Which Republican crumb-bum do you most want to see go down in flames in 2008?
Also, anyone at YearlyKos right now? Wish I could've made it this year, but Swing State Project godfather and netroots hero DavidNYC is proudly waving the site's banner in Chicago. Did anyone get a chance to catch one of his panels on local blogging today?
I enjoyed compiling the figures for this diary so much last month, that I’ve decided to turn our tracking of the twenty hottest House challengers on ActBlue.com into a monthly series.
Here’s the August installment:
| State | CD | Candidate | Actblue Total | Contributions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CO | 2 | Jared Polis | $137,304 | 321 |
| MA | 5 | Niki Tsongas | $136,852 | 406 |
| MA | 5 | Jamie Eldridge | $113,154 | 694 |
| ME | 1 | Chellie Pingree | $103,785 | 247 |
| CA | 26 | Russ Warner | $74,840 | 232 |
| IL | 10 | Dan Seals | $71,073 | 234 |
| MO | 6 | Kay Barnes | $69,949 | 102 |
| NY | 29 | Eric Massa | $64,507 | 755 |
| AZ | 3 | Bob Lord | $59,440 | 163 |
| TX | 10 | Dan Grant | $58,220 | 145 |
| NY | 26 | Jon Powers | $54,117 | 288 |
| FL | 8 | Mike Smith | $49,825 | 73 |
| CA | 4 | Charlie Brown | $46,485 | 990 |
| NM | 1 | Martin Heinrich | $42,744 | 205 |
| MD | 4 | Donna Edwards | $36,828 | 612 |
| NC | 8 | Larry Kissell | $32,282 | 308 |
| CT | 4 | Jim Himes | $27,759 | 76 |
| IL | 4 | Ricardo Muñoz | $25,590 | 67 |
| IA | 4 | Selden Spencer | $18,855 | 123 |
| MT | AL | Bill Kennedy | $17,866 | 71 |
Certainly an exciting group of challengers. One guy I’ll be keeping my eye on his rematch candidate Selden Spencer, who raised under $500K in is 2006 challenge to Republican Rep. Tom Latham, which he lost by a 57-43 margin. Let’s see what he can do with an earlier start. (In the second quarter, he raised $88K.)
PS: Anyone wanna help put Charlie Brown over the top to 1000 contributions?
Former Republican Rep. Charlie Bass’ service in Congress can be called many things (“disingenuous” and “Bush-enabling” being my top two), but you've gotta give the Bassmaster some credit where credit is due for some straight-up honesty:
Charlie Bass, who lost to Hodes last year after serving five terms, isn't sounding like a candidate for a rematch.
“Life after Congress is not bad,” said Bass, now executive director of the Republican Main Street Partnership, a Washington-based organization focused on getting moderate Republicans elected.
“I haven't ruled anything out, but, frankly, I think that if the election were held today, the outcome might be worse for me than it was last November. I'm not making any decisions at this point.” (emphasis added)
Couldn’t have said it any better myself, Charles.
(H/T: Dean Barker)
On Monday, the Run Andrew Run draft blog informed us that Oklahoma Democratic state Senator Andrew Rice was very likely to challenge crumb-bum extraordinaire Jim Inhofe in the state's 2008 U.S. Senate election:
After a few weeks on the road in Oklahoma and a whirlwind of meetings in Washington, D.C., it now seems likely State Senator Andrew Rice will soon be filing papers to challenge U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe in the 2008 election.
Since winning election to the State Senate from a diverse, inner-OKC district, Rice has already proven to be a skilled consensus builder who gets results. He offers a stark contrast to the right-wing curmudgeon, Jim Inhofe.
Rice still says he will make a formal announcement after Labor Day but fundraising prospects have surpassed his expectations and sources close to him say he may be “all in” within the next 10 days. He has received encouragement on this site and in meetings throughout the state. We also hear the DSCC now views Rice as a potential upset challenger in the style of a Jim Webb or a Jon Tester.
Rice lost a brother in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and believes that Bush and Inhofe took their eye off the ball by waging war in Iraq while Al Quaeda rebuilt its global terror network. Inhofe, who once called global warming a “hoax,” boasts of being “one of the last true conservatives left in the Senate”.
Earlier today, DailyKos diarist gypsy shared with us a letter that Rice is apparently distributing to his friends and supporters:
Andrew Rice for U.S. Senate
P.O. Box 1027
Oklahoma City, OK 73102
August 2, 2007
Dear Friends,While I have deliberated during these past few months, I have also encouraged other, more widely-known Democrats to take up the challenge. To date, none has done so. I have also thoroughly discussed the pros and cons of running with my wife Apple and my family.
Today, I want you to know that I have decided to run and that I intend to win!
