Tag: FL-09

This area is kinda the I-4 corridor. I would say out of the 3 districts I drew which are about 780k people give or take. This is a fast growing area of Florida and this is merely a map that will focus on the communities of interest idea of this area.

Blue is for the elderly and exurban. The center of the district is The Villages|Lady Lake which looks to grow more and more and is very attractive for Republican identifiers all over the country to move to. This district if it were to be made smaller would likely remove the Lake County portion that would be more of a Daytona exurb. And some parts of Marion county that are not near The Villages into a district that would go to Gainesville or Tallahasse.

I used to live in Citrus county which is in the north and western portion of the district, the county is divided in half, using the potential extension of the Suncoast Parkway as a border. This district is very much a transition from North Florida into the I-4 corridor. I should mention that in modern Florida the plotting of major road corridors are for growth purposes by developers who run the show in this area. This blue district is quite Republican and save for the areas near Orlando it is nearly all red.

It should be noted that the growth here is in the 50+ population and perchance minority populations along State Road 50 for work in Orlando. If this district was to be split up even further the Black voters in western Orange county would probably prefer to be in the purple district; pushing that one further Democratic.

Counties: parts of Citrus, Marion, Hernando, Orange, and all of Lake and Sumter

Partisan rating: Likely Republican for awhile

Green is for the suburbanite. The center of this district is the center-right Lakeland, a city between the sprawling cities of Orlando and Tampa which in turn could make Lakeland similar to Tacoma, Washington many years down the road (Think Seattle and Olympia with Tacoma in between). The area is southern for the most part in this area and middle class.

There are areas that are well to do but down the road there is going to be a large Hispanic plurality in some communities due to farm workers. One only has to drive I-4 to see why I drew this district into Hillsborough, once it his I-75 you see the tall buildings of downtown Tampa and though Plant City appears to be a Tampa suburb it is more similar to Lakeland and Polk county in appearance as well as proximity.

Counties: part of Pasco, Hillsborough and most of Polk

Partisan rating: Lean Republican, but tossup in 10 years

Purple is for Mickey. This district is just South Orlando with all its Theme Parks and its suburbs, it is a majority minority district with Whites having the VAP plurality and Hispanics having the plurality when it comes to the population as a whole. The area is very likely to elect a Democrat. The populations in Osceola county are either Farmers (low in number but Republican), Rich Whites (who occupy the planned communities adjacent to Disney and Universal), and Minorities who very much can bring this district home for Democrats.

Counties: Orange and Osceola

Partisan rating: Lean to Likely Democrat

I felt like putting this up for all to see since I have seen some diaries that split these areas up. Mind you I do not expect everyone to conform to what I think; but I am offering this as a guide for those interested in communities of interest in the I-4 corridor. This is absent actual partisan data but just an assumption on my part as someone who has spent a great part of the past few years traveling around this area.

If wanted, I would love to post a Tampa Bay and Orlando-Daytona maps finishing the I-4 corridor for reference.

• CO-Sen: Mark Udall endorsed his fellow Senator Michael Bennet yesterday. Superficially, that’s completely unsurprising, but it’s an indicator that we’ve gotten to the point where it seems unlikely anyone else from the Democratic political establishment (former state House speaker Andrew Romanoff, for instance) might challenge the appointed Bennet in the primary.

• FL-Sen: I predicted yesterday that billionaire Tom Golisano’s interest in the Florida senate race wouldn’t last long, and now it doesn’t even seem to have ever existed. He let the Buffalo News know today that he’d never publicly expressed any interest, and that nobody (starting with Politics1, where the rumor started) ever called to ask him about it before launching the story.

• ME-Gov: After months of nothing happening in the Maine governor’s race, now we have two candidates. Democratic State Rep. Dawn Hill, who represents part of York County and owns a dog day care in her spare time, announced she’s in the race. She may be a long shot in the primary against former AG and former state House speaker Steve Rowe, who quietly filed his candidacy papers last week.

• FL-09: Our condolences to the family and friends of Phyllis Busansky, who died unexpectedly last night. She ran a solid race in FL-09 in 2006, and was elected Hillsborough County’s Supervisor of Elections in 2008.

