Tag: FL-16

First this:

Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Mahoney has a homestead exemption on a house in Palm Beach Gardens and describes it as his primary residence.

But the address on Mahoney’s voter registration is a barn with a small apartment that he owns in the rural Caloosa area west of Palm Beach Gardens. The barn is in the 16th Congressional District that Mahoney represents; the homesteaded house is just outside Mahoney’s district.

And now this:

The campaign of Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Mahoney, who’s been under fire for registering to vote at a barn with an apartment rather than at his homesteaded primary residence, called Republican challenger Tom Rooney a hypocrite today upon learning that Rooney was registered to vote for five years at the Palm Beach Kennel Club dog track.

While Rooney was in law school and then in the Army in Texas and at West Point from 1998 to 2003, the address on his voter registration was the Kennel Club, which is owned by the Rooney family.

Where would you rather hang your spurs: a BARN down by the RIVER, or a dog track?

The Tarrance Group for Tom Rooney (9/7-8, likely voters):

Tim Mahoney (D-inc): 48

Tom Rooney (R): 41

(MoE: ±4.9%)

Mahoney isn’t out of the woods yet — only 32% say he deserves re-election, compared to 41% who say that it’s time for someone new. Rooney, a former Chicago-area high school principal Pittsburgh Steelers heir, won’t be hurting for the resources he needs to make his case.

SSP currently rates this race as Lean Democratic.

A quick round-up of the results from last night’s congressional primaries:

• AK-Sen (D): Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich won the Democratic Senate nomination with an impressive 91% of the vote, with 98% of precincts reporting.
• AK-Sen (R): Ted Stevens survived his primary against banker Dave Cuddy and Floridian beardo Vic Vickers (and several other also-rans), but only with 63.5% of the vote.
• AK-AL (D): Ethan Berkowitz won the Democratic nomination for the state’s at-large House seat by a 59-41 margin over ’06 candidate Diane Benson. Alaskan Independence Party candidate Don Wright received 5600 votes and will appear on the November ballot.
• AK-AL (R): With 98% of precincts reporting and many absentee ballots still outstanding, Don Young has taken a 145-vote lead over Sean Parnell. This race is heading into “contentious recount territory” real fast.
• FL-08 (D & R): Democrat Alan Grayson upset ’06 nominee Charlie Stuart by a 48-28 margin for the right to take on Ric Keller in November. Keller, meanwhile, barely survived his primary challenge from right-wing radio personality Todd Long, with only 53% of the vote to Long’s 47%.
• FL-09 (D): In a bit of an upset for the DCCC, attorney Bill Mitchell beat out wealthy former Plant City Mayor John Dicks by a 38-33 margin for the nomination against frosh GOP Rep. Gus Bilirakis.
• FL-10 (D): Dunedin Mayor Bob Hackworth dispatched ’06 nominee and Ron Paul acolyte Samm Simpson by a 47-29 margin for the chance to take on longtime GOP Rep. Bill Young. Max Linn, a self-funding candidate who ran for Governor in 2006 on the Reform ticket, only earned 24% of the vote.
• FL-15 (D & R): Physician Stephen Blythe crushed pilot Paul Rancatore by a 65-35 margin for the Democratic nomination for this open seat. Republicans nominated state Sen. Bill Posey with 77% of the vote, and he seems poised to run away with this race come November.
• FL-16 (R): Pittsburgh Steelers heir Ed Tom Rooney won a tight three-way race by a 37-35-28 margin for the GOP nod to face off with Democratic Rep. Tim Mahoney.
• FL-24 (D): Former state Rep. Suzanne Kosmas crushed ’06 nominee Clint Curtis by a 72-28 margin. Kosmas will face ethically-challenged GOP Rep. Tom Feeney in November.

Polls are now closed in the great state of Florida, where we’ll be tracking the results for the Democratic primary in Florida’s 8th District, and the GOP primary in Florida’s 16th. There are also a number of other primaries in FL-09 (D), FL-10 (D), and FL-15 (D), but we won’t be focusing too heavily on those rinky-dink races.

RESULTS: Associated Press | FL Department of State

12:17AM: It’s ROONEY!

11:23PM (David): In FL-16, Rooney now has an 800-vote lead with just 3% of precincts remaining.