I want you to be assured that I will not have to vacate my State Senate seat in order to run and I will continue to make myself accessible and accountable to my constituents in Senate District 46.
I believe Oklahomans deserve a choice for U.S. Senate in 2008.
Washington is paralyzed by partisan bickering, and Jim Inhofe may be one of the most partisan Senators of all. He even boasts of being the “most conservative” Senator. In contrast, as a member in the evenly divided Oklahoma Senate, I have proven that I can work with both Republicans and Democrats to get results for our state.
Divisive politics is harming our country. That’s not my style. I have already met many Oklahomans from across the state. They tell me that Washington no longer listens to them.
This will be a tough and expensive race. In fact, I will need to raise several million dollars just to compete against Inhofe and the National Republicans who will stop at nothing to help him extend his 40-year career in elective politics. […]
Despite having a very lackluster approval rating for a senior senator in his third term (the last time that SUSA polled this race in November, he was at a 46% approval), more prominent names in Oklahoma’s Democratic cycles (and there are a few, including Gov. Brad Henry and four-term Attorney General Drew Edmondson) have not jumped at the chance to challenge Inhofe. Perhaps the hesitancy stems from watching former Democratic Rep. Brad Carson’s surprisingly wide loss (42%-53%) in the 2004 open seat race against Tom Coburn–a candidate who nicely complements Inhofe’s nuttiness in the Senate.
There’s no doubt that Rice, a young progressive with a compelling biography, will face a tough climb in the state, especially in a Presidential year when Duncan Hunter carries the state by a 30-point margin (kidding). Still, Inhofe is older, he has a tendency to say stupid shit, and the dynamic of a fresh face versus a doddery loon could be fun to watch, given a reasonable amount of funding in Rice’s campaign coffers.
With Jeff Merkley in Oregon and now Andrew Rice in Oklahoma, 2008’s Senate races are beginning to take more shape as we approach the fall.
On the web: Andrew Rice for Oklahoma (I’m assuming that this will be updated once Rice makes his official announcement)
What’s for dinner?
Hungry yet? In the last couple months, I know many of us have thought twice while picking our food for our families at the supermarket, and we should. The CDC estimates that 76 million Americans suffer from foodborne illnesses every year, 325,000 are hospitalized, and 5,000 die.
While the mainstream media is happy to tell the public of the great threats to their health and safety, scaring them stiff into watching the evening news, they rarely ask why the flood of dangerous imports is happening and of our leaders, what can be done to stop it.
A new report by Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch offers an answer to those questions. The report called “Trade Deficit in Food Safety: Proposed NAFTA Expansions Replicate Limits on U.S. Food Safety Policy that Are Contributing to Unsafe Food Imports” draws the link between the Bush administration’s damaging trade policies and our food safety problems.
Our food imports have increased sharply, almost doubling in value, since NAFTA and the WTO passed in the mid-‘90s. Seafood imports alone have increased 65 percent. For the first time in 2005, the United States, formerly known as the world’s bread basket, became a net food importer, with a food deficit of nearly $370 million.
There may not be anything inherently wrong with increasing the food imports into our country, but there is something inherently dangerous about doing so when our ability to inspect those imports is decreasing even more sharply than our increase in imports. In 1992, the FDA inspected 8% of all the food imports under its jurisdiction. In 2006, the inspection rate is now less than one percent, a staggering .6%.
NAFTA started this trend, and the Bush administration’s policy of free-trade-at-any-cost has made it worse. Under Bush, the U.S. has already expanded NAFTA to Central America and is now pushing for passage of NAFTA-expansion deals to Peru, Panama, Colombia, and South Korea.
The real problem is that these so-called “trade” agreements do more than increase trade of goods between nations. Trade rules incorporated into the proposed FTAs with Peru, Panama, Colombia and South Korea limit food safety standards and border inspection. The agreements require the United States to rely on foreign regulatory structures and foreign safety inspectors to ensure that food imports are safe. The agreements require that the U.S. food safety regulators treat imported food the same as domestically produced food, even though more intensive inspection of imported goods is needed to compensate for often weak domestic regulatory systems in some exporting nations.
Last November, Democrats won a much-needed and much-deserved majority in Congress, and trade issues played no small part in helping usher in new leadership. 37 supporters of our failed trade policy lost their seats to Democrats campaigning on fair trade. The food safety issue is just one aspect of the Bush administration’s trade policy that has hurt Americans, but it’s also an issue that Democrats can start fixing right now to make a real difference in people’s lives. While several Democratic leaders have proposed legislation to help mend our food safety regulatory system, none of those steps will suffice if our leaders keep passing these Bush administration trade deals. The first step that Democrats can take is to vote “no” to NAFTA expansions to Peru, Panama, Colombia, and South Korea.
