This is a quick reminder that the runoff election for U.S. Senate in Georgia will be on December 2, and there are many ways you can help Democrat Jim Martin beat Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss.
Depending on how the recount in Minnesota turns out, which won’t be resolved for a few weeks, Martin could be the key to getting Democrats to that magic filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
Have you started linking to Saxby Chambliss yet? The more people who do, the higher it will appear in search engine rankings. If we can push it into the first ten results for Saxby Chambliss in Georgia, then it will result in a lot of excellent voter contacts. Everyone who encounters the site will be a voter looking for more information on Saxby Chambliss, and we can show them this great website made by an enterprising activist.
Log on to the various blogs where you comment, and click on your user page. Then click “profile.” There should be an area where you can write text that will be your “signature,” attached to all comments you make.
You want to embed a link to the Saxby Chambliss website. Here is what I did:
Remember that there are many ways to volunteer besides knocking on strangers’ doors and calling strangers on the phone. You can help sort literature for the canvassers. You can help stuff envelopes. You can bring a home-made meal to the campaign office for the staff and other volunteers. I heard of one woman in Iowa who used to do laundry for field organizers renting apartments without washing machines. Every hour that staffer doesn’t have to spend in a laundromat is an hour he or she can be getting out the vote for Jim Martin.
5. Ask some friends or relatives to make a campaign contribution. Explain to them that this race will affect the Republicans’ ability to obstruct the change we need.
Please feel free to suggest other ways activists can help Martin bring this race home.
UPDATE: MyDD commenter ATL Dem made a fantastic suggestion:
In the meantime, I’m also running this Google ad to assist in desmoinesdem’s project No. 2:
Hi from Saxby Chambliss
Read about my work in D.C.
Too bad it’s not for you!
saxby-chambliss.com
It’s getting monster response — over 15 percent of people searching for “Saxby Chambliss” are clicking it. The bad thing about that is that my $10 a day budget gets used up pretty fast, so if you’re of a mind to, go to Google and click on “Advertising Programs” and set up another ad.
We’ve had ten days to decompress from the election. It’s time for a little self-promotion and self-criticism.
What did you predict accurately during the past campaign, and what did you get completely wrong?
The ground rules for this thread are as follows:
1. This is about your own forecasting skills. Do not post a comment solely to mock someone else’s idiocy.
2. You are not allowed to boast about something you got right without owning up to at least one thing you got wrong.
3. For maximum bragging rights, include a link to a comment or diary containing your accurate prediction. Links are not required, though.
I’ll get the ball rolling. Here are some of the more significant things I got wrong during the presidential campaign that just ended.
I thought that since John Edwards had been in the spotlight for years, the Republicans would probably not be able to spring an “October surprise” on us if he were the Democratic nominee. Oops.
inflated by the fact that she has a lot of name recognition. I think once the campaign begins, her numbers will sink like Lieberman’s did in 2003.
Then when her poll numbers held up in most states throughout 2007, I thought Hillary’s coalition would collapse if she lost a few early primaries. Um, not quite.
By the way, if you are from Iowa or have Iowa connections, please consider helping the progressive community blog Bleeding Heartland analyze what went wrong and what went right for Democrats in some of the state House and Senate races.
UPDATE: I wasn’t thinking just in terms of election predictions. I meant more broadly, what were you right and wrong about during the course of the whole campaign? Such as, “I thought Obama was done after Nevada” or “I thought the long primary battle was going to destroy Obama’s chances” or “I thought once Reverend Wright emerged Hillary would win the nomination.”
So, who wins what prizes this year? Feel free to suggest other prizes or candidates for any prize!
Nominees below the fold.
Most Interesting Name:
Barack Obama (D-Pres)
Theodore Terbolizard (R-CA-04)
Pro-Life (R-ID-Sen)
Charlie Brown (D-CA-04)
Carl Mumpower (R-NC-11)
Elwyn Tinklenberg (D-MN-06)
(and Bill Sally?)
