John Barrow	D-inc.	$252K	$506K
IA-04	Tom Latham	R-inc.	$143K	$215K
IA-05	Steve King	R-inc.	$16K	$21K
ID-01	Bill Sali	R-inc.	$87K	$70K
IN-02	Joe Donnelly	D-inc.	$342K	$264K
IN-08	Brad Ellsworth	D-inc.	$228K	$216K
KS-02	Nancy Boyda	D-inc.	$137K	$171K
KS-02	Jim Ryun	R	$171K	$256K
KY-03	John Yarmuth	D-inc.	$304K	$293K
LA-06	Richard Baker	R-inc.	$94K	$66K
MI-07	Tim Walberg	R-inc.	$136K	$160K
MI-09	Joe Knollenberg	R-inc.	$262K	$280K
MN-01	Tim Walz	D-inc.	$187K	$156K
MN-06	Michelle Bachmann	R-inc.	$259K	$200K
MT-AL	Denny Rehberg	R-inc.	$76K	$300K
NC-08	Robin Hayes	R-inc.	$150K	$176K
NC-08	Larry Kissell	D	$12K	$469
NH-01	Carol Shea-Porter	D-inc.	$107K	$128K
NH-01	Jeb Bradley	R-inc.	$7K	$64K
NH-02	Paul Hodes	D-inc.	$248K	$203K
NM-01	Heather Wilson	R-inc.	$274K	$250K
NM-02	Steve Pearce	R-inc.	$114K	$196K
NM-03	Tom Udall	D-inc.	$1,600	$713K
NV-03	Jon Porter	R-inc.	$234K	$235K
NY-13	Vito Fossella	R-inc.	$133K	$83K
NY-19	John Hall	D-inc.	$341K	$342K
NY-20	Kirsten Gillibrand	D-inc.	$668K	$552K
NY-23	John McHugh	R-inc.	$51K	$111K
NY-25	Jim Walsh	R-inc.	$105K	$132K
NY-26	Tom Reynolds	R-inc.	$238K	$356K
NY-29	Randy Kuhl	R-inc.	$93K	$104K
NY-29	Eric Massa	D	$7K	$2K
OH-02	Jean Schmidt	R-inc.	$20K	$17K
OH-15	Deborah Pryce	R-inc.	$167K	$171K
OH-15	Mary Jo Kilroy	D	$23K	$36K
OH-16	Ralph Regula	R-inc.	$1,560	$91K
OH-18	Zack Space	D-inc.	$213K	$180K
OR-03	Earl Blumenauer	D-inc.	$92K	$405K
OR-04	Peter DeFazio	D-inc.	$24K	$106K
PA-04	Jason Altmire	D-inc.	$225K	$225K
PA-06	Jim Gerlach	R-inc.	$213K	$107K
PA-07	Joe Sestak	D-inc.	$444K	$587K
PA-08	Patrick Murphy	D-inc.	$340K	$301K
PA-10	Chris Carney	D-inc.	$248K	$210K
PA-15	Charlie Dent	R-inc.	$181K	$221K
TX-22	Nick Lampson	D-inc.	$219K	$261K
TX-23	Ciro Rodriguez	D-inc.	$221K	$356K
VA-02	Thelma Drake	R-inc.	$227K	$190K
VA-11	Tom Davis	R-inc.	$623K	$833K
WA-08	Dave Reichert	R-inc.	$185K	$48K
WA-08	Darcy Burner	D	$17K	$38K
WI-08	Steve Kagen	D-inc.	$155K	$167K
WY-AL	Barbara Cubin	R-inc.	$18K	$9K

A few quick thoughts:

1) Kirsten Gillibrand has been working overtime to deter any strong Republican opposition from forming against her in New York’s 20th district. Her $668,000 raised is simply awe-inspiring. I haven’t gone through each individual filing, but I bet that, aside from members of the House leadership, she made the largest fundraising splash of 2007.

2) Don’t miss Flordia Republican Bill Young’s measley $15,000 raised. Despite Florida Democrats pouring on the heat over his inaction during the Walter Reed scandal and the DCCC actively recruiting potential challengers in the district, Young, who will be 78 on election day, vowed that he would not bend to what he called a “smear campaign” against him. At that level of fundraising, he sure isn’t preparing for much of a brawl.