• NC-08: With the NC GOP trying to recover the fumble on their attempts to recruit Carolina Panthers star Mike Minter to go up against freshman Rep. Larry Kissell, a new possibility has emerged: former state Rep. Mia White (who was Mia Morris while in the legislature). She’s been pretty far out of the loop lately, though… she has been living in Singapore, where she’s been American politics commentator for what she called their equivalent of CNN.

• NY-23: One more Republican has declared his interest in the open seat in the 23rd, who wasn’t on anybody’s watch list: veterinarian Gary Cooke. In a dairy-heavy district, Cooke seems primarily focused on farm issues.

• OR-04: Springfield mayor Diamond Joe Quimby Sid Leiken has already run into some trouble in his nascent campaign against Rep. Peter DeFazio: he’s the subject of a campaign finance complaint from Democrats. Leiken paid $2,000 to a company called P&G Marketing and Research for “surveys and polls,” but no such firm exists and the address is the same as his mother’s real estate business. While Leiken didn’t return calls on the matter, Leiken’s campaign manager said that he has receipts for all of the campaign’s expenditures… except for this one.

• PA-03: You know your campaign wasn’t meant to be, when the first mention your campaign gets in the press is your Facebook announcement that you’re dropping out of the campaign. The GOP’s lone challenger against freshman Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper, social studies teacher Brian Lasher, dropped out, leaving the GOP without a candidate, although businessman Steve Fisher is still thinking about it. Hard to fathom the GOP giving up without a fight in such a traditionally swingy district.

• Cal-St. Ass.: Fresno-area Assemblyman Juan Arambula left the Democratic caucus yesterday to become an independent, supposedly over budget issues (although water issues may be a major subtext). This tips the balance to a still comfortable 49-29-1 for the Democrats, but with Arambula gone they’re now five votes short of the 2/3s necessary to do anything useful with the budget. Arambula is term-limited out in 2010, so the fallout is contained.

• Demographics: Nate Silver has, as always, a fascinating graph as part of a piece on changing migration rates in the last few years. Migration from blue states to red states has slowed significantly in recent years, probably because of the economic slowdown. The plus side is that this may salvage a few Democratic House seats in 2010.

Back in August, we crunched the voter registration numbers in nine key Florida congressional districts, and found Democrats making big gains in all of them.

The Florida Division of Elections has just posted new numbers for each congressional district, and a quick glance confirms that the trend is continuing big time. Statewide, Democrats have added an additional 200,000 registered voters to their advantage over the GOP since July. But let’s take a look at the same nine districts that we looked at in August.

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 numbers as of July 28 of this year, followed by the most recent numbers (October 8).  Take a peek:

Wow — for the first time, Democrats now have a partisan advantage in the 8th District, where Democrat Alan Grayson is taking on GOP crumb-bum Ric Keller. Keller is locked in the fight of his political life, and these numbers prove it.

While two of these districts are pretty much off the map in terms of realistic Democratic pick-up opportunities (the 9th CD and the open seat dud in the 15th), the other huge shift can be seen in South Florida, where Democrats are waging tough fights against the Diaz-Balart brothers (the 21st and 25th CDs) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in the 18th District. For years, these districts were seen as Republican strongholds, but now, Democrats have chipped away significantly at the GOP’s edge.

Democrats have even made up a lot of ground in the 16th District; it’s just too bad that disgraced Rep. Tim Mahoney has squandered it all.

Full raw numbers for all of these districts are available below the fold.

October 8, 2008:

July 28, 2008:

October 10, 2006:

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.

With congressional primaries in Alaska and Florida on August 26th, tonight was the deadline for candidates to file their pre-primary fundraising reports with the FEC. I’ve rounded up the numbers of interest, covering the period of July 1st through August 6th, in the chart below. All figures are in thousands.

Christine Jennings has yet to file her report, but once she does, it will be available here.

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.

Originally posted at FLAPolitics

Congresswoman Karen Thurman, Chair of the Florida Democratic Party (FDP), titled a recent email “The Road to the Presidency Runs Through Central Florida”. Like most missives from a political party it was soliciting funds (which is to be expected). This one was for the Democratic challenger in the special election for a central Florida State House seat. 