Most undeserving win:
Michelle Bachmann (R-MN-06)
Don Young (R-AK-AL)
Aaron Schock (R-IL-18)
Dollar Bill (D-LA-02)
Mean Jean (R-OH-02)
Most undeserving loss:
Nick Lampson (D-TX-22)
Nancy Boyda (D-KS-02)
Don Cazayoux (D-LA-06)
Most deserving loss:
Andy Harris (R-MD-01)
Tim Mahoney ( D WTF-FL-16)
Robin Hayes (R-NC-08)
Randy Kuhl (R-NY-29)
Virgil Goode (R-VA-05)
Tom Feeney (R-FL-24)
Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO-04)
Best campaign:
Walt Minnick (D-ID-01)
Barack Obama & Joe Biden (D-Pres & VP)
Tom Perriello (D-VA-05)
Harry Teague (D-NM-02)
Alan Grayson (D-FL-08)
Jeff Merkley (D-OR-Sen)
Kay Hagan (D-NC-Sen)
Travis Childers (D-MS-01)
Worst campaign:
Bill Sali (R-ID-01)
Paul Kanjorski (D-PA-11) (but he won, so maybe he shouldn’t be here)
Mike Arcuri (D-NY-24) (well, he won anyway, but with a very underwhelming win)
Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH-15)
David Boswell (D-KY-02)
Linda Stender (D-NJ-07)
Kay Barnes (D-MO-06)
John McCain (R-Pres)
Rudy Giuliani (R-Pres)
Fred Thompson (R-Pres)
Bob Straniere (R-NY-13)
Carl Mumpower (R-NC-11) (YOU CAN’T STOP THE MUMPOWER)
“What happened to the” Liddy Dole “I knew?” (R-NC-Sen)
Stupidest event on the D side:
Michael “Bad” Jackson
Mahoney’s getting sucked into the FL-16 sex scandal swamp (or his sheer existence, after retroactively failing the ChadInFL Jim Webb Smell Test)
John Edwards’s also getting sucked into a sex scandal swamp
John Murtha’s rednecks comment
Mark Penn ignores caucuses
Boyda rejects the D-trip
Hillary attacks liberal elitism
Jon Powers vs. Jack Davis
Stupidest event on the R side:
McCain’s choice of running mate
the Club for Shrinkage primarying Wayne Gilchrest
NY-13 (enough said)
McCain’s suspended campaign (yea, right)
Dole’s “Godless” ad
Jim Gilmore’s convention
Bill Sali (he’s his own event)
Joe the Plumber debacle
Giuliani skips the early primaries
Wilson vs. Pearce (NM-Sen)
Cheney endorses McCain
Big Bad John Cornyn (granted, though, he didn’t lose)
Best-looking men:
Martin Heinrich (D-NM-01)
Mark Warner (D-VA-Sen)
Aaron Schock (R-IL-18)
Scott Kleeb (D-NE-Sen)
Patrick Murphy (D-PA-08)
Jon Powers (D-??)
Best-looking women:
Gabby Giffords (D-AZ-08)
Sarah Palin (R-VP)
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY-20)
Debbie Cook (D-CA-46)
Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (D-SD-AL)
Closest federal race: well, this still has yet to be decided. But it looks like MN-Sen, OH-15, or CA-04 might win that prize, with VA-05 having an outside chance. (“Landslide Joe” Courtney won by a real landslide this time.)
This is the diary I had hoped to be able to write Wednesday, but with the closeness of the Smith-Merkley US Senate race was happy enough to write a diary talking about the reasons why Merkley would win, as he indeed has. This diary serves as my review of the Oregon campaign, in what can, without a doubt, be described as the best cycle for Oregon Democrats and other progressive organizations in my lifetime. All of our goals were met and we beat back every single bad ballot measure to boot.
Note: These numbers are still not completely final due to the delay in counting ballots in some counties (which was due to the extra-long ballot necessitated by the high number of ballot measures among other factors).
Total Number of Oregonians Who Voted: 1.835 million or 84%.
Highest Turnout County by %: Wallowa-90%.
Lowest Turnout County by %: Umatilla-79%.
Number of Counties won by Kerry (who won by 5%): 8.
Number of Counties won by Obama: 12.
Obama’s Margin of Victory (which will go higher as the last urban ballots are counted): 16%.
Number of Oregon House Seats Won by the Democrats: 36 (+5).
Number of Oregon House Seats Won by the Republicans in Multnomah County: 0.
Number of Oregon House Seats Won by the Republicans in either the Eugene or Portland metro areas: 3, all in outer Portland suburbs.
Number of Ballot Measures Proposed by groups other than the legislature: 8.
Number of them that passed: 0 (All 4 of the Legislature’s measures passed).
How did I do?:
My final projections were pretty well spot on in most cases this year. Here is my record:
Statewide and Congressional Campaigns: 100%, I correctly called every single one, although to be honest except for Smith/Merkley none were close.
