New Jersey political insiders say Rep. Jim Saxton (R-NJ) will announce his retirement as early as this afternoon. With a PVI of D+3, this district should be a top Democratic pick-up opportunity for 2008.
State Sen. John Adler (D-Cherry Hill) has been running a strong challenge to Saxton and should be a formidable candidate for the open seat.
UPDATE (David): It's official.
Let’s tally up all the turnovers in statewide and legislative races last night. Democratic pick-ups are in blue; Republican pick-ups in red. Italics denote a close race that appears to be going to a recount.
If we missed something, please let us know in the comments.
Today’s the day! Below is a list of poll closing times and races to watch in five states:
| State | Polls Close | Races to Watch | Results | Key Blogs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kentucky | 6pm and 7pm EST | Governor/Lt. Gov, Secretary of State, Attorney General, Auditor, Treasurer, Agriculture Commissioner | KY SoS | Bluegrass Report |
| Mississippi | 8pm EST | Governor, Lt. Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, Auditor, Treasurer, Agriculture Commissioner, Insurance Commissioner, SD18, SD29, SD43, SD46, SD52, HD12, HD20, HD43, HD99, HD102 | MS SoS | Cotton Mouth |
| New Jersey | 8pm EST | SD01, SD02, SD08, SD12, SD39, HD01 (x2), HD02 (x2), HD08 (x2), HD11 (x2), HD12 (x2), HD14 (x2), HD39 (x2) | NJ.com | Blue Jersey |
| Ohio | 7:30pm EST | OH-05 Special Primary | OH SoS | BSB | ODB |
| Virginia | 7pm EST | SD01, SD06, SD22, SD27, SD28, SD33, SD34, SD37, SD39, HD32, HD33, HD34, HD40, HD50, HD51, HD52, HD67, HD83, HD86 | VA SBE | Raising Kaine |
Special thanks to The Green Papers, which was the source for several of the poll closing times. One note: the New Jersey state House races are listed slightly oddly, as each numerical district actually has two seats up for grabs.
If you have any races happening in your area that aren’t on this list, let us know in the comments. And if you’d like to give any predictions for any of today’s contests, now is the time to share them. How many counties will Ernie Fletcher win in Kentucky? Will Bob Latta prevail in Ohio? How far will Virginia Democrats go?
Other useful links: PoliticsNJ’s race ratings | WaPo’s key Virginia races
Here is Dennis Shulman’s story about living as a blind man in a sighted world.
It’s a moving and honest account of his struggle to not only live with but transcend his disability.
And it’s about how and why his disability is leading him to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2009.
To learn more about Dennis, check out Shulman for Congress.
Before I answer this question, I would like to first thank all the commentators for their interest in my disability and their questions about the obstacles I have faced.
I lost my vision gradually throughout my childhood so that, while I could still read large print when I was ten or eleven, I could not when I was thirteen. Using a cane became necessary in my junior year of high school.
By the time I went to college (Brandeis) and grad school (Harvard) I was totally blind.
I started at Brandeis in 1968. These were the pre-personal computer dark ages. For all people, the personal computer has radically changed their lives; for blind folks, this change is downright revolutionary.
In college and grad school, virtually all my reading was done by sighted readers. Little of the material was in Braille or recorded. When working on my review of the literature for my doctoral dissertation, I broke my own personal record-35 hours a week of sighted readers for the entire summer to read absolutely everything I could find on my dissertation topic. And then there was typing. I did my writing on an electric typewriter. (Does anyone out there remember the electric typewriter?) Well the problem with typewriters for a blind person is that, if you get a phone call or otherwise get distracted, how do you figure out where you left off? And then there was the worst day of my academic life when I typed an entire chapter for a grant I was leading involving alternatives to institutionalization for developmentally disabled adults when I did not realize the typewriter ribbon had slipped. When my colleague told me that the twenty-five pages I had just given him were totally blank, I finally really understood what a bad day was.
And then God created the personal computer.
Part of the reason I am running for congress in NJ-5 involves my blindness. As you can imagine or know, it is not easy to be blind or otherwise disabled in a sighted or able-bodied world. But there is a great benefit to being blind. I learned what it really means to struggle. I learned how to respect all people who are struggling-with the limits of their bodies or the limits of their income or the limits of their parents’ income or the limits that society places on them because of their gender or choice of love partner or immigration status or race.
In my own case-a poor kid, totally blind, in Worcester, Mass-there was no way in the world that I could have gone to Brandeis and Harvard without a great deal of family and community and government support. No way! And this also figures into my politics. The money the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind invested in my education has been paid back many times over by the taxes I have paid over the past 31 years of my being a clinical psychologist and rabbi. So don’t talk to me about how cutting programs that truly help people who are struggling cuts taxes. To truly cut taxes and help people who are struggling with their circumstances or the accident of their birth we are going to have to be sensible about the investments in people that we make. And here I am–a proud and grateful beneficiary of a far-sighted government program that actually invested in people.
I am acutely aware that my election to congress is, of course, not just about me. In January 2009, when I am sworn in as a congressman from my district, I will proudly join a very small but (hopefully) growing list of individuals with disabilities–from Max Cleland of Georgia to Thomas Gore of Oklahoma–who have served their country in the U.S. Congress. I promise to take this responsibility to represent, not only my district, but also all people with disabilities with great humility and seriousness.