To read the report, sign a petition or find out what you can do to protect yourself from dangerous imports visit http://www.citizen.org/trade/food/ or read our blog, http://www.eyesontrade.org for continuing coverage of the unsafe food import crisis.
According to Roll Call (subscription required), the NRCC is getting giddy over the candidacy of state Senator Nick Jordan against 5th-term Democratic Rep. Dennis Moore:
House Republicans, long stymied by Rep. Dennis Moore (D) in Kansas’ GOP-leaning 3rd district, think they might have recruited the perfect candidate — state Sen. Nick Jordan (R) — to flip the seat back to the GOP.
In Washington, D.C., last week to participate in the National Republican Congressional Committee’s candidate school, Jordan is described as having the support of both the moderate and conservative wings of the GOP in the Jayhawk State’s 3rd district.
If true, this could prove crucial for a Jordan victory. That’s because Moore first won the suburban eastern Kansas district in 1998 — and has held it since — largely because Republicans have failed to unify behind their nominee in each of the past five elections.
“Both moderates and conservatives are pushing [Jordan] to run,” said a knowledgeable Republican operative based in Kansas. “This is the guy we’ve been waiting for.”
Jordan said in a brief interview late last week that he is “very likely” to run for Congress in 2008 and that he probably would announce his intentions sometime in August. […]
Republicans in D.C. and Kansas claim that Jordan’s position on social issues and his record on economic matters appeal jointly to the conservative and moderate wings of 3rd district Republicans. The two factions have warred with each other in the 3rd district at least since 1998 when Moore defeated Vince Snowbarger (R) for the seat — a split that reflects an intraparty rift plaguing the Kansas GOP statewide since the early 1990s.
Jordan is socially conservative, opposing both abortion rights and embryonic stem-cell research — which makes the conservatives happy. But he also has a lengthy record of championing business and economic development projects — and this makes the moderates happy.
It’s hard to blame Republicans for trying at an R+4.2 seat in a Presidential year, but I’m having a hard time seeing Moore as a particularly vulnerable incumbent, especially after looking at his steadily improving electoral track record:
| Year | Moore (%) | Republican (%) |
|---|---|---|
| 1998 | 52 | 48 |
| 2000 | 50 | 47 |
| 2002 | 50 | 47 |
| 2004 | 55 | 43 |
| 2006 | 64 | 34 |
With a Presidential year bringing the base to the polls (we assume) and a more credible challenger than novice Chuck Ahner, who Moore beat by 30 points last year, Republicans may be able to hold the incumbent to a level more similar to his 2004 result than his 2006 blow out. Nick Smith may be a good recruit for Tom Cole’s NRCC (assuming he makes his bid final), but he strikes me as three or four cycles too late to catch Moore in a particularly vulnerable position.
Confirming weeks of speculation, Iraq War vet Eric Egland announced today that he will challenge corrupt Rep. John Doolitte in the 2008 Republican primary. Doolittle’s campaign team, however, is maintaining a “more the merrier” attitude:
Egland is the first to flatly declare for the Republican primary. Auburn City Councilman Mike Holmes also is exploring a primary run for Doolittle’s seat, and he said Monday he is moving closer to entering the race.Doolittle’s campaign consultant, Richard Temple, said the congressman is not worried, and welcomed the competition.
“In this case, the more candidates the better,” said Temple. He said that because the congressman has a strong base of support, multiple opponents will only divide the disenchanted.
“Neither of them can beat him,” Temple said.
Temple makes a strong point, and 4th district Republicans interested in retaining this seat in the red column would be best served to confine Doolittle to a head-to-head match up. (Holmes, as you may recall, collected less than 33% in the 2006 primary after spending just over $90,000 on the race.) Conversely, Blue Majority candidate Charlie Brown’s best shot is if a badly wounded Doolittle crawls out of a three or four-way primary with a barely active pulse… assuming that he hasn’t resigned in disgrace by that point.
If Bob Novak is correct, then John Sununu must be looking for a new pair of pants. The Prince of Darkness is reporting that Former Governor Jeanne Shaheen is very likely to enter the Senate race.
New Hampshire: Former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen (D) and her husband are telling supporters that she there is about a 70 percent chance that she will run for Senate against Sen. John Sununu (R). There is no need for her to move too quickly, since the state is currently consumed with presidential politics, and she already has universal name recognition there.
I hope she announces soon so the other canddiates can decide what to do. Until Shaheen confirms this herself, I wil continue to support Steve Marchand. Either way, New Hampshire is looking blue in 2008.
With the recent decision of Republican Ray LaHood of Illinois not to seek re-election in 2008, Democrats hoped to put up a strong challenge for this open seat. With a PVI of R+5.5, such a district would require an especially strong challenger in order to overcome the area's Republican lean. The DCCC hoped that man would be state Senator John Sullivan, who sought the Democratic nomination in the neighboring 17th district against Phil Hare in 2006 after Rep. Lane Evans' retirement.