11:14PM (David): Don’t touch that dial – we’ll be up and running with an Alaska thread any moment now. Polls close there at midnight eastern time.

11:06PM: 77% in, and Harrell is back up by 80. In the words of the immortal Samuel L. Jackson, hang on to your butts.

10:45PM: 75% in, and Rooney is up by 300. Over in FL-09, with 93% reporting, Bill Mitchell has a 950 vote lead over former Plant City Mayor John Dicks. That’s something of an upset for the DCCC, who had hoped that Dicks could make this an interesting race. Guess not.

10:29PM: 72% in, and Rooney is hodling onto a 210 vote lead.

10:08PM: With 66% in right now, Rooney is up by 200 votes.

9:58PM: Over in FL-24, Suzanne Kosmas has beaten Clint Curtis by 72-28. No doubt that Curtis will soon gather “sworn affidavits” from voters showing that he actually won.

9:51PM: The see-saw continues in FL-16, where Rooney is back up by 140 votes with 54% in.

9:43PM: Harrell is now up by 310 votes with 49% reporting. Keller is holding on to his 2600 vote lead with 97% in.

9:17PM: Looks like we can now officially close the book on FL-08. With 93% of precincts reporting, Grayson has won by a 48-28-17 margin.

9:07PM: It’s even tighter in FL-16 now, with Harrell leading by only 70 votes.

8:46PM: Harrell’s lead is now down to about 180 votes. Looks like Mike Gravel fan Stephen Blythe has easily won the Dem privilege to get beaten by Bill Posey over in FL-15.

8:26PM: Keller has pushed ahead to a 2500 vote lead now, while Harrell is clinging to a 400 vote lead over Rooney with 18% in.

8:21PM: Grayson has really run away with FL-08. The results so far are almost a complete reversal of the 2006 primary. Grayson turned a 2500 vote deficit in Orange County into a 5000 vote lead, and close losses in Marion and Lake counties into blowouts. Looks like shaving off the scary beard helped!

8:15PM: SSP is calling FL-10 for Bob Hackworth, who has wrecked shop against Sammwise Simpson and Max Linn.

8:00PM: Grayson has pushed ahead to a 5800 vote lead, while Keller is still holding on by 1600 votes.

7:51PM: The DoS now shows Harrell up with a 1000-vote lead in FL-16.

7:46PM: According to the DoS, Grayson now has a 20% lead over Stuart, with a cushion of 5600 votes. Ric Keller has now padded his margin over Todd Long to 1,500 votes and 4%. Still, this race is way closer than it should have been.

7:40PM: Keller continues to lead by 1,200 votes, and Rooney is now edging ahead to a 200 vote lead with 10% reporting.

7:35PM ET: Rooney is leading Harrell by one vote with 6% reporting in FL-16, according to the AP.

7:26PM ET: Alan Grayson has a big early lead in FL-08 according to the DoS — 10,922 to Charlie Stuart’s 6,065, with Mike Smith lagging in third. More shockingly, Ric Keller is barely beating his right-wing challenger, Todd Long, by 14,850 to 13,743 among the early votes. Wow.

This is it — primary day in Alaska and Florida. The biggest prize of the day is the AK-AL primary, where scandal-tainted GOP Rep. Don Young is facing a stiff challenge from Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell. If Young can hold off Parnell, Democrats stand a good chance of taking out Young in November; if the primary goes the other way, this will be a tougher but still doable race. Ethan Berkowitz and Diane Benson will face off for the Democratic nod tonight.

And while few expect indicted Sen. Ted Stevens to lose his primary against beardo Vic Vickers and businessman Dave Cuddy, his performance might give us a better reading on the level of discontent with Stevens among the GOP base in Alaska.

In Florida, the hottest action may be in the 8th District, where Charlie Stuart, Mike Smith, and Alan Grayson are vying for the Democratic nomination to take on GOP Rep. Ric Keller, and the 16th District, where the GOP is battling through a three-way primary to take on Democratic Rep. Tim Mahoney.

Care to make any predictions for any of these primaries?

Polls close in Florida at 7pm Eastern, and in Alaska at 12am Eastern. We’ll be rolling with liveblog coverage for both of these states later in the evening, so be sure to check back with us then.

