Tag: Mary Jo Kilroy

• MN-Sen: Our long national nightmare is finally over: Senator Al Franken was sworn in today, without any weird last minute gambits by Norm Coleman. Harry Reid announced he’ll be on the HELP, Judiciary, Aging, and Indian Affairs Committees.

• KY-Sen: Jim Bunning, via his regular teleconference with reporters, reminds us that he’s still running for Senate. Bunning also thinks that he won’t outraise SoS Trey Grayson (who raised $600,000 in the 2nd quarter) for the quarter, but it doesn’t matter because Grayson won’t stay in the race if Bunning stays in too.

• OR-Gov: Here’s a surprise: Democratic rising star state Rep. Brian Clem suddenly made his presence known in the Oregon governor’s race, launching an exploratory committee and filling up his coffers with a $500,000 loan from his mother-in-law. The 37-year-old Clem, who has represented part of Salem since 2006, implied that he wouldn’t pull the trigger on a run, though, if former Gov. John Kitzhaber got into the race.

• SC-Gov: Mark Sanford may get to keep his job after all (thanks in part to Sarah Palin creating a distraction). The state GOP voted yesterday to censure Sanford over his doomed tango, rather than call for his resignation.

• HI-01: Roll Call takes a quick look at who might run for the seat being left behind by Rep. Neil Abercrombie. Top of the list is Ed Case, a Blue Dog who used to represent HI-02 but gave up his seat for an ill-fated primary run against Sen. Dan Akaka and pissed off a lot of the Democratic base along the way. They also cite state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa, former state House majority leader Kirk Caldwell, state Democratic Party chair Brian Schatz, and also Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann, who’s currently exploring the governor’s race but conceivably could switch races if he doesn’t get any traction in the primary against Abercrombie. Also, we can’t rule out Republican Honolulu city councilor Charles Djou, who seems well-thought-of but faces a steep climb given the state’s lean.

• IL-07: CQ provides a similar laundry list of potential candidates in IL-07, assuming Rep. Danny Davis leaves an open seat to run for President of the Cook County Board instead. Davis’s former Chief of Staff Richard Boykin tops the list, but there’s also state Reps. LaShawn Ford and Karen Yarbrough, state Sen. Rickey Hendon, and Aldermen Dorothy Tillman and Ed Smith. (No mention of any Republicans here, unsurprising since it’s D+35.)

• NY-03: Here are some folks who’d especially like Rep. Peter King to Beat It, following his Off the Wall remarks disparaging the nonstop coverage of Michael Jackson. They’ve started “Michael Jackson Fans Against Peter King” on ActBlue and have already raised several thousand dollars for whoever steps up to run in the 3rd.

• NY-14: With Rep. Carolyn Maloney looking more likely to follow through on her Senate primary challenge, state Sen. Liz Krueger, whose turf closely overlaps the 14th, has been getting a lot of encouragement to run for the open seat. Krueger sounds politely interested, saying “I’ve never been in Congress so I don’t know if it’s less frustrating. But I suspect pretty much any job in the United States of America would be less frustrating than Albany in the last three weeks.”

• NY-23: A potentially strong candidate for the GOP nomination in the upcoming NY-23 special election has taken himself out of consideration: Assemblyman Will Barclay. Unfortunately for us, this may make the primary path easier for moderate GOP Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, who would be a tougher general election foe; the more conservative Barclay, remember, was the loser of the state Senate special election to Darrel Aubertine last year. Two other minor GOPers added their names to the list as well: YMCA director Andrew Bisselle and businessman Bart Bonner.

• OH-15: His candidacy was already well in the works, but GOP former state Senator Steve Stivers made it official today that he’s seeking a rematch against Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy, who barely won the open seat in 2008. Stivers may have an opening in 2010 if there’s less Obama-driven college turnout in this district dominated by Ohio St., and no pro-life independent candidate siphoning votes from his right flank.