According to CQ Politics, after weeks of decision-making, Sullivan has decided to seek re-election for his state Senate seat instead:
Sullivan will instead seek re-election next year to the Illinois Senate, where he has held a seat since 2003. He noted in a statement that he serves in that body as chairman of the Agriculture & Conservation Committee and as Majority Caucus Whip.“I can better serve my constituents in a leadership position as one of 59 state senators than as a freshman in the U.S. House with its 435 members,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan would have been a serious candidate for the seat, even though his state Senate district does not take in the 18th District’s population centers in and around Peoria and Springfield.
Clearly a setback for the DCCC, who would like to put as many Republican seats in play as possible. From my observation, Sullivan was seen as the most obvious choice for this fight in a district where the Democratic bench isn't as well-stocked as in other areas of Illinois. Could another hero emerge?
Twenty-First Century Democrats is in the middle of our Annual Youth Leadership Speakers Series. We put on this program in order to provide a chance for the interns who flood Washington DC during the summer to hear real progressive leaders. These young people come to DC with high idealism and a desire to change the world, yet too often they only find cynicism and complacency.
At a time when bad news about the war dominates public dialogue, it has been energizing to hear from progressive leaders with integrity and courage. We encourage our speakers to talk about big ideas and their bold vision in America. One of our endorsed candidates from 2006, freshman Representative Chris Murphy (D-CT), really cut to the heart of why we don’t hear big ideas any more, why as a public we aren’t inspired. It really made me think.
“I have this feeling in general that today there are so many politicians that are so afraid to go out there and talk about big ideas, right, I mean we have become so addicted to incremental change and so scared of failure that nobody really talks about change in revolutionary terms any longer.”
Chris went on to talk about what I think is one of the major barriers to seeing real leaders talk about big ideas – money in politics.
“What is happening is that the bar to becoming a candidate for office, certainly for federal office in Congress, but also to a certain extent even to run for local office is not how hard you’re going to work, is not how many good ideas you have, is not how committed you are to public service. It’s one simple question. Can you or can you not raise the money?”
Chris first ran for public office at 24, barely older than many of the people in the room. But it is near impossible to repeat that kind of success with out deep pockets or pandering to big money. Nevertheless, hearing this freshman congressman and his colleagues in the House talk about big ideas – like Chris’ work to make fundamental changes in the way campaigns are financed and pass comprehensive ethics reform was important to me and the young people who gathered around.
More than anything, though, I am excited by what I hear from the interns that are attending the series. These are the young people making things happen right now, on the ground. They are the campaign volunteers of today and the leaders of tomorrow.
“It was a great event. My only regret is that we didn’t have even more time to spend with the representatives. – Kendra Jackson (intern with Rep. Bob Filner)
“Nice to have the opportunity to hear from congressmen, on leadership and other issues that affect youth today.” – Ann Shikany (Cincinnati, Ohio)
“It was really encouraging to hear from current congressional leaders that were young when they first ran for office.” – Shannon Goldberg (intern with Rep. David Price)
Chris Murphy was not the only speaker in our series who connected with our group:
Rep. Brian Baird on what guides him – “Something we never talk about in politics is character… character is the embodiment of values, putting values into action. And those values would be honesty, integrity and responsibility.”
Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton on her tireless effort to obtain a vote for the people of DC in Congress – “Eleanor Holmes Norton has a vision all right, it is not to make the whole world perfect but to make our country more perfect by making the citizens who live in our home capitol first class citizens.”
Rep. Henry Waxman on encouraging people to never give up on what they believe – “I hope you will leave with a renewed sense of commitment to fight for these ideas…fight for things that are more than what is in your own self interest but in the interest of all us.”
This is why Twenty-First Century Democrats does more than just endorse candidates with a “D” next to their name. We find real leaders, with big ideas and we help them get elected with boots on the ground field work, trainings, and strategic advice.
This is why we recently made Darcy Burner our first endorsement for 2008. Within days we will announce the full list of our first round of candidate endorsements. We had an overwhelming response to our call for applications and we found outstanding candidates running for all types of office. Our goal is help them win election and provide leadership to enact bold policies rather than incremental changes.
This Thursday we have another great line up of progressive leaders: Senator Sherrod Brown, Senator Tom Harkin, Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Jon Tester and Representative Paul Hodes.
If you haven’t lately, stop by the 21st Century Democrats web site where we’ll be adding more information about the speaker series as well as announcements about upcoming endorsements and events. I'll be at YearlyKos this week, and I look forward to seeing everyone there. We’re excited about the 2008 election and we hope to see you on the campaign trail.