A sampling of some of the latest campaign ads cluttering the airwaves:

The Florida Division of Elections has released their latest tallies of voter registration by congressional district (as of 7/28), and Democrats are posting some big gains since 2006 in targeted races this fall.

Let’s take a look at the numbers in the chart below. In the 2006 column, we have the GOP’s voter registration advantage in each district as of October 10th, 2006. In the next column, we have the most recent spread, followed by the net change. In the last column, we’ve ranked the districts according to the percentage change in the GOP-Dem spread. Take a peek:

The ground is shifting quickly in the Orlando-based 8th District, where GOP Rep. Ric Keller could be facing a real battle to hang onto his seat. The next biggest shift is in South Florida, where Democrats have posted huge registration gains in recent months, and where Democrats Annette Taddeo, Raul Martinez, and Joe Garcia are giving Republican Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balart brothers the fight of their lives.

The biggest black eye for Florida Democrats continues to be the open seat of FL-15, where despite having cut into the GOP’s voter registration advantage by over 9000 votes, Democrats were not able to find a top-tier candidate for the race. Democrats held retiring Rep. Dave Weldon to a 56-44 margin with an unknown candidate in 2006, but it appears that our candidate this year won’t be much stronger: both Democrats in the race have raised under $40K each.

Still, there’s a lot of good news here, and we should see some exciting races in Florida this fall.

In Part I of the August preview, we looked at the 8-5 runoff in Georgia and primaries in Kansas, Michigan, and Missouri, the 8-7 primary in Tennessee, and the 8-12 primary in Colorado.

August 19

WA-03, WA-08: Washington has switched back to a Top 2 primary system, in which candidates of all parties run against each other, and the top two finishers advance to the general election, regardless of party. In the past, the numbers from the all-party primary gave a good indication of the comparative strength of the major party candidates, drawing on a much larger sample than any poll. So all eyes will be on WA-08, where netroots heroine Darcy Burner will be up against Dave Reichert. (There is also at least one other Democrat in the race, Jim Vaughn, running well to Burner’s right. He has no money and isn’t expected to be a factor.)

Netroots goat Brian Baird also faces some intramural competition in WA-03 from peace activist Cheryl Crist. Baird should be reelected without any trouble, although Crist can’t be entirely disregarded, having made some waves at the 3rd District nominating convention (losing to Baird 59 to 24) and holding $8K CoH. The question will be whether those waves amount to more than a ripple in the broader population, or if there’s some discontent outside the activist base in this D+0 district.

WY-AL: Democrat Gary Trauner has been running for this R+19 seat for years now, losing by a small margin in 2006 to Barbara Cubin. Ding dong, she’s gone, but the question is who the GOP candidate to succeed her will be. A Research 2000 poll from May showed Trauner narrowly beating former Secretary of State Cynthia Lummis. Although she’s the best known Republican candidate, she’s not a sure thing; rancher Mark Gordon has more cash and released an internal poll showing him beating Lummis. (Trauner vs. Gordon wasn’t polled.)

August 26

AK-Sen: As recently as a few days ago, this race wasn’t on anyone’s mind. Then, things really took off: first, previously-unknown beardo Vic Vickers announced he’d be dropping $410,000 of his own money into the race. The following day, incumbent Ted Stevens was indicted for failing to report the value of free house renovations. The question, all of a sudden, was no longer whether Mark Begich could squeak by Stevens in the general, but whether Stevens would even survive the primary. Luckily for Uncle Ted, the anti-corruption vote is split a variety of different ways, including not just Vickers but ex-State Rep. Dave Cuddy, who challenged Stevens in the 1996 primary and can also self-finance. The Rasmussen poll from a few days ago didn’t poll the primary matchup, but shows beating any of those three by double-digit margins.

AK-AL: It’s unlikely that anything other than a Ted Stevens indictment could overshadow the battle for the at-large House seat in Alaska. Don Young, just as entrenched and corrupt as Stevens, faces a run through a primary gauntlet before even being able to think about the general. He’s up against Sean Parnell, the Lieutenant Governor from the ‘clean’ camp of the Alaska Republicans led by Governor Sarah Palin. Parnell is also being propped up with big media buys from the Club for Growth, but he’s suddenly pulled a disappearing act in the face of the mini-scandal surrounding the Governor. Another wrinkle in the race, though, is that State Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux is running too and pouring in a lot of her own money, (probably) unintentionally diluting the anti-Young vote. The most recent polling gives a four-point edge for Parnell, flipped from a three-point edge for Young in May.