• TN-09: Burned-out Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton seems to have a pattern and practice of delaying his planned resignations whenever things don’t quite go right for him. Herenton, who’d planned to resign in order to devote himself full-time to his primary challenge to Rep. Steve Cohen, pushed back his resignation date (planned for July 11) to July 30, citing some unfinished items of business.

• House: The Hill throws together an interesting catch-all of ten “dark horse” House races, one of which is already threatening to be top tier (TX-10), one of which features an intriguing Dem primary (FL-02), and some of which are interesting because of changing demographics (TX-32) or changing political tides (all three Dem seats in Arkansas).

• DGA/RGA: In keeping with the sense that the real battlegrounds in 2010 are going to be the gubernatorial races, the DGA and RGA are both raising like gangbusters. The DGA raised $11.6 million in the first half of the year, a record for them, but the RGA nosed ahead of them, raising $12.2 million.

• Census: A coalition of Colorado local governments joins New York’s legislature in laying out its own funds to help assist the Census Bureau in putting together an accurate count by reducing undercounting. While Colorado isn’t likely to gain or lose a House seat in 2010, it’s still important in terms of securing federal funds, and with much of the state’s growth coming among Latinos, the risk of undercounting is high.

• Campaign Finance: Florida’s Republican SoS, Kurt Browning, has decided not to appeal a federal court’s ruling that found a state law regulating 527s was unconstitutional. With major implications for the Florida governor’s race, now 527s can operate without disclosure requirements on who they are and who funds them. (Florida has strict $500 limits on individual contributions, so 527s are especially important there.)

• Trivia: Wondering who the last Governor to resign in mid-term to focus on a presidential run was? New York’s Nelson Rockefeller, in 1973. He never made it to the presidential run, although he did wind up briefly serving as Gerald Ford’s fill-in vice-president.

• DSCC: Friend of SSP and once-and-future DKos editor Arjun Jaikumar (f/k/a brownsox) is not just the DSCC’s new media guru – he’s also up for The Hill’s 50 Most Beautiful in DC. Vote for the good-looking bastard by sending an email. (D)

• CT-Sen: Economist/talking head Peter Schiff, who’s been talking himself up for Chris Dodd’s Senate seat, released an internal poll taken for him by Wilson Research Strategies. Schiff, from the Paulist wing of the party, loses the general to Dodd, 42-38; the bad news here is that, despite the AIG imbroglio falling down the memory hole, Dodd is still significantly behind ex-Rep. Rob Simmons, 47-38. One thing the poll doesn’t test (or at least release publicly): results in the GOP primary.

• OH-Sen: Car dealer Tom Ganley announced his candidacy for the GOP primary for the open Senate seat. (I thought he’d already announced on April 2, but I guess he needed to remind the media of his existence.) Ganley owns 38 dealerships, so he’s not just your average used car dealer; he vows to self-fund significantly in his uphill fight against Rob Portman.

• MN-Gov: Minnesota’s Independence Party seems determined to field a major candidate in 2010’s ultra-confusing gubernatorial race, and at the top of their wish list is ex-Rep. Jim Ramstad. Ramstad’s name has occasionally been linked to the race as a Republican, but he may be too moderate to make it out of the activist-dominated nominating process. Ramstad’s popularity would make him one to watch in the general, but he’d be laboring under the IP label, whose candidates (including moderate Dem ex-Rep. Tim Penny, who ran for Governor in 2002) have had trouble getting out of the 10-15% range this decade.

• NJ-Gov: Yet another poll of the New Jersey governor’s race, and while it still has Jon Corzine losing to Chris Christie, I’m going to file this in the “good news” column, as it has Corzine down by only 6, with Christie under 50%: 45-39. Interestingly, New Jerseyites seem to understand that the state has become fools gold to Republicans: despite their preferences, they still think Corzine will win, 46-38. Corzine also has a campaign appearance scheduled for July 16 with someone who’s actually maintaining a 62% approval rating in New Jersey (which would translate into about 105% approval in a normal state): Barack Obama. Which, I think, is the first in-the-flesh appearance Obama has made on behalf of any candidate since getting elected.