But, the email’s title spoke to me, because I’ve been thinking along the same lines recently. Let me explain.

Way back in December of 2006 James Carville and Mark Penn did an op-ed piece in the Washington Post that made the case for how Hillary could win the presidency:

Certainly she could win the states John Kerry did. But with the pathbreaking possibility of this country’s first female president, we could see an explosion of women voting — and voting Democratic. States that were close in the past, from Arkansas to Colorado to Florida to Ohio, could well move to the Democratic column. It takes only one more state to win.

And then in an interview with Tom Schaller, Carville added which state was the most likely to go Hillary’s way:

Carville puts Arkansas, Florida, and Virginia in Tier 1, with Louisiana and Tennessee in Tier 2. That makes sense in terms of ranking, but I pressed him to pick the one state he thought Hillary was most likely to flip, if she were to win only one. He picked Florida.

Now, I’m not exactly a fan of Hillary‘s, but if she does get the nomination, I still want her to win. Also, I think there would be a silver lining for Florida if she does get the nomination. Before I proceed, let me post a map of Florida showing the counties.

In a comment to a diary I wrote right after the election, GatorDem made the point that the key to winning a state-wide election in Florida for a Democrat was for the candidate to hold his or her own in the part of central Florida known as the I-4 corridor. I looked at this phenomenon in depth in my diary called What Can We Learn From the Florida State-Wide Races of 2006?

The only state-wide race in Florida for 2008 will be the presidency. That means that if Hillary wants to win Florida’s 27 electoral votes, she has to do okay in central Florida.

In 2006, the Democrat running for Chief Financial Officer, Alex Sink, did all right there. If we look at her totals for the central Florida counties (Brevard, Citrus, Hardee, Hernando, Hillsborough, Indian River, Lake, Manatee, Marion, Orange, Osceola, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, Sarasota, Seminole, St. Lucie, Sumter, and Volusia) we see that she bested her opponent Tom Lee 1,122,770 to 1,059,063 (51.5%-48.5%).

For comparison, the 2006 Democratic candidate for governor, Jim Davis, lost to Charlie Crist in those same counties by 954,960 to 1,221,558 (43.9%-56.1%) and Democratic candidate for attorney general, Skip Campbell, lost to Bill McCollum 973,653 to 1,220,365 (44.4%-55.6%).

In 2004 John Kerry lost the central Florida counties 45.8%-54.2%. In 2000 Al Gore also lost, but was closer, 48.6%-51.4%. Again, the point to be made is that if you’re a Democrat and you break even in this area, then you’ve won the state wide race.

But, in the last six years, the only two Democrats to do that are Senator Bill Nelson and CFO Sink. We know Nelson‘s situation is special, being a celebrity ex-astronaut (he won the area 60.8%-39.1%). And it’s possible that Alex Sink‘s case was also unique. She was perfectly qualified for the position, having been a bank executive, she has a lot of personal charisma, and the CFO position avoids the usual liberal-conservative issues that other races get mired in.

So, this is not exactly going to be a cakewalk for Hillary.

If Sen. Clinton wants to do well in the same area she needs to have a strong message and be ready to spend some money. Is there anything else she can do to help her chances?

Republicans control most of the US House seats through the area. Kathy Castor has the safe Democratic seat in FL-11 and Corrine Brown has the majority minority FL-03, but Ginny Brown-Waite is in FL-05, Cliff Stearns in FL-06, Ric Keller in FL-08, Gus Bilirakis is in FL-09, Bill Young is in FL-10, Adam Putnam in FL-12, Dave Weldon in FL-15, Tom Feeney in FL-24, and everyone knows what happened in FL-13.

The lop-sided result is due to the masterful gerrymandering (pdf map of districts) that the Republican legislature accomplished in 2002 and the sorry state of the FDP before Congresswoman Thurman took over.

Now the DCCC has said it is going to target FL-10, probably because they feel Young is going to retire (he’s 76 and has been in congress since 1971). And I’m sure FL-13 is going to get some attention. But what about the rest of them?