So who’s going up against Young/Parnell in the general? There’s a primary to determine that, too. Former State House Minority Leader Ethan Berkowitz is favored, although Native activist Diane Benson, who mounted a surprisingly strong challenge to Young in 2006, is very much in the race.

FL-08: The Democratic primary to take on the underwhelming Ric Keller in this R+3 (and rapidly bluening) district has a crowded field. Businessman Charlie Stuart, who held Keller to a 53-46 result in 2006, is the likeliest winner. Lawyer Alan Grayson, who lost the 2006 primary to Stuart, is running to Stuart’s left and has stirred some netroots attention lately with his aggressive advertising, but he may making his move too late. More attorneys (Quoc Ba Van and Mike Smith) round out the field.

Keller can’t be considered entirely safe in his own primary, either: he’s facing a challenge from local radio host and attorney Todd Long, mostly over his breaking his self-imposed term limits pledge (and probably also his backbench ineffectiveness).

FL-15: Coulda, woulda, shoulda. This R+4 seat, open with the retirement of Dave Weldon, is a prime pick-up target for the Democrats. Unfortunately, DCCC recruitment efforts failed, and the two contenders for the nomination, physician Steve Blythe and commercial pilot/AF reserve officer Paul Rancatore, are both sitting on very little cash (less than $10K each). The primary winner could conceivably move this race back onto the map with an outside cash infusion, but this mostly serves to underscore the main need for Dems in Florida: to elect Dems at the legislative and county levels outside of the major cities in order to build a bench and affect redistricting.

FL-16: Three different Republicans try to out-conservative each other for the right to take on Tim Mahoney, a freshman Blue Dog who lucked into this seat via the Mark Foley scandal and seems to have a somewhat tenuous hold on it despite its R+2 status. Palm Beach Gardens councilman Hal Valeche seems to be occupying the religious right corner, lawyer Tom Rooney (nephew of Steelers owner Dan Rooney) is the money conservative, and State Rep. Gayle Harrell tries to grab a little from each column. The big endorsements seem to be going for Rooney, although I don’t know if they’re the kind of endorsements you necessarily want (Tom Feeney, ’06 substitute loser Joe Negron). Without any polling, though, it’s up in the air, and any of the three would be at a disadvantage in the general against Mahoney’s huge war chest.

After a quiet July, we’re back in the thick of primary season in August.

August 5

GA-Sen (Runoff): When we last checked in, the primary for the Democratic nomination for the Georgia Senate race had gone to a runoff, with none of the five candidates clearing 50% in the July 15 primary. Bush-enabling DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones led the field with 41%; ex-State Rep. Jim Martin came in second with 34%. This makes it look like Jones has the edge, but Martin has a good shot at consolidating the anti-Jones votes that were dispersed among the four white candidates. A late June poll shows Martin with a much better shot at beating Saxby Chambliss in the general than Jones has.

KS-02: Nancy Boyda, who won an upset victory in this R+7 district in 2006, has had to sit and wait while Jim Ryun, the former Representative that she beat, and Lynn Jenkins, the Kansas State Treasurer, beat the snot out of each other in the primary. (Ryun was one of the most conservative members of the House; Jenkins is considered a moderate, at least by Kansas standards.) Ryun and Jenkins have raised a fair amount of money, but have had to spend it on each other, and an internal poll from June gives Boyda a sizable edge over each one. Still, this is a Lean D race and Boyda is widely regarded as one of our most endangered incumbents.

MI-13: Representative Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick is in a three-way fight with ex-State Rep. Mary Waters and State Sen. Martha Scott in the Democratic primary. She’s a long-time incumbent, but scandal involving her son, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, is dragging her down, and a poll this week shows her in the lead but only with 33% of the vote.

MO-Gov: Representative Kenny Hulshof and State Treasurer Sarah Steelman are vying for the Republican nomination to succeed Governor Matt Blunt, retiring at the ripe old age of 37 in the face of massive unpopularity. Polling gives the edge to Hulshof in the primary, but either one of them looks like a speed bump in the road for four-term Attorney General Jay Nixon, making this the Dems’ likelist state house pick-up.