• NY-Gov: Maybe I’m feeling extra charitable today, but I’m also going to file yesterday’s Marist poll in the “good news” column, because it actually shows David Paterson beating someone: he tops feeble ex-Rep. Rick Lazio 41-40 in a potential matchup. Of course, he still loses to everyone else, whether Andrew Cuomo in a primary (69-24) or Rudy Giuliani in the general (54-37, although that’s also an improvement from May). In case you’re wondering how a Cuomo/Lazio matchup would go, Cuomo would win 68-22.

• SC-Gov: Well, maybe publicly proclaiming that your mistress is your “soulmate” and that you’ve had run-ins with other women (but never crossed “the sex line”) isn’t the best way to keep your job. After it looked like Mark Sanford was successfully digging in for the last few days, the tide seems to be turning: Columbia’s The State says that 12 (of 27) state Senate Republicans have signed a letter to Sanford asking him to resign (including state Sen. Larry Grooms, who’s running to replace Sanford and would suffer having to run against LG Andre Bauer as an incumbent), with 4 more on the record as supporting it but not signing it, or leaning in that direction; Jim DeMint also asked Sanford to pack it in. While the Columbia and Charleston papers haven’t called for resignation, the News in Greenville yesterday joined the Spartanburg Herald-Journal (the twin cities of the state’s bible belt) in publishing an editorial doing so.

• NY-23: Looks like moderate GOP Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, who has attracted the interest of both parties in the NY-23 special election, is going full-speed-ahead on the GOP side. She told supporters she’ll be “aggressively seeking her party’s nomination.”

• NY-29: Corning (pop. 11,000) mayor Tom Reed announced that he’ll run against freshman Rep. Eric Massa in 2010. Reed seems to be running as an out-and-proud moderate, with the Main Street Partnership expected to support him. The NRCC has identified him as a leading recruit but hasn’t endorsed him, with several other candidates reportedly still exploring the race. (For what it’s worth, Corning is the hometown of Amo Houghton, former Corning Glass CEO and popular GOP moderate who held this seat for decades.)

• PA-15: I’m starting to like Bethlehem mayor John Callahan more and more, as it’s come out that in 2005 he proved he can match Rahm Emanuel F-bomb-for-F-bomb. Callahan’s response to Emanuel’s needling that “Are you tired of being fucking mayor yet?” was “It’s better than being a fucking congressman.” (The only reason this is relevant today is that the NRCC is now using this incident to argue that he’s now disqualified from becoming a congressman.)

• TN-03: Former GOP state chair Robin Smith made it official, that she’s running to replace Zach Wamp in the 3rd. She had previously quit her party job to focus full-time on exploring the race, so no surprise here; Smith is the likely GOP frontrunner.

• NRCC: The NRCC wasted no time in launching ads to go after the potentially vulnerable House Dems who voted yes on cap-and-trade. Rep. Tom Perriello is the recipient of the dread TV ad this time, while they also took out radio spots and robocalls against Harry Teague, Rick Boucher, Bruce Braley, Betsy Markey, Vic Snyder, Baron Hill, Mary Jo Kilroy, Alan Grayson, Zack Space, Bart Gordon, Debbie Halvorson, John Boccieri, and Ike Skelton.

• Votes (pdf): The Hill has a handy scorecard arranged by district lean while showing how many times vulnerable Dem representatives have broken ranks on 15 important bills. The biggest defector, unsurprisingly, is Bobby Bright, who flipped 13 out of 15 times. (Compared with Chet Edwards, in an even more difficult district but who defected only twice.) The guy who stands out like a sore thumb, though, is Joe Donnelly, who defected 8 times in IN-02, a district that Obama actually won, 54-45.

• MS-St. House: Democrats held the line in a special election in Mississippi state House district 82, as Democrat Wilber Jones held the seat. This is an African-American majority seat, but attracted some attention because the GOP ran a credible African-American candidate, Bill Marcy… but he still went on to lose, 66-34. Dems hold the edge in the House, 75-47.