3) Tim Walberg’s underwhelming total of $136K certainly won’t deter a top-shelf candidate from giving this Club For Growth stooge a hard challenge next year. MI-07 and FL-10 have got to be in the top five Democratic House targets this cycle.

Anything we missed?

Maybe Tom Udall isn’t going to be running for Senate against Pete Domenici in 2008.  What makes me say that is his latest campaign fundraising numbers.  Sure, the numbers look good.  Udall has $712,941 cash on hand after the end of the first quarter.

But when you begin the quarter with $712,873, it’s not all that impressive.  In other words, he netted something under $100 for his fundraising efforts.  Udall raised just $1600 in the first quarter.  I could go on and on on the numbers (the number of “other income” which includes interest and dividends is nearly four times that of the money he raised), but I think you get the point.

More under the fold.  Crossposted at New Mexico FBIHOP.

This doesn’t look like someone gearing up for an intense Senate run against an incumbent of over thirty years. It looks like a safe incumbent who is willing to stay in the position he is at.

Sure, Udall has more cash on hand than Domenici, but if Udall was serious about going after Domenici — or of even scaring Domenici into retirement — he would have been out trying to put up a big number.  Raising $300,000 would have put Udall at twice the amount of money Domenici has at this point.

I’m disappointed that Udall looks to not be interested in running for Senate.  I’m just not sure which credible New Mexico Democrat will step up to the plate to take on Domenici.

We don’t have a crystal ball.  We never understood Tarot cards.  We can’t read Senator John Warner’s mind.  And we certainly don’t have any informants in the upper ranks of the Virginia Republican Party.

But we do have FEC filings, and they may very well be just as useful to find out whether John Warner is running for another term in the Senate or not.  As you may recall, rumors were floating last month that Warner had signalled his preferred successor, Rep. Tom Davis, to prepare himself to run in his place.  This was amidst news that Mark Warner, the mind-bogglingly popular former Virginia Governor, was considering a Senate run regardless of Warner’s decision.

Well, Tom Davis filed his first quarter fundraising reports today, and money talks:

Tom Davis (R): $623,463 raised; $833k cash-on-hand

$623k almost two years before the next election is an astronomical amount raised for a House campaign.  While I haven’t seen all of the fundraising reports, it could very well be the highest haul of all House members this year.  The next higest fundraising total was a similarly impressive number: $600k for freshman Democrat Ron Klein of Florida.  Klein, however, occupies a bizarrely-drawn district with an insanely expensive media market, so he needed to post a larger-than-average 1Q report to deter any potentially strong challengers.

Stack up Davis’ $623,000 next to Warner’s five Benjamins (yes, that’d be $500 even) raised during the same time frame, and I think we may have some pretty compelling evidence to believe that John Warner is heavily leaning towards retirement.

Let the games begin.

Race Tracker: VA-Sen | VA-11

I wanted to share with everyone a brand new site that we have been putting together over the past couple of months: DC Critters.

This site lists every House and Senate incumbent and the vote totals by county for each race. The site also lists any challenger or potential challenger for the seat in 2008 (the Senate seats that are up in 2010 and 2012 will be updated as candidates announce as well.)

This should be somewhat of a clearinghouse for election data and candidate announcements so we will keep it updated as the candidates begin to announce for 2008.

If you are a data geek like us, this site is pure heaven!

There have been persistent rumors for weeks now that Sen. Orrin Hatch is aggressively seeking to be nominated by President Bush to replace embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The Nation is the most recent publication to report on the possibility that Hatch could be appointed. If Hatch is named that Republican Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman would appoint an interim senator.

http://bluesunbelt.c…

It is no longer a secret that Hatch is moving aggressively to position himself as the replacement for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. With the scandal involving Gonzales’ firing of U.S. Attorneys deepening on a daily basis, there is no longer much question that President Bush is going to need someone new to take charge of the Department of Justice. And Hatch has made little secret of the fact that he thinks he is the man for the job.

http://www.thenation…

For those who fear that the disembodied head of Orrin Hatch suspended in a jar will be serving in the U.S. Senate well into the next century, there is good news: Hatch could be up for Attorney General. Utah’s senior senator denies it, but a fellow senator claims Hatch is openly campaigning for the job vacancy after the inevitable departure of embattled AG Alberto Gonzales.

http://www.slweekly….