MO-09: Kenny Hulshof is leaving behind this open seat in his quest to become Governor, giving the Dems a good shot at picking up this R+7 seat (represented by conservative Dem Harold Volkmer before Hulshof). There are competitive primaries in both parties. On the GOP side, most of the action is between State Rep. Bob Onder and State Tourism Director Blaine Luetkemeyer. (Although the presence of ex-football star Brock Olivo keeps things lively.) Onder is backed by the Club for Growth, Luetkemeyer is backed by Missouri Right to Life, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch couldn’t bring itself to endorse either of them.

On the Dem side, the leading contenders are State Rep. Judy Baker and former State House Speaker Steve Gaw. Marion County Commissioner Lyndon Bode and ex-State Sen. Ken Jacob are also viable candidates. Baker (from the university town of Columbia) seems about as liberal as is viable in this district, Gaw is a bit to her right (although he did come out strongly against retroactive immunity) while the others are pretty Blue Doggish. Baker, who was running before Hulshof dropped out, leads the money chase. In absence of any polls, though, the race on both sides is a big question mark.

August 7

TN-09: Representative Steve Cohen, who picked up Harold Ford’s old Memphis-based seat in 2006, is being challenged by another one of the 2006 contenders, Nikki Tinker. Regrettably, this race has been defined by identity politics: race, gender, and religion, rather than ideology (which is important, as Cohen, the white guy, is quite progressive, while Tinker, the African-American woman, is running to his right). The district’s 60% African-American composition gives an advantage to Tinker, but internal polling in May gave a huge edge to Cohen. At D+18, it’s safe for the Dems in the general.

TN-01, TN-07: Two members of Tennessee’s wingnut patrol face primary challenges from other wingnuts hoping to capitalize on discontent within the wingnut base. In TN-01, freshman Rep. David Davis (who won the last primary with 22% of the vote) faces a rematch with 2006 contender Johnson City mayor Phil Roe. And in TN-07, Marsha Blackburn is up against Shelby County Register of Deeds Tom Leatherwood, who released an internal poll showing him within striking distance. These races don’t seem to be about much other than “my turn,” and Dems aren’t in a place to capitalize in these deep-red districts (R+14 and R+12), but they’re worth keeping an eye on.

August 12

CO-02: In this safe Dem (D+8) district based in Boulder, there’s a heated race to replace soon-to-be-Senator Mark Udall. State Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, Board of Education chairman and Internet entrepreneur Jared Polis, and Colorado Conservation Trust executive director Will Shafroth are all strong candidates. Conventional wisdom seems to mostly focus on Fitz-Gerald and the self-funding Polis, but Shafroth has picked up the major newspaper endorsements. Polis may be a smidge to the left of the other candidates (he’s openly gay and a Responsible Plan endorser).

CO-05: Doug Lamborn is another freshman wingnut who ruffled a lot of feathers in his first election (to the extent that his predecessor, Joel Hefley, refused to endorse him). He faces off against two of his 2006 challengers, former Hefley aide Jeff Crank and ex-AF Maj. Gen. Bentley Rayburn. Crank and Rayburn originally entered into a gentlemen’s agreement where one would drop out based on polling to avoid splitting the anti-Lamborn vote, but that agreement collapsed, leaving Crank and Rayburn attacking each other instead. It’s probably all for naught anyway, as their joint internal poll gives a big edge to Lamborn. Whoever wins has a big edge against Dem Hal Bidlack in this R+16 district.

CO-06: There’s a crowded field of Republicans trying to pick up where the retiring Tom Tancredo leaves off. Mike Coffman, the Colorado Secretary of State, seems to be slight front runner against businessman (and son of long-ago Senator Bill Armstrong) Wil Armstrong, according to Armstrong’s internal polling. Armstrong, despite not having held office, boasts some key endorsements, including retiring Sen. Wayne Allard and Mitt Romney. Two state senators, Ted Harvey and Steve Ward, are also vying for the seat. Local activist Steve Collins will represent the Dems in the general in this R+10 district.

Look for the 8-19 primaries in Washington and Wyoming, and the 8-26 primaries in Alaska and Florida, in Part II.