• IL-Sen: AG Lisa Madigan is still under a lot of pressure from inside the Beltway to move over from her preferred race (Governor) to the Senate race instead. Thing is, the pressure seems to be working (and the fact that Pat Quinn remains pretty popular also helps): she says she’s “seriously considering it” and will decide within “four to six weeks” whether to run for gov, senate, or another term as AG.

• KY-Sen: SoS Trey Grayson is still treating Jim Bunning as undecided about running for a third term, despite the crotchety Bunning’s many protestations, Abe Simpson-style, that he ain’t dead yet. While saying that he has “no plans to run against him right now,” Grayson says he’d have a better answer to the question “after next month, when Bunning makes a decision….” Still, he says “I don’t suspect that (having to run against Bunning) would be a problem,” if Bunning stays in the GOP primary. The remarks were made at a poorly-attended (as in less than 50) Grayson fundraiser in Corbin.

• MO-Sen: Rep. Roy Blunt can’t catch a break. No sooner than professor Tom Schweich bailed out and former Treasurer Sarah Steelman’s message discipline came completely unglued, along comes yet another likely primary challenger: state Senator Chuck Purgason, who formed an exploratory committee. It sounds like he’ll be going at Blunt from the right (Purgason is known for his “country-western fashion sense and iron-clad fiscal conservatism,” and said we must “stop the ‘changing’ of America”).

• NC-Sen (pdf): Good polling news out of North Carolina, according to PPP: Generic Democrat leads Richard Burr, 41-38. (There’s still the little matter of nailing down a candidate, of course.) Only 29% overall (and 49% of Republicans) think he deserves another term, while 49% say give someone else a chance. Burr’s approval is 34/35, with a 31% “not sure,” which is still crazily high for a sitting senator.

• NH-Sen: Senatorial speculation for the GOP in the Granite State has turned to AG Kelly Ayotte. (AG is an appointed position in New Hampshire; Ayotte was appointed by ex-Gov. Craig Benson, but retained by John Lynch.) Still, everything seems to be on hold until fall, when the younger John Sununu is supposed to make known his senate intentions. Dean at Blue Hampshire observes ex-Rep. Charlie Bass (another possible Senate, or NH-02, candidate) getting a little testy about having to wait for Sununu Jr. to make up his mind (or for Sununu Sr. to make up Jr.’s mind).

• NY-Sen-B: Rep. Carolyn Maloney keeps ratcheting up her attacks on Kirsten Gillibrand, focusing increasingly on character and credibility. She hit Gillibrand’s “evolving” stances and said “She’s, to my knowledge, never passed anything. She spends all her time fund-raising. I spend my time doing things.” Meanwhile, Gillibrand rolled out the endorsements of 52 of the 62 Democratic Party county chairs in New York. That seems huge, but only half the population of New York state is accounted for, as they have yet to endorse in New York, Kings, Queens, Bronx, Richmond, and Suffolk Counties.

• CA-Gov: Rep. John Campbell from CA-48 in Orange County endorsed Insurance Comm. Steve Poizner a few months ago, but he recently dropped that endorsement and then this week endorsed ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman instead. Campbell’s explanation is that when he first endorsed Poizner, Whitman wasn’t in the race yet and he had never met her. (This Campbell, of course, is not to be confused with ex-Rep. Tom Campbell, who’s the third wheel in the GOP gubernatorial primary.)

• LA-03, LA-Sen: GOP state Rep. Nickie Monica, who has recently met with officials at the NRCC, is telling his contacts that he’s planning on running against Democrat Charlie Melancon. Meanwhile, faced with the prospect of a strong challenge and the looming uncertainties of redistricting, Melancon is still giving a race against GOP Sen. David Vitter a “pretty hard” look, according to a “Democratic insider.” (J)

• NY-23: Republican state Senator Joe Griffo, who’s based outside the district in Rome but whose turf overlaps part of the 23rd, said he won’t run in the special election. For the Dems, veteran Danny Francis (who ran twice against McHugh in the 1990s) said he’ll seek the nomination. Dem state Senator Darrel Aubertine shot down speculation that he’d fielded a call from Barack Obama about the seat, although he did cop to talking to DCCC recruitment guru Steve Israel about it.