One way that Hillary can insure that she does well in central Florida, and thereby win all of the 27 electoral votes, and the presidency, is to make sure that the FDP and the DCCC find serious Democratic challengers for these seats. She can then help them along by funneling some of her megabucks into the races thru the DCCC.

The big advantage is that any challenger to these Republican US House members can still run against George Bush, since this bunch will be part of his rubber stamp congress. If a coordinated campaign against them can be mounted that nationalizes these elections in the same way that Ron Klein successfully did in beating 12 term congressman Clay Shaw in FL-22, then the Democratic vote thru the area will be highly energized.

Since the major media markets in the area overlap several districts, a Friends of Hillary PAC can hammer all the Republican incumbents at once for being stooges for George Bush and Tom DeLay. Why wasn’t proper oversight performed by congress while Bush was running the country into the ground during the six years they were in exclusive power?

You know as well as I do that everyone wants another chance to vote against our incompetent president. Hillary can give it to central Florida Democratic voters by following this strategy.

Another advantage to having Hillary as the candidate would be that she could get Bill to come down to fund raise and campaign with these Democratic challengers. Who would people in Hillsborough County rather see, Gus Bilirakis or Bill Clinton? If the former president shuttled back and forth across the center of the state a couple of times during the election, it would have a dramatic effect.

And when Hillary comes, she could make the trip with Alex Sink. This would allow Hillary to gain the immediate advantage of Sink‘s charisma and strong, fiscally conservative message, and also provide the added effect that having two women politicians appearing together would accomplish by energizing Democratic women to come out and vote.

Now, it’s not critical to Hillary‘s prospects for any of the Democratic candidates to win any of these seats, only that enough Democrats turn out and also vote for her so that she does well enough to win the state.

But, if some good candidates (like Rod Smith) can be recruited, and the FDP and DCCC can coordinate the campaigns so that they’re effective, and Hillary can divert enough money to them to get the message out, then it’s possible some of the Republican congressmen can be defeated as well.

Hey, a win-win. So, what’s Carville‘s email address?

Yep here we go again. With the dust not yet settled on the last challenge in FL-13 (Good luck Christine) we take a look forward to 2008.

Wander below the fold for the good oil.

Well well well. It seems so soon since we were celebrating the Midterm results and our record of contesting 425 Districts. That’s because it is so soon (LOL). Odd thing to do here in Australia watch the midterms but I took the day off work and had a merry old time watching it all unfold on the net and on cable he he he.

Nonetheless time for the 50 State Page to crank up for 2008 courtesy of the redoubtable Barry Welsh. This cycle we have some help however from the magnificent 2008 Race Tracker wiki. Go and take a look at them both right now and whilst you are there throw Barry some cash. He will be running again and is rightly a netroots champion.

Now for the good oil;
248 races with confirmed candidates. A confirmed candidate has either filed with the FEC, The Sec of State or has an active campaign website, or even if they come and blog and say yep I am running.

The 248 includes all 233 Democratic incumbents (yeh yeh I know some will not run but I am assuming we will find candidates in those districts, and all Dem incumbents are also listed as Running But Unconfirmed).

There are also 15 Republican held districts where we have confirmed candidates as follows:
FL-01,
FL-09,
FL-21,
IL-14,
IA-04,
MI-07,
MO-09,
NE-02,
NJ-11,
NC-08,
NC-09,
OH-07,
OH-16,
PA-03,
TX-04.

But wait there is more.
We also have 238 candidates who I believe are running but who are at this stage unconfirmed according to the above criteria. All 233 districts held by Democrats but also 5 districts held by Republicans as follows:

AR-03,
CA-04,
ID-01,
IN-06 hurry up and confirm Barry!,
NJ-05.

We also have 6 rumoured candidates. These guys are mentioned as considering the race in the following districts:
FL-06,
FL-13 *** depends on the outcome of the challenge,
NV-03,
NJ-07,
PA-15,
TX-06.

So we are off and racing for 2008. Use the 2008 Race Tracker wiki as the primary source of gossip and information as it is a fantastic site and I have spent a LOT of time contributing there also.

Any candidate news, particularly opponents for Repubs welcome in the comments!