Just when the GOP is starting to catch some small breaks in the Senate, the situation in the House is rapidly deteriorating. As many had predicted, a growing number of Republican representatives do not find the prospect of life in the minority appealing and are calling it quits. Unfortunately for Republicans, a large majority of them represent competitive districts. The latest retirement were particularly shocking because they were completely unexpected — especially Rep. Ferguson’s in NJ-07. Democrats have golden opportunities to pick-up all of these seats, especially if the environment continues to favor them. But this also means Republicans will be forced to play defense and will not be able to contest that many Democratic-held seats, no matter how vulnerable they might be.

The situation is made much worse for Republicans by the awful financial situation they are in. As of the end of October, the NRCC is still a million in debt, while the DCCC has 27 million dollars. That’s nearly a 30 million dollar gap, which will have a significant impact on next year’s results. The RNC will have to concentrate on the presidential elections and will have a limited ability to help the NRCC out. This means that the DCCC has the ability to play offense in many seats, expand the map, and protect its own seats — while the Republicans will probably end up having to concede some of their open seat and choose which select Democratic seats they are going after.

As a result, many of the freshmen Democrats who looked very vulnerable last year are likely to survive, though the GOP will no doubt be able to claim some of its very conservative seats back, starting with FL-16 and TX-22; they also got some good news this month when the Democratic challenger in MT-AL withdrew, as unpopular Rep. Cubin retired in Wyoming, and as they made Indiana’s 7th district much more competitive. But six of the seven race that are rated more vulnerable this month are Republican, underscoring the steady stream of bad news for the GOP.

I have only written full descriptions of seats that have made news over the past month. For detailed descriptions of the other races, check last month’s rankings. Only a few seats saw their rating change in the past month. I indicated upgraded or downgraded next to them to indicate whether they became more vulnerable or less vulnerable for the incumbent party. Here is the quick run-down:

• Less vulnerable: CT-2, NY-19, WY-AL
  
• More vulnerable: AK-AL, IL-06, IL-11, IN-07, KY-02, NJ-07, OH-05
  

Outlook: Democrats pick-up 7-12 seats.

The October ratings are available here.

Republican seats, Lean take-over (5)

• AZ-1 (Open)
  
• CA-4 (Rep. Doolittle): Republicans might finally be getting what they want here, as some rumors are starting to circulate that ethically (very) challenged Doolittle might be finally ready to announce his retirement. If he does, this race will significantly drop down the rankings; but if Doolittle stays in the race, this is a sure a pick-up for the Democrats’ Brown.
  
• IL-11 (Open, upgraded): The filing deadline has already passed in Illinois (it’s the first in the country), and Republicans did not manage to recruit a top-tier candidate. They are fielding the Mayor of New Lenox and an ex-Bush White House official; both could be good candidates and make the race competitive, but Democrats have to be considered slightly favored since they convinced a reluctant Debbie Halvorson, the State Majority Leader, to run.
  
• NM-1 (Open): 2006 nominee Patricia Madrid announced she would not run again, making Albuquerque councilman Heinrich the likely Democratic nominee. Republicans are confident that their nominee, sheriff White, is strong and will run much stronger than other Republicans would. If that is confirmed by independent indicators and polls, the race will be downgraded, but the fact that the district is naturally competitive (it narrowly went for Kerry in 2004) combined with the sour national environment for Republicans makes Heinrich the early favorite.
  
• OH-15 (Open): The GOP finally got some much needed good news in this race. Democrats had united behind their 2006 nominee Mary Jo Kilroy, but all Republicans who might have made this race competitive declined to run one after another, making this the top pick-up opportunity in the country for Democrats. But the GOP finally convinced a strong candidate who had initially passed on the race to get in: state Senator Steve Strivers. They ensured that the race remains competitive; but given that OH-15 is very tight in the first place, that the environment is toxic for the GOP and that Kilroy came within a few thousand votes of unsitting an entranced incumbent in 2006, Democrats are still favored.
  

Democratic seats, Lean take-over (1)

• FL-16 (Rep. Mahoney)

Republican seats, Toss-up (14)

• AK-AL (Rep. Young, upgraded): A new poll shows just how disastrous Young’s approval rating has become as he is involved in a corruption probe that has claimed many other Republican congressmen. Democrats have a few candidates, and an October poll showed former state Senator Ethan Berkowitz leading Young.
  