• OH-15: ’08 candidate/ex-state Sen. Steve Stivers says that he’ll make up his mind on a rematch against Mary Jo Kilroy by the 4th of July, but Ohio Republicans apparently feel very confident that he’ll jump into the race. (J)

• PA-06, PA-Gov: Rep. Jim Gerlach has set a deadline of “this summer” for deciding whether to jump into the 2010 governor’s race — although he certainly seems to be moving to do so, positioning himself message-wise as the only GOPer who’s dealt with fiscal issues in a legislature. In the meantime, GOP power brokers are getting antsy that Gerlach’s delay in announcing his plans are complicating their efforts to hold this D+4 seat (although GOP state Rep. Curt Schroder is already warming up in the bullpen, having opened an exploratory committee).

• Votes: The war supplemental passed the House 226-202 yesterday, with 32 Democrats and 5 Republicans breaking ranks. The GOPers fall under the ‘moderate’ umbrella: Cao, King, Kirk, Candace Miller, and John McHugh (for whom a ‘no’ vote would be awk-ward, as the incoming Sec. of the Army). The Dems are generally the most liberal few dozen, although with a few eyebrow-raising exceptions (Eric Massa, maybe most notably): Baldwin, Capuano, Conyers, Doggett, Donna Edwards, Ellison, Farr, Filner, Grayson, Grijalva, Honda, Kaptur, Kucinich, Barbara Lee, Lofgren, Massa, McGovern, Michaud, Payne, Pingree, Polis, Serrano, Shea-Porter, Sherman, Speier, Stark, Tierney, Tsongas, Waters, Watson, Welch, and Woolsey.  

• IL-Sen: Tempted by Lisa Madigan’s titanic poll numbers against all comers, and her public statement of reconsidering the Senate race, the DSCC has started actively courting Madigan to get into the Senate race. This news comes from Madigan herself, who still maintains that her main focus is the governor’s race (but, if you read the fine print, seems to be firing warning shots across Chris Kennedy’s bow to keep him from jumping into the Senate race). Madigan’s interest can’t be good news for Alexi Giannoulias, especially as concerns over his handling of the state college savings program are taking a bit of the bloom off his rose.

• FL-Sen: Movement conservatives are tying themselves in knots trying to decide how to react to apostate Charlie Crist’s entry into the Senate race in Florida. The Club for Growth gave a tepid reaction, saying that Crist can still redeem himself by opposing the tax hikes proposed in the new state budget. On the other hand, Grover Norquist, the CfG’s patron saint, sounded a note of realpolitik, saying that Crist may be the best candidate “in Florida.” The conservative blogosphere, however, isn’t giving an inch, trying to organize a boycott on giving funds to the NRSC after John Cornyn weighed in on Crist’s behalf.

• MN-Sen: Norm Coleman is getting buried under legal bills, and not all of them are related to his tiresome contesting of Al Franken’s election. He just requested for FEC permission to start tapping his campaign funds for defense attorney fees related to allegations that sketchy Coleman benefactor Nasser Kazeminy was funneling payouts to Coleman through Coleman’s wife. Would GOP donors be willing to keep funding Coleman if they knew their donations were going to his defense attorneys and not the futile Franken fight? That hasn’t stopped Coleman’s Senate friends from continuing to solicit donations for him, as compiled in this video.

• MO-Sen: Rep. Roy Blunt pulled down a couple of expected but important endorsements in his quest to become Missouri’s next Senator: Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, the last member of Missouri’s House Republicans to get behind him, and Sen. Kit Bond, whose seat Blunt is looking to fill.