A rumor floating in Washington D.C. has Utah Senator Orrin Hatch openly campaigning for the nomination to be Attorney General’s job, should Alberto Gonzales step down.

Hatch says the rumors are pure speculation, and that he would never campaign for the job because it would make doing his current job as Senator more difficult.

That speculation came to light on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” program when Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy said Hatch was indeed campaigning for the position – a charge Hatch denies.

http://www.kcpw.org/…

Wow.  It has been a crazy few days in North Carolina.

It started Wednesday with a tiny little story saying that Rep. Brad Miller was thinking about running against Elizabeth Dole.  That was followed up by matching articles in the Charlotte Observer and Raleigh News & Observer on Thursday.

Later Thursday Public Policy Polling conducted a poll, which showed Brad behind Dole, but only 33 to 44.  While that poll is an amazing result, it shows a lot of room for improvement.  For starters, 26% of Democrats are currently undecided.

Friday saw this poll get a plethora of responses, and even got us into a tie for 10th most likely seat to flip over at the WaPo’s The Fix.

Before I start in with the pitch let me give you two reasons why I think Brad would win this race:

“I think she will be judged on her record as a politician in 2008 and not judged as a celebrity, as she was in 2002,” he said. “And she has simply been a down-the-line partisan Republican on every issue from Iraq to privatizing Social Security to opposing the minimum wage increase and supporting CAFTA [the Central America Free Trade Agreement].”

That is Brad from the Charlotte Observer Article.

“I think the advantage I’d have — and any Democrat would have — is I will never have to be briefed on which state I represent in the Senate.”

That is Brad from the Raleigh N&O Article.

One of the easiest ways for the media to measure support is to see how much money a candidate has raised.  The Obama campaign, even as it took in huge sums of money, attempted to upend this mindset by talking about the amount of people that gave money, and not how much money was given.

We are going to do the same thing.  I am asking each and every one of you to donate to the Draft Brad Miller movement.  But, I am not asking for us to raise a thousand or ten thousand dollars.  I am asking for donors.  I do not care if you give 2 dollars and 8 cents.  I would be thrilled if you gave 20.08 or even 200.80  However, we are all on limited budgets.

I am looking for donors.  I am looking for people to put their money where their mouth is and say, “I want Brad Miller to run for US Senate.”  I hope that everyone is able and willing to give 5 dollars to help convince Brad to run.  He needs to know that the netroots will do everything in our power to launch him into office.

Right now we are at 17 donors.  14 of those donations occured before Brad said he was even thinking about running.

By Monday morning I would like to see us at 50 donations.  I would also like to see us at 100 by the end of the week.  We can do this.  I would be much happier to see us at 100 donations with 800 dollars than I would be to see us at 2000 dollars and only 25 donors. 

Brad will need our help fundraising if he decides to run.  However, even he raises double what Jim Webb did in 2006 online, it will only be a small part of what he needs to win this seat.  He is still going to have to spend a large amount of time raising the funds that will be necessary to beat Dole.

BUT, there is one thing that money can not buy.  Committed Volunteers.  By giving 5 dollars you say to Brad, I believe in you, and I will do everything that I have the ability to do to help you out.  Your hours as a volunteer are worth much more than any amount of money you are legally allowed to give to campaigns.  Tell Brad that you are willing to spend them! 

For those of you who still dont believe Brad can win (as if the poll isnt convincing enough!), please stop by either this diary, or this one.  Thank You.

Let me close with another quote, from fellow blogger momaizo of BlueNC

Won’t it be nice to have a Senator that actually represents North Carolinians?

I can’t believe it, but I just finished the last day of classes for my degree.  While it’s a relief, it’s a bit surreal to be finishing college.

