Sen. Mike Enzi announced Saturday that he is running for a third term.
There had been speculation that Enzi would not seek re-election after he was passed over for a seat on the powerful Senate Finance Committee earlier this year.
Enzi made his announcement at the Gillette City Hall. He spent more than 10 minutes speaking about his achievements and thanking his supporters before he made clear that he is running.
I’m mildly surprised, considering that Enzi’s had a pretty lousy time lately in the Senate, getting passed over for an assignment on the Finance Committee by his GOP colleagues.
These numbers are awfully similar to the last poll of this race by the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics — Thompson seems to have a small edge in the primary, while both potential November match-ups are dead heats.
Feel free to comment, share opinions. There are a lot more house races and it’s harder to draw clear distinctions when ranking them compared to ranking the US Senate races. I am posting this to get feedback, and to compare information.
I also don’t want the diary to be too long, so I’m not going to post financial information on here, but I will link SSP’s two diaries.
We may be engaged in an uphill fight here in Kentucky’s First Congressional District, but hey, we ARE fighting!! It appears that our opponent, Ed Whitfield realizes he has a battle in front of him. He knows Democrats here have no stomach for conceding this district yet again. His actions are showing, he may very well be feeling the heat!!
Shortly after this speech:
Exxon Eddie started releasing statements about all the good he is doing for the Citizens of this district. He even got a website:
Yes, Exxon Eddie has been trying to clean up his record of rubber-stamping every failed policy thought of in the distorted world of George W. Bush. Here at Ryan for Kentucky, we live with the consequences of Ed Whitfield as our Representative for far to long to buy it. Our leader, Heather Ryan sure doesn’t. She recently released this statement, ripping Whitfield for his failed leadership for the people of this district:
As of late, Republican Congressman Ed Whitfield’s staff has felt the need to press release every action that the “Absentee Representative” makes.
Within the past 48 hours, they expressed his desire to cowtow to the Bush Administration by cutting funding for farm subsidy programs, which include Food Stamp benefits for the poor, and just a few hours later, released Mr. Whitfield’s support of legislation that would allow a credit for the cost of gasoline when we file taxes in 2009.
Being a mother, I tend to be a “giver”, so certainly, I am happy to assist Mr. Whitfield with his apparent need to connect to middle class. Putting food on the table, the ability to get to and from work and buying the prescriptions for which our families rely are all top priorities for average folk, like us.
These are all pressing issues that must be addressed NOW, not next year when Mr. Whitfield proposes we should receive a “rebate” on the price of gas, assuming we all save our $4.00 a gallon receipts from Exxon. Of course, he does not know from where the money for said rebate will materialize and I have yet to read about what he plans to do about the rising cost of everything else, including food, clothing, airline tickets and the like as a result of the soaring price of gas.
Perhaps Mr. Whitfield might entertain a “Windfall Profits” tax on oil companies such as Exxon and Mobile during this time of their blatant war profiteering?
But then again, Exxon and Mobile are but a few major donors to his re-election campaign and he owns in the arena of $250,000 in Exxon stock alone. It does not financially benefit him or his “friends” to impose a tax on the companies who have waged an all out assault on the poor and middle class, so don’t expect a windfall tax on the horizon as long as Whitfield is at the helm.
When an elitist Republican proposes that we should strip funding for crumbling infrastructure as a solution to Middle Class pain, we should be incensed and insulted. I hope the voters remember this pandering to the oil companies on November 4th,
I couldn’t agree with her more, and I am proud to have this young lady running for Congress in my district. She is just the sort of Democrat we need in the House, she is proud of our ideals and not afraid to run on and fight for them. If we get the resources to get her message out there, we win and expand our Congressional majorities. Better yet, we do it with a grassroots “fighting Democrat” who is beholden to us, and noone else.
Here she is talking about the promise of Renewable Energy:
Now, we have already been able to raise some funds. However, we are facing an opponent with a cool mil in Special Interest money in the bank to run on. If we can come up with just a fraction of that we win, it just takes getting the sorry record of Whitfield out to the citizens of our district and introducing them to Heather.
With that in mind I started AmericansforRyan to raise $1500 for Heather by May 20, Kentucky’s primary. Now, she is unopposed in that primary, but I want her to have funds to hit the ground running early in the General, as that could be key to victory. I am over halfway to my goal, and have decided to up the ante. I will take the names of everyone that donates between now and May 20 on my page, and put them in a drawing. To the winning name I will send these two pinback buttons from the 1960 campaign of JFK:
Help us make history, and have a chance to own a piece of Democratic history!!
Research 2000 for KCCI and KCRG (likely voters, 4/21-23):
Leonard Boswell (D-inc): 52
Ed Fallon (D): 28
Undecided: 20
(MoE: ±5%)
There’s still over a month to go to Iowa’s June 3rd primary, but Boswell has a strong lead so far. With only $20K cash-on-hand at the start of the month, it looks doubtful that Fallon has the resources he needs to topple Boswell this year.