• CO-4 (Rep. Musgrave)
  
• CT-4 (Rep. Shays)
  
• IL-10 (Rep. Kirk): A recent primary poll has Dan Seals crushing Footlik in the Democratic primary for the right to take on Republican Kirk, who sits on a  very competitive district. Seals got 47% in 2006 with the national party paying little attention, but he will receive lots of help from the DCCC this time.
  
• MN-03 (Open):
  
• NC-8 (Rep. Hayes)
• NJ-03 (open): In the first New Jersey surprise, Rep. Saxton announced he would not run for re-election in early November giving a major opening to Democrats in a district that Bush won by only 3% in 2004. Democrats were already excited about this race before Saxton’s retirement, and they believe that state Senator John Adler is a very strong candidate who will carry the district. Republicans do have a solid bench here though, and are looking to get state Senator Diane Allen in.
  
• NJ-07 (open): Rep. Ferguson’s retirement was perhaps the biggest surprise of this year’s House cycle. He opens up a very competitive district that Bush won with 49% in 2000 and 53% in 2004. Democrats appear united behind state Assemblywoman Linda Stender who came within a point of beating Ferguson in 2006. The GOP is having a harder time at recruitment, as its three top choices (especially Tom Kean Jr.) announced they would not run within a few days of Ferguson’s retirement. Republicans better find a good candidate fast, or they will be looking at a certain Democratic pick-up.
  
• OH-1 (Rep. Chabot)
  
• OH-16 (Open):
  
• NY-25 (Rep. Walsh)
  
• PA-6 (Rep. Gerlach)
• VA-11 (Rep. Davis): Whether or not Tom Davis retires, this race is sure to be very competitive. Davis’s wife Jeannemarie massively lost a re-election race to the state Senate last month in a contest that cost millions of dollars, proving that Davis will have a very tough fight on his hand next year if he runs again in a region that has been rapidly trending their way. If Davis retires (and he was supposed to run for Senate and leave the seat open until about a month ago), this will automatically jump up to the top of the Democratic pick-up list. Does his wife’s loss make him more or less likely to run again?
  
• WA-8 (Rep. Reichert): Democrats are clearly confident they can take Reichert down in a rematch of the 2006 race against Demcorat Burner. They recently filed an FEC complaint over Reichert’s fundraising, hoping to get the incumbent in ethical trouble. They did not manage to tie him quite enough with the GOP brand in 2006.
  

Democratic seats, Toss-up (11)

• CA-11 (Rep. McNerney)
• GA-8 (Rep. Marshall)
• IL-8 (Rep. Bean)
• IN-7 (Rep. Carson, upgraded): This is a very Democratic district, that Kerry carried with 58%. But Rep. Carson has had health problems and has rarely been in the House in the past few years — nor has she campaigned very actively. Her 2006 re-election was surprisingly narrow, and Republicans have recruited state Rep. Jon Elrod, who they believe will be the ideal candidate to take down Carson. This race could be an unlikely pick-up for the GOP if Carson runs for re-election; if she retires, it could be easier for Democrats to hold.
  
• IN-09 (Rep. Hill): Rep. Hill and Republican Sodrel are running against each other for the fourth straight time. Voters know both of them at this point, and there is little they can do this early to change the dynamics.
  
• KS-2 (Rep. Boyda)
  
• NH-1 (Rep. Shea-Porter): Republicans are preparing for a primary between ousted 2006 congressman Bradley and the former HHS commissioner; but if Shea-Porter won last year with no money and no national attention, how vulnerable could she be now as an incumbent.
  
• OH-18 (Rep. Space)
  
• PA-4 (Rep. Altmire)
  
• PA-10 (Rep. Carney)
  
• TX-22 (Rep. Lampson): This race is deemed by many the most vulnerable seat held by a Democrat. But the strongest Republicans passed on the race, giving at least some pause to those who have long predicted Lampson is a one-timer. They might very well be right, but we shall wait until the GOP field yields its nominee to reassess the situation.

The race of the rankings, including all the “lean retention” and “potentially competitive” rated seats, is available here, at Campaign Diaries.