I’m going to be going into semi-bunker mode during the next couple of weeks while I write my exams, but I don’t anticipate that the level of posting will dry up too badly, because I was already keeping up with a hectic schedule for the last couple of weeks to begin with!

So, do tell: what’s on your mind?

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Friday Night Discussion Items:

• NV-Gov: Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons–the next Duke Cunningham?
• Chris Cillizza updates his Senate Line.
• LA-Gov: Ugh. Just ugh. (David)

As you can imagine, I am stunned. 

http://blog.nola.com…

Two potential candidates now are former US Rep. Chris John and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu.

I apologize for the brevity of the diary, but I desire to read online reaction to Foti’s decision.  Here are two sources:

http://blog.nola.com…

ryan at Daily Kingfish also has an analysis:

http://www.dailyking…

Breaux will make his decision in a couple of days.

We shall wait some more.

(Give us numbers, people! – promoted by DavidNYC)

Everywhere at once:

• LA-06:

Richard Baker (R-Inc.): $94k raised; $66k cash-on-hand

Wow, is that ever weak.  Considering that Baker is among the top tier of potential Republican candidates rumored to run against Sen. Mary Landrieu next year, this says a lot.  Is he that unenthusiastic to enter a high-profile slugfest?  In any case, he might want to watch himself: Katrina-related demographic changes have made his R+6.5 district a shade bluer.

• PA-06:

Jim Gerlach (R-inc.): $213k raised; $107k cash-on-hand

Mediocre showing for Gerlach, who should never be considered safe in this tossup district.

• MN-06:

Michelle Bachmann (R-inc.): $259k raised; $200k cash-on-hand

It remains to be seen whether or not Minnesota’s 6th district is suffering a serious case of buyer’s remorse after seeing their newly-elected Representative’s death-grip on President Bush on the House floor, or after her claim that she knows of a “secret plan” by Iran to partition Iraq.

• KS-02:

Nancy Boyda (D-inc): $137k raised; $171k cash-on-hand
Jim Ryun (R): $275k raised; $255k cash-on-hand

Oof, that’s a brutal, but unsurprising showing for Boyda.  Any freshman Democrat who occupies a district that Bush won by 20 points should be bracing for the fight of their lives in 2008.  By opting out of the DCCC’s Fronline incumbent protection program earlier in the year, Rep. Boyda has made it clear that she has other priorities, and other ideas on what it takes to win in a district this red.  Her saving grace could come from a nasty primary fight between Ryun and State Treasurer Lynn Jenkins, who comes from the so-called “moderate” wing of the Kansas GOP.  A bloodied Ryun as the Republican nominee would be her best bet for survival.

• NM-01:

Heather Wilson (R-inc.): $274k raised; $250k cash-on-hand

You’re gonna need every penny, Heather…

• KY-Sen:

Mitch McConnell (R-inc.): $1.7 million+ raised; $4.4 million cash-on-hand

Daaaaamn.  It looks like that blood money raised on his behalf by Bush himself can add up quickly.

• PA-04:

Jason Altmire (D-inc.): $300k raised; $200k+ cash-on-hand

• WA-08:

Darcy Burner (D): $17k raised; $38k cash-on-hand

• NY-29:

Eric Massa (D): $7k raised; $2k cash-on-hand

(Bumpedity bumped. – promoted by James L.)

Could this really be true? Via MyDD, John Warner’s campaign finance report for 1Q 2007 – and the first line is really all you need:

Total Receipts: $500

No, I’m not leaving off a “K” at the end there. That’s five hundred dollars even – five Benjamins exactly. Is this for real? Or did some staffer or FEC clerk screw up?

Fact is, I could believe it. I definitely could. Jon Singer over at MyDD thinks that Warner would have to be literally turning money away in order to raise so little. Perhaps he’s just using his dead presidents to light cigars. (But even then, he’d have to report it! So can that theory.) But John Warner is an old man, and he may well be hanging up his spurs.

In that case, clear the path for Mark Warner. And hang on to your hats in VA-11, a dead-even swing district whose current Rep., Tom Davis, is the likely Republican nominee in the event of a John “Five Franklins” Warner retirement.

Race Tracker: VA-Sen | VA-11