National Democrats have exactly three targets in New Jersey that they would like to seriously contest: Mike Ferguson (7th District), Jim Saxton (3rd District), and Frank LoBiondo (2nd District). In two of those three races, the DCCC has their preferred candidates: state Rep. Linda Stender is in for a rematch against Ferguson, and state Sen. Jim Adler is taking on Saxton. If state Assemblyman Jeff Van Drew entered the race against Republican incumbent Frank LoBiondo, he would complete the trifecta. The only problem? Van Drew is currently locked in a tooth-and-nail campaign against Republican state Sen. Nicholas Asselta, and he has to win that race first before thinking of another promotion.
Van Drew didn’t do much to quiet the speculation today, as he played it coy on the question of a potential 2008 congressional campaign:
“What I’ve made clear is there’s only one thing on my mind now, and that is winning the State Senate seat in the first legislative district,” said Van Drew. “I have a lot of my plate and that’s all I’m thinking about. And that’s all I’m going to comment.”
That non-committal response is in stark contrast to his campaign’s official line last month:
“He’s not running for Congress. He’s got way too much on his plate right now,” said Allison Murphy, who is managing Van Drew’s campaign to oust Asselta. “I can safely say he’s not running next year, but maybe sometime soon.”
Unsurprisingly, Asselta is slamming Van Drew for the statement.
LoBiondo would be a tough foe to beat. His campaign coffers are flush with over $1.5 million on hand and he has always dominated his district by wide margins. Not in his favor, however, is the following fact about his district: its PVI is D+4. While Kerry actually lost the district by one point in 2004, Gore carried it by a healthy 11 point margin in 2000. Rather than changing demographics, we saw a 9/11 bounce for Bush that was pronounced throughout New Jersey. And, if the Republican presidential nominee is anyone other than Rudy Giuliani, I expect those top-of-the-ticket numbers to return to their 2000 level. If Democrats and progressives hope to expand their caucus, this is exactly the kind of seat they should be targeting.
We’ll just have to wait and see if Van Drew can win his state Senate race this fall before we know who LoBiondo will line up against.
Race Tracker: NJ-02
I’ve heard it said that the ideal political candidate is the individual who neither wants nor needs to hold public office. Instead, the ideal candidate is the individual who serves simply because he or she feels a civic and moral responsibility to do so.
This individual is Dennis Shulman, a Democrat running for New Jersey’s fifth congressional district seat in the United States House of Representatives.
So, who exactly is this ideal candidate? As a longtime student in Dennis’s classes and congregant at his services, I believe I’m in a unique position to answer this question.
Let me begin with some background. First, Dennis is a Harvard-educated, internationally recognized clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. Second, Dennis is a revered and respected ordained rabbi in his New Jersey community. And, to put these facts in proper perspective, Dennis has been blind since childhood.
But this background information, as remarkable as it may be, fails to capture who this man really is. It does not convey Dennis’s fundamental decency, honesty, and integrity. It does not communicate the depth of his wisdom, compassion, and commitment. And it does not speak to the profoundly positive impact Dennis has had on my life, and upon the lives of countless others. Ultimately, mere biographical data is not enough-one must know Dennis to grasp what my words cannot express.
While I’m only 30-years-old, I’ve lived and experienced enough to know with absolute certainty that human beings like Dennis Shulman are rare in this cynical and broken world of ours.
So, you might be wondering, why on earth would such a good man want to run for congress?
The answer is simple: His conscience dictates it. As a proud American who, in his words, feels “heartbroken and troubled by our recent direction as a nation,” Dennis feels obligated to take action. While writing checks, signing petitions, and attending political rallies is both important and necessary, Dennis feels compelled to do more. Certain in his belief that we as a nation can and must do better, Dennis is choosing to run for the United States House of Representatives.
As someone who feels utterly disheartened by the corruption, cronyism, cynicism, and lies that are currently debasing and destroying our democracy, I have been waiting and searching, often in desperation, to find a politician that I can believe in and support without reservation. For me, Dennis Shulman is this candidate.
So, if you too are yearning for a candidate that you don’t have to support with one hand on the lever and one hand holding your nose, I tell you that Dennis Shulman is your man.
But don’t take my word for it.
Check Dennis out for yourself and read what others are saying about his unorthodox and inspiring exploratory campaign at Shulman for Congress
This is the third in a series of diaries graphically depicting the Democratic victory in this year’s midterm elections.
Today we will be looking at how the election went in New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. No seats changed hands in these states, below are maps of the the current state of party control.
Of 1,822,786 votes cast in the 2006 New Jersey House races 983,747 votes (54%) were cast for Democrats while 815,871 votes (45%) were cast for Republican candidates.
In Maryland, 1,581,195 votes were cast with 1,017,276 (64.3%)for Democrats, while 544,508 votes (34.4%) were cast for Republicans.
In Delaware, the Republican candidate won with 57.2% of the vote.
Looking at vote margins, the only close race in these states was in the NJ-07 where the Republican candidate won by a margin of 3,259 votes (1.9%), with the Democratic candidate garnering 47.8% to the Republican’s 49.5%. The Democratic 2006 performance is a 6.2% improvement over the 2004 Democratic vote share. This should be a target for 2008.
Tier 0
Race D% R% Margin 2006 D Cand.
No races meet the criteria for this tier.
Tier 1
Race D% R% Margin 2006 D Cand.
NJ-07 47.8 49.5 1.7 Linda Stender
Tier 2
Race D% R% Margin 2006 D Cand.
No races meet the criteria for this tier.