• OH-15: Ohio voters may get the chance to add even more Steves to their House delegation. Former GOP state Sen. Steve Stivers, who narrowly lost the open seat race in OH-15 to Mary Jo Kilroy last year, is contemplating another shot at the race, with lots of urging from John Boehner. (Ex-Rep. Steve Chabot is already committed to a rematch against Rep. Steve Driehaus in nearby OH-01.)

• SC-02: Speaking of rematches, backbench GOP Rep. Joe Wilson will have to face off again versus Iraq vet Rob Miller, who held Wilson to a surprising 54-46 margin in 2008 without DCCC help. Miller should be able to count on a higher-profile run this time.

• Mayors: City councilor Jim Suttle squeaked past Republican Hal Daub (former mayor and Representative) to hold the open Omaha mayor’s seat for Democrats. (The position is officially nonpartisan, but the race was fought along clearly partisan lines, which favored Suttle as Democrats hold a 44-33 registration edge within the city.) Suttle won by 1,500 votes, by a 51-49 margin.

This has no bearing on anything in particular, but I noticed it some time ago and it’s been driving me insane…

A win for Stivers would give the Ohio delegation four — yes, FOUR — members named Steve.  

It started out with just Chabot and LaTourette.  Lo and behold, Chabot came to be challenged (ultimately successfully) by none other than a fellow Steve (Driehaus). Still, this was to be no more than a preservation of the nomenclatural status quo, switching out a bad Steve for a good one.

Yet then Steve Austria won the Republican primary in OH-07. Holding out little hope for Democrats winning this seat, my attention fell to OH-15, where I assumed (probably along with many others) that Mary Jo, having been campaigning for four years, would handily beat Steve Stivers.

Election Night: the race was called for Stivers.  My heart was broken on many levels — a good, hard-working Democrat had come up short, a premier pick-up opportunity had been missed, and Ohio’s Steve contingent had been **shudder** doubled.

But soon came word that the race was in fact too close to call!

Fearing the catastrophic glut of Steves I’d seen on the horizon, I began refreshing the Ohio Secretary of State’s page every few hours to monitor the results out of the 15th District. As of this moment, Superfluous Steve #4 is leading by 146 votes.

Such has been my life for the past five days.

Can Mary Jo still staunch the oncoming Tstevenami?

UPDATED: I’m proud/dumbstruck to announce that this very diary was featured on tonight’s Rachel Maddow Show.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26…

It seems like ohio_anon and DCal in comments have figured out the mystery in OH-15. You’ve probably noticed by now that sites which rely on data from the AP (such as CNN) are reporting results that look like this:

Steve Stivers (R): 48% (146,907)

Mary Jo Kilroy (D): 43% (134,492)

Yet the race hasn’t been called, and news accounts say Stivers has just a 321-vote lead. So why is the AP data screwed up? Well, ohio_anon points out that in Ohio, the board of elections for the county with the greatest number of people in any given congressional district is responsible for reporting for all the counties covered by that CD. This means that the data on the Franklin County website includes the votes for much smaller Madison and Union Counties.

So the AP appears to be counting Madison and Union twice – once on their own, and once folded into the combined results reported by Franklin. (Stivers did much better in the two smaller counties, while Kilroy ran ahead in Franklin, so that’s why his lead is inflated.) Indeed, the math works out perfectly, as DCal observes – double Madison and Union and add them to the “Franklin” results, and you get those phony numbers listed in the blockquote above.

The AP needs to get its act together, but the bottom line is that due to the closeness of this race, we probably won’t know the final results for ten days.

Grove Insight for DCCC (10/21, likely voters, 10/4-5):

Gary Peters (D): 46 (46)

Joe Knollenberg (R-inc): 36 (37)

Jack Kevorkian (I): 2 (n/a)

(MoE: ±4.9%)

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for DCCC (10/19-20, likely voters, 9/30-10/1):

Mary Jo Kilroy (D): 44 (44)

Steve Stivers (R): 36 (36)

Don Eckhart (I): 11 (7)

(MoE: ±4.9%)

Two new polls from the DCCC show Democratic candidates in midwestern swing district races maintaining their sizable leads from last time. In the open seat in the Columbus-based 15th, the head-to-head numbers stay exactly the same; the only movement, unfortunately for Stivers, seems to be to pro-life independent Don Eckhart. (At the presidential level, Obama leads McCain 51-39 in OH-15.)