Ballot Measures: 11/12 correct, I thought Measure 61 would pass but with less votes than Measure 57, and it actually failed outright. I thought Measure 65 would be a lot closer than it was (it lost by about 2-1).
State Legislature: Senate 3/3, House 16/18. I missed 2 house races, both of which were very close. I projected that Adamson and Eberle would win and neither did. Forsberg appears headed to a narrow defeat as well, which is unfortunately predicted.
Overall I think I did rather well this year as I nailed virtually every prediction and the ones I missed I didn’t miss by much.
Winners/Losers and Awards:
The final section of this diary is my favorite as I have a bit of fun with the election results and who won and lost as well as hand out some awards.
Big Winners/Losers:
Winner: Barack Obama. Carrying the state by near-record margins, Obama led the Oregon Democrats to perhaps their best results ever. Oh and this ad may have put Merkley over the top:
Loser: John McCain. He never contested the state and it was apparent why. McCain suffered perhaps the worst defeat ever for a major party candidate in the state, certainly the worst since the 1960s.
Winner: Jeff Merkley and the DSCC. Jeff fought his way through a tough primary and won the day by unseating Republican Gordon Smith. He did it, in no small part, thanks to the DSCC which poured more into this race than any other race in the country.
Loser: Gordon Smith, Freedom’s Watch and the NRSC. Despite their best efforts to lie to Oregonians and mislead them into thinking Smith is a moderate, they failed this time. At times it even seemed that the more Smith and his allies spent on negative ads, the worse they did. This is not to say that Merkley and our side did not run negative ads because we did but theirs seemed to backfire.
Electoral Trends:
Winner: The 36 county strategy. Although they didn’t win everywhere, Oregon Democrats surged to near record performances across the state. They won their first state legislative seat east of the Cascades since the 1990s and basically eliminated the Republican party’s presence in Portland and Eugene.
Loser: Fake moderate Republicans. From Gordon Smith to John Lim to Jim Torrey and beyond, Oregon Republicans who claimed to be moderates were roundly defeated by Democrats in virtually every case. Proving that Oregonians can indeed see beyond the hype.
Interest Groups/Endorsers:
Winner: Oregon SEIU. Perhaps the biggest winner in the state among all the unions was the Oregon SEIU as it helped ensure a majority favorable to their concerns and helped Defend Oregon defeat all the nasty ballot measures to boot.
Loser: Big Business. The Employee Free Choice Act (Card Check Unionization) was passed in Oregon last year and despite the best efforts of big business to elect candidates who would oppose it, they failed. Oregon is a pro-worker and pro-union state and shall remain so at least for now.
Winner: Barbara Roberts. I so love our former Governor and honestly its hard not to. Barbara still clearly has a lot of political power as all of the persons she endorsed and measures she took positions on went the way she hoped.
Loser: Kevin Mannix and Bill Sizemore. They go a combined 0 for 7 in the ballot measures this year and only one of them, Measure 64, was even close. Back to the drawing board you morans!
The Media:
Winner: Tim Hibbits. Oregon’s top political analyst called the Senate race for Merkley Tuesday night and turned out, as usual, to be spot on. In more than 900 races in which Hibbits has made a projection, he has been wrong exactly twice.
Loser: The Oregonian. For endorsing Gordon Smith because Merkley’s win would give the Dems too much power. Really, that’s a bad thing? Well the streak continues as the Oregonian has not endorsed a winning Republican in a major race in a long time.
Awards:
Biggest Surprise in a major election: Measure 65’s stunning rejection by a 2-1 margin. I thought it would fail but that it would be very close. I’m happy to be wrong.
Best Victory Celebration: A crowd in Portland spontaneously breaking out into singing the national anthem after finding out Obama won.
Best political ad: Obama’s ad for Merkley (see above).
Worst Political ad: The Hot Dog ad by the NRSC:
Most disgusting political ad: Merkley supports rapists by Smith’s campaign:
Best victory speech: Merkley’s victory speech in the US Senate race, which I just saw delivered at Portland State. Waiting a few extra days for it didn’t make it any less sweeter when Sen.-elect Merkley, flanked by his wife, his mother and current Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), walked into the hall packed with lots of local supporters in a space designed for maybe 50-75 on a typical day. Merkley spoke about the issues that matter both to Oregon and the nation and how he would be a new progressive voice for this state.