MS-01: $260,000 on media buys against Democrat Travis Childers, and $15,000 on producing the ads.
LA-06: $53,000 on direct mail against Democrat Don Cazayoux, and $8800 on another poll in this district.
The new expenditures in MS-01 add up to $570,518 spent by the NRCC, with $276,588 of that spent during the runoff period. The NRCC’s total bill in LA-06 is $312,206 — but they’ve also been aided by huge infusions of cash by Freedom’s Watch and the Club For Growth.
Update: The DCCC just posted a few expenditures of their own, including $2900 on field organizing, $16K on direct mail, and $9K on ad production in LA-06. They also spent $13K on media production in MS-01.
The deadline for congressional candidates in Indiana and North Carolina to file their extended first quarter fundraising reports passed last night. Let’s take a look at the notable numbers (all figures are in the thousands):
A few notes:
Andre Carson’s numbers cover 2/21-4/16, while Jon Elrod’s cover 2/21-3/31.
All other filings cover the period from 1/1-4/16.
Nels Ackerson and Michael Montagano continue to impress in deep red districts (R+17.5 and R+16.3, respectively). Daniel Johnson, a Democrat running against the odious Patrick McHenry, is also raising a very respectable amount of money. Democrats truly are blessed with a deep second tier of challengers this year.
On another note, Larry Kissell’s slow fundraising pace ($106K raised, $131K cash on hand) continues to be weak, despite his presence on the DCCC’s Red to Blue program. Kissell needs to find money fast, because he won’t have the benefit of a surprise attack this cycle. For a top tier race, we need to be doing better here.
The House race in Georgia’s 12th district just got a lot more interesting: after winning by 800-some votes in 2006, it was looking like John Barrow would get an almost-free ride against a third-tier GOP challenger with little money. However, Barrow is now getting a plausible challenge… in the primary. State Senator Regina Thomas is running against him.
Barrow is a Blue Dog, and has one of the most conservative records among House Democrats, by any measure: his Progressive Punch score for the 07-08 session is currently 67.80%, the lowest of any Dem. His Progressive Punch Chips are Down score is only 31.22%, 3rd worst of any Dem. National Journal’s score for him for the 2007 session was 45.8, which is also 3rd worst of the Dems, and actually more conservative than three Republicans. But unlike Blue Dogs with similar track records, who sit in districts that are R+10 or worse, Barrow is in a Democratic-leaning district (D+2). He’s one of the most glaring instances of a rep out of his step with his district’s lean.
Regina Thomas (no campaign site yet; this is her senate site) has been a state senator since 2000, representing part of Savannah. The 12th is bookended by the African-American parts of Augusta and Savannah, and contains a lot of rural territory in between.
The district is 44% African-American, so in all likelihood African-Americans make up well more than half of the Democratic electorate. (Thomas is African-American; Barrow is white.) Unlike Barrow, for starters, she’s opposed to the war in Iraq and pro-choice.
Ordinarily, I’m kind of lukewarm about running primary challenges against Blue Dogs and their ilk, but this race is something of a unique opportunity: perhaps the single most egregious example of a very conservative Dem in a Dem-leaning district, a viable challenger who already represents a sizable portion of the district as state senator, and unlike Lipinski vs. Pera, no urban machine propping up the incumbent. Thomas lacks two main things: probably very few people in the rest of the district (like Augusta, which will be key) know who she is… and money (as far as I can tell, she has none).
We had a good haul yesterday in our efforts to “max out” to Travis Childers: twelve donations, $656 raised. That puts us about a quarter of the way toward our $2,300 goal.
What I’d like to see SSP do today is increase our number of donors by half – so, six more contributions by the end of the day. I usually prefer donor goals rather than dollar goals, but with the run-off less than three weeks away, it’s really the almighty dollar (rather than building up donor lists) that matters most.
But for today, at least, let’s focus on donations, not total amounts raised. After all, if Childers wins next month, he’ll still have a fierce race on his hands come November – and a big list of small donors will be invaluable. So please consider contributing today, no matter the size. The DCCC is stepping up, and so that means we need to put our money where are mouths are, too.
Update (Trent):Perhaps we underestimated y’all; we’ve already met today’s fundraising goal and it’s not even lunchtime. We’ve now raised over $900 from 18 folks; let’s try to make it to $1000 by day’s end. Every little bit helps get us closer to a Democratic majority in Mississippi’s congressional delegation (how sweet that would be!).
Update (Trent):Once again we’ve cleared the bar, having raised over $1000 for Travis Childers in little more than a day. Let’s all give ourselves a pat on the back, but we’ve got a ways to go before reaching our ultimate goal of $2300, the equivalent of one maxed-out contribution.
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