MI-09 continues to be a big surprise, as Gary Peters puts up a bigger margin against incumbent Joe Knollenberg than in the open seat in OH-15. This one just seems like a perfect storm: the Detroit area was already suffering economically more than any other part of the country, it’s suffering even more with the financial crisis and subsequent free fall in the auto industry, and we have an old incumbent who hasn’t faced a top-tier challenge before.

(Proudly cross-posted at C4O)

Last week, we finished surveying the lay of the land out West. This week, we begin to turn our attention to the Midwest. Yes, that’s right. The Midwest looks to be once again a crucial battleground to win both the White House and Congress. And with just six weeks left until election day, we’d like to talk about the state of the races in America’s Heartland.

So would you like to join us?

Let’s begin with Ohio. Ohio may yet again be THE critical swing state this year, as polls show an extremely tight race here. However, the Presidential race isn’t the only exciting contest in The Buckeye State. We also have some great opportunities to win some more Congressional seats as well!

In the Columbus based 15th District, we have a great candidate in Mary Jo Kilroy. She’s currently a Franklin County (Columbus) Commissioner who has a terrific record of accomplishments in bringing Republicans and Democrats together to enact real solutions to the county’s economic, health care, and environmental problems. But while Kilroy offers a message of real change, her Republican opponent only offers more of the same Bush-Cheney-McCain nonsense. Mary Jo Kilroy nearly ousted the Republican incumbent in 2006 (who’s now retiring) and Bush barely squeaked by with 50% of the vote here in 2004, so this district is ripe for the picking in 2008! With the DCCC and EMILY’S List already all in here, our help can really help put Mary Jo Kilroy (and Barack Obama, for that matter!) on top this November.

Another race that the DCCC and other top Democrats are targeting in Ohio is the 16th District. Here, Air Force veteran and current state representative John Boccieri is running to bring some real change for Northeast Ohio. He’s fought for our country, and he now wants to fight for Ohioans… For more and better jobs, affordable health care, and real help in these perilous economic times. Meanwhile, Republican Kurt Schuring… Well, he’s not quite as fond of his possible future constituents. This race is quite winnable for Democrats, and we have a terrific candidate in John Boccieri. If we support him, he will win.

Another state that’s critical for Barack Obama this fall is Michigan. The race here is close, but the renewed focus on the economy does seem to help Obama here. If there’s any state that’s been severely hit by the economic downturn, it’s Michigan.  And hopefully with Obama’s message resonating here, we can also elect more good Democrats to Congress from here.

One great candidate running is Gary Peters from Michigan’s 9th District (Oakland County, Detroit suburbs). Peters is an accomplished state legislator, business owner, and a Navy Veteran who signed up again to serve after 9/11. Unlike the incumbent Republican Joe Knollenberg, Peters wants to get to work to help rebuild Michigan’s economy. But in order to make change happen here, we need to help Gary Peters win.

Michigan and Ohio are two critical swing states for Barack Obama to win this fall. If he wins them both, he’ll likely win the White House. But in addition to the Presidential race, we have critical Congressional races to win as well in these two states. Please don’t forget to help all these wonderful Democrats win by giving what you can here and by volunteering for the campaign if you live in or near any of these districts. With our help, we’ll make victory happen on November 4 in the Midwest and all over the country! 🙂

As reported by Joe Hallett in the Columbus Dispatch and noted on Ohio 15th and Plunderbund this morning, State Sen. Steve Stivers (R-Upper Arlington) of the 16th Ohio Senate District has changed his mind and will jump into the contest to replace retiring Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Upper Arlington) in the 15th Ohio Congressional District. Stivers is an Iraq War vet and a state senator for five years. In short, he is a relatively high-profile adversary for Franklin County Commissioner and well-funded repeat candidate Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Columbus).