A key quote from Merkley’s speech:
Speaking at PSU’s Urban Center, Merkely said he couldn’t be “more honored” than to be serving with veteran Democrat Ron Wyden in the U.S. Senate and said that it is now “time for a problem solving, bi-partisan approach” to the many issues facing the country
Best-run campaign: Jeff Merkley (US Sen.). One should not underestimate what Jeff and his team just accomplished as they unseated Gordon Smith, who many even in Democratic circles thought was untouchable. Kudos to his staff and the army of supporters who carried the day.
Worst-run campaign: Mike Erickson (OR-5). Not so much for how he ran the campaign as for how he reacted to all his personal scandals. Whether it was taking his girlfriend to an abortion doctor and lying about it or taking a trip to Cuba supposedly for humanitarian reasons and instead partying the night away, Erickson in a textbook example of how NOT to run a campaign. Yet he is utterly clueless about this and has, in fact, already been rumored to be running again in 2010.
Most-misleading campaign: Both sides of the Measure 64 campaign, the union payroll deduction. Both sides stretched the truth more than a bit when it came to this proposed measure. The yes folks overstated the danger of having public employee unions involved in politics while the no die claimed a far wider impact from this law than was likely (stifling the Oregon Food Bank among others supposedly). Still, the good guys on the no side won, and I am very happy they did. This criticism is not about their position but some of the ads they ran during this campaign.
Best-run campaign in a losing cause: Michele Eberle (OR House). Came within inches of unseating a man with a long history in this state, Rep. Scott Brunn. She may well win again if she runs in two years but given that this seat was not on anyone’s target list two years ago, the fact that she came this close says a lot. Honorable mention to Jessica Adamson in Wilsonville as well.
Politician I am most happy to see lose: Gordon Smith. After the misleading attack ads in what was without a doubt the most negative campaign in Oregon history, I really wanted to win this one. We did, so I’m happy.
I see a lot of “aw shucks” sentiments in the comments, and I’m sure it exists elsewhere in the blogosphere surrounding our perceived underwhelming performance down the ticket last night. And I understand that.
Well, it wasn’t the massive landslide that some thought it could have been, but we still did make some very nice gains. And we still have a few undecided races and runoffs in Georgia and Louisiana to talk about.
Let me put it to you this way. Earlier in the year I came back home from the States to take a job with the Alberta Liberal Party to help them get ready for a March election. Every indicator we had said that we’d be making significant gains — in fact, the pundits were even talking about the possibility of us knocking off the incumbent party. And they were doing so with a straight face. Come election day, what happened? To everyone’s surprise, we lost half our seats and all of our relevance. You don’t get a bigger punch in the stomach than that.
When things like that happen to you, I think you learn to find peace with results like last night’s.
I was planning on posting a diary reviewing the results of Oregon’s elections but that will have to wait until tomorrow. Due to the VERY close numbers in OR’s Senate race and the misconceptions out there, it is important that I correct some of them. Please read this as your “chill out” diary.
As of this moment the official count shows Merkley trailing by about 8k votes with 1/3rd of the vote still out (Results at http://www.oregonlive.com/special/index.ssf/2008/11/senate.html). However, most of the remaining votes are in deep blue counties like Multnomah, Lane and Benton.
To get into detail, these are the numbers we are looking at:
Multnomah County (Merkley winning 66-30) has only 47% in at this time.
Lane County (Merkley winning 58-38) has only 46% in at this time.
Benton County (Merkley winning 60-37) has only 74% in at this time.
By contrast, the largest Smith counties with votes still out are Jackson and Marion and there are both less votes there and the margins aren’t as big. Merkley won BOTH Washington and Clackamas Counties but was offset a bit by huge margins for Smith in eastern OR (Smith won 3-1 in most of those counties where Obama did 10-15% better).
Oh and making me more sure of this result than anything else is that Tim Hibbits, Or’s preeminent political analyst, called the race for Jeff last night (http://www.kptv.com/index.html)
As to why this is taking so long, a few reasons:
1. It always does. Vote by mail ballots take longer to process because they have to be verified AND counted at the county office, rather than merely counted.
2. Last minute turnout was huge. It was 2-2.5 times what it was in 2004 and given that the first priority of elections officials is to verify ballot, counting had to wait. That’s how we know that about 180k votes are still to be counted in Multnomah County.
3. The precinct calculation is BS. Since we don’t have polling places, ballots are counted as they come in (although not before election day), NOT by precinct. That is why the Oregonian shows votes still out there when no one else.
