Tag: NJ-07

Biggest House retirement shocker of the cycle?

Rep. Mike Ferguson will announce today that he will not seek re-election to a fifth term in 2008. The 37-year-old Republican, who won re-election last year by just 1% against Democratic Assemblywoman Linda Stender, wants to spend more time with his four young children.

Senate Minority Leader-designate Thomas Kean, Jr. becomes one of the most likely GOP candidates for the seat. Kean, the Republican U.S. Senate in 2006, was among the candidates who ran against Ferguson in the 7th district Republican primary in 2000, when Bob Franks gave up the seat to run for the Senate.

This seat just vaulted up a dozen or so places on the list of pick-up opportunities for Democrats.

(For those keeping score, this makes 17 GOP House retirements this year.  Wowza!)

Update (Trent): While this is a seat Kerry and Gore narrowly lost (with 47% and 48%, respectively), a PVI of R+0.6 suggests Stender should be able to easily improve on last year’s performance without an incumbent in the race.

Nationally, many pundits and bloggers didn’t take Nevada’s 2nd district too seriously in 2006. It was too safe a Republican district to be even slightly competitive, so the argument went.

Well, we all know that Dean Heller in the end won his election against Democrat Jill Derby. Against expectations though, his result wasn’t very convincing. The man who was elected Secretary of State of Nevada three times, barely won more than 50% of the vote in a district that doesn’t include Democratic Las Vegas. So today, I ventured out in search of Republicans who won their districts in 2006 and did worse than him. Turns out that there weren’t that many.

Only 11 Republicans were elected with a worse result than Heller. Among them: Rep. Sali of Idaho, Rep. Cubin of Wyoming, Rep. Musgrave of Colorado and Rep. Doolittle of California. All these districts were presumed to be safely in Republican hands. There was no way they would become competitive and yet they were.

Again, there is talk of Heller being safe, of other Republican districts more important than Nevada’s 2nd. This is reminder for all of these folks that Heller is among the vulnerable dozen Republicans currently serving in Congress:

  * 50.37% Heller
  * 50.24% Pryce (OH-15)
  * 50.21% Wilson (NM-01)
  * 50.14% Hayes (NC-08)
  * 50.08% Buchanan (FL-13)
  * 50.05% Bachmann (MN-06)
  * 49.95% Sali (ID-01)
  * 49.53% Ferguson (NJ-07)
  * 49.26% Doolittle (CA-04)
  * 48.46% Porter (NV-03)
  * 48.33% Cubin (WY-01)
  * 45.91% Musgrave (CO-04)

Results were taken from NPR.

PS: Please note that I only looked at how many people were willing to vote for the Republican, not how well the opponent did. This is not a diary on close margins. Feel free to comment on that below.

Cross posted from Helluva Heller, where Nevada bloggers have united to take down Heller in 2008.

Attention New Yorkers:

Who: Congressional Candidates Linda Stender (NJ-07), Dan Maffei (NY-25), and Eric Massa (NY-29) – and featured guest Jim Dean (chair of Democracy for America)

What: “Expanding our Majority: On to 2008!”  – a fundraiser for DFA

When: Wednesday, 4/25 – 6pm to 8pm

Where: Manhattan (Upper East Side)

For more info & to RSVP, click here. You can also contact Rachel Moss at (802) 651-3200, ext. 134 or rmoss@democracyforamerica.com. A wide range of contribution levels are available for anyone who would like to attend, including a special student rate of just $35.

So if you’re in town, this is a great chance to meet some of our strongest rematch contenders for 2008, plus Jim Dean, brother of Howard and a supremely good guy. Let’s go Team Blue!

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!