More after the flip.

The fascinating thing about the announcement is that Stivers, a member of the incumbent’s party, is portraying it as a race about change. “I’ve decided to run for Congress because I think we really need change in Washington,” he says, and “the country is ready for change …and I represent that change.” He even goes so far as to portray Kilroy as “almost like” an incumbent in the race: “It will be a very different race than in 2006. The voters know her and they need to get to know me.”

On the face of it, that is a difficult argument. Although the Republicans lost control of the House last year, they still hold the White House and the nation is still reeling from the Bush Administration and its policies. Even more telling, the 15th District has been in Republican hands since 1967, when Chalmer Wylie (R) replaced Robert Seacrest (D). Change, indeed.

Stiver’s Ohio Senate district is almost entirely within the 15th Congressional District. Word is that State Rep. Jim Hughes (R) is the pick to run for Stiver’s Ohio Senate seat.

The 15th Congressional District is in central Ohio in Franklin, Madison, and Union counties. It includes part of Columbus and its northwestern suburbs, including Hilliard, Marysville, as well as rural countryside to the northwest. It is a swing district (Cook PVI R+1) and is thought to be tredning blue. Bush won 50% in 2004. Retiring incumbent Deborah Pryce (R) defeated Mary Jo Kilroy (D) by just over 1,000 votes (50% to 50%) in 2006.

From CQ Politics:

Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy, who narrowly lost to Republican Rep. Deborah Pryce last November in Ohio’s Columbus-centered 15th District, will run again in 2008.

Kilroy – an elected commissioner in Franklin County, which includes Columbus – sent a letter to political supporters this week informing them of her decision, according to a statement her campaign office released Thursday afternoon.

“I want to finish this campaign,” Kilroy told CQPolitics.com in an interview. “I want to continue this campaign and bring this home so that the people of the 15th District get the kind of representation they deserve.”

As she did in her last effort, Kilroy’s 2008 rematch bid will focus heavily on her opposition to President Bush and his policies in Iraq – and will link Pryce to an administration that remains mostly unpopular.

Kilroy managed to lose a race in 2006 that many predicted (in the home stretch) she’d win, albeit by a razor-thin margin of 1062 votes.  For that reason, I’m a little hesitant to automatically support a rematch, as previous heavy-spending four-year campaigns run by candidates such as Lois Murphy in PA-06 and Diane Farrell in CT-04 fell just short of producing Democratic victories in a blue wave year.  This isn’t meant as a knee-jerk knock against second-rounders, as folks like Jerry McNerney, Paul Hodes, and Nancy Boyda took the hard lessons of their 2004 defeats and turned them around into 2006 victories.  But: A) they had the advantage of running for the second time in a wave year, and B) excluding Boyda, Hodes and McNerney ran underfunded, low-profile ’04 contests, practically allowing them to introduce themselves to district voters in 2006 for the first time all over again.  Kilroy will have the name recognition advantage, for sure, but she’ll also carry with her the baggage that millions of dollars of four years of brain-numbing media oppo brings.

Discuss.

As an aside: the bigger problem with the Ohio map is the Republican gerrymander that has split the Democratic-leaning Franklin County (which includes the Democratic city of Columbus) between Pryce’s 15th and Republican Pat Tiberi’s 12th.  Kilroy edged Pryce by a 52-48 margin in their share of the county last November, while Democrat Bob Shamansky (a sentimental favorite of SSP) only lost by a 49-51 margin to Tiberi in the rest of the county.  Swaths of Republican “heartland” tacked on to the cleaved Franklin county has denied Columbus fair represenatation for years.  Oh, the powers of the redistricting process.  Speaking of which, Ohio Democrats are only five seats short of majority status in the Ohio House, which is a far cry from their 2006 position of being 21 seats short of control.  With the Senate looking somewhat out of immediate reach, it would be nice if we could snatch control over one half of the state’s legislature to gain some leverage during the next round of redistricting.

Race Tracker: OH-15