So sit tight, calm down and know when all the votes are counted Jeff will be victorious. Thanks to everyone for all your hard work in electing Jeff the next Senator from Oregon.
Alright, one more post before I conk out for good.
As far as the House goes, what exactly did we win last night? Well, let’s start by checking in with what we lost:
FL-16 (Tim Mahoney)
KS-02 (Nancy Boyda)
LA-06 (Don Cazayoux)
TX-22 (Nick Lampson)
And what did we pick up? Here’s what we know for sure — 2123 24 seats, by my best count:
AL-02 (Bobby Bright)
AZ-01 (Ann Kirkpatrick)
CO-04 (Betsy Markey)
CT-04 (Jim Himes)
FL-08 (Alan Grayson)
FL-24 (Suzanne Kosmas)
ID-01 (Walt Minnick)
IL-11 (Debbie Halvorson)
MD-01 (Frank Kratovil)
MI-07 (Mark Schauer)
MI-09 (Gary Peters)
NC-08 (Larry Kissell)
NJ-03 (John Adler)
NM-01 (Martin Heinrich)
NM-02 (Harry Teague)
NV-03 (Dina Titus)
NY-13 (Mike McMahon)
NY-25 (Dan Maffei)
NY-29 (Eric Massa)
OH-01 (Steve Driehaus)
OH-16 (John Boccieri)
PA-03 (Kathy Dahlkemper)
VA-02 (Glenn Nye)
VA-11 (Gerry Connolly)
And what’s still up for grabs? We’re currently sitting on leads in the following districts:
ID-01 (Walt Minnick): With 90% of precincts reporting at the time of this writing, Minnick leads GOP Rep. Bill “Brain Fade” Sali by 4300 votes. Some of the outstanding precincts should add to Sali’s total (but not all), so this race is still way too close to call. UPDATE: 95% of precincts are now in, and Minnick is up by 4363 votes. The remaining votes are from Bonner County (where Minnick is leading by 54-46) and Canyon County, a more populous area where Sali is leading by 54-46. Bonner has reported 52% of its vote, while Canyon only has 11% more to go. Looks like Minnick may just pull this off. (LATER UPDATE: Walt Minnick, you magnificent bastard, you did it!)
MD-01 (Frank Kratovil): With 100% reporting, Kratovil leads Club For Growth stooge Andy Harris by nearly 1000 votes. No one’s making a call here yet, but I’d be surprised if there are enough outstanding votes floating around that would tip the outcome here.
VA-05 (Tom Perriello): In what could be the biggest shocker of the night, Democrat Tom Perriello is leading GOP Rep. Virgil Goode by over 1657 votes with only one precinct outstanding according to the VA SBoE. (LATE UPDATE: The VA SBoE now says the Goode is ahead by six votes.)
What else has yet to be called?
CA-04 (Charlie Brown): With 100% of precincts in, carpetbagging blockhead Tom McClintock is leading Charlie Brown by 451 votes. It seems pretty cruel, but it looks like Brown might not get a chance to kick that football, after all.
CA-50 (Nick Leibham): With 63% of precincts reporting, GOP Rep. Brian Bilbray leads Democrat Nick Leibham by 50-46 here. (Update: Bilbray wins.)
LA-02 (Bill Jefferson): Democratic crumb-bum Bill Jefferson will face a December general election against Republican Anh Cao.
LA-04 (Paul Carmouche): Democrat Paul Carmouche won the Democratic primary runoff here, and will face Republican physician John Fleming in the December general election. This one could be a chance to avenge Don Cazayoux.
NJ-03 (John Adler): This race was actually called for Adler by CNN earlier in the night (after an extremely bleak start) and Adler declared victory, but now CNN has moved it back into the too close to call column. Myers leads by about 1700 votes with 93% of precincts reporting. (LATE UPDATE: Adler wins.)
OH-15 (Mary Jo Kilroy): CNN and the AP have moved this race back into the undecided column.
SC-01 (Linda Ketner): GOP Rep. Henry Brown is currently leading Democrat Linda Ketner by 53-47 here, and CNN has called this race for Brown. But 26% of precincts are outstanding, and they’re all in Charleston County, where Ketner is leading Brown by a 59-41 margin. The Ketner campaign is not yet conceding, believing that they still have a chance at eeking out a win here, based in part on 35,000 absentee ballots from Charleston that have yet to be counted. (Update: The bad guys win big.)
WA-08 (Darcy Burner): With 39% of precincts reporting, Darcy leads Reichert by a mere 60 votes here.