Tag: CA-45

• PA-Sen: Rep. Joe Sestak is actually sounding likelier to jump into the Senate race than he did before Arlen Specter’s party swap. Interviews this week find him taking on a more belligerent tone and staking out an outsider position. Sen. Bob Casey, however, is moving right away to say he’ll support Specter no matter what happens in the primary.

• IN-Sen: A Hamilton Campaigns poll finds Evan Bayh with ridiculously high favorables: 74/23, with even 61% from Republicans. He also has $11.4 million in the bank. You think with that level of popularity maybe he could drop the defensive crouch and stop reflexively opposing his party’s agenda?

• CA-32: As the May 19 special election primary fast approaches, Board of Equalization chair Judy Chu and state Senator Gil Cedillo have started going at each other hammer-and-tongs. Cedillo’s camp has sent out mailers charging Chu with giving special tax breaks to corporate campaign contributors; Chu’s camp responds that they were “routine refunds of overpaid sales taxes.” Chu leads in fundraising and endorsements, but will need to make substantial inroads into the Latino vote in this district with a Latino majority but a large Asian bloc.

• CA-45: We’ve known for a while that openly-gay Palm Springs mayor Steve Pougnet was intending to challenge Rep. Mary Bono Mack in this newly-blue district (still R+3), but he made it official earlier this week.

• AR-St. House: Here’s one I’m still trying to wrap my head around: until this week, there was actually a Green Party member in a state House of Representatives. And it wasn’t Vermont, Maine, or Oregon: it was Arkansas, of all places. Well, that ended this week, as State Rep. Richard Carroll of North Little Rock switches to the Democratic Party today. (The effect of the switch is minimal: Dems now control the House 75-25.)

• Swingnuts’ Delight: Everything you ever wanted to know about the awesome delicacy that is chocolate babka. Stick around here long enough and DavidNYC might send you one! (Hat-tip: reader RC)

With the release of the new registration numbers, I now have updates for the open and/or competitive State Senate and State Assembly districts. The Secretary of State’s website has the presidential results by district, so I am including the presidential results in each districts.

I am also tacking on the eight districts that are our top targets in 2010: CA-03, CA-24, CA-25, CA-26, CA-44, CA-45, CA-48, and CA-50.

Cross-posted at Calitics and Democracy for California.

District	Incumbent	DEM	GOP	Margin	2008 Result
CA-03	Dan Lungren	37.72%	39.63%	R+1.91	O+0.5
CA-24	Elton Gallegly	35.84%	41.88%	R+6.04	O+2.8
CA-25	Buck McKeon	37.72%	39.35%	R+1.63	O+1.1
CA-26	David Dreier	35.64%	40.56%	R+4.92	O+4.0
CA-44	Ken Calvert	34.70%	42.38%	R+7.68	O+0.9
CA-45	Mary Bono Mack	37.97%	41.96%	R+3.99	O+4.6
CA-48	John Campbell	29.41%	44.87%	R+15.46	O+0.7
CA-50	Brian Bilbray	31.38%	40.36%	R+8.98	O+4.2

Competitive and/or open state legislature districts are over the flip…

Our current numbers in the Senate are 25 Democrats/15 Republicans, with winning 2 GOP-held seats necessary for 2/3; and in the Assembly 51 Democrats/29 Republicans, with winning 3 GOP-held seats necessary for 2/3.

SENATE

Republicans (4)

District	Incumbent	DEM	GOP	Margin	2008 Result
SD-04	Sam Aanestad	33.05%	44.10%	R+11.05	M+11.8
SD-12	Jeff Denham	47.46%	33.09%	D+14.37	O+17.6
SD-18	Roy Ashburn	31.91%	47.58%	R+15.67	M+23.1
SD-36	Dennis Hollingsworth	28.94%	46.13%	R+17.19	M+14.2

Democrats (5)

District	Incumbent	DEM	GOP	Margin	2008 Result
SD-16	Dean Florez	49.61%	33.15%	D+16.46	O+19.5
SD-22	Gilbert Cedillo	58.98%	14.74%	D+44.24	O+58.7
SD-24	Gloria Romero	53.62%	21.13%	D+32.49	O+41.3
SD-34	Lou Correa	42.82%	33.58%	D+9.24	O+16.8
SD-40	Denise Ducheny	46.59%	29.65%	D+16.94	O+25.7

ASSEMBLY

Republicans (16)

District	Incumbent	DEM	GOP	Margin	2008 Result
AD-03	Dan Logue	34.81%	40.15%	R+5.34	M+1.6
AD-05	Roger Niello	37.93%	38.80%	R+0.87	O+4.2
AD-25	Tom Berryhill	36.84%	42.30%	R+5.46	M+7.9
AD-26	Bill Berryhill	42.04%	39.22%	D+2.82	O+4.4
AD-30	Danny Gilmore	46.31%	36.66%	D+9.65	O+3.9
AD-33	Sam Blakeslee	35.91%	40.77%	R+4.86	O+1.4
AD-36	Steve Knight	39.56%	38.65%	D+0.91	O+0.8
AD-37	Audra Strickland	35.86%	41.40%	R+5.54	O+3.7
AD-38	Cameron Smyth	36.84%	40.02%	R+3.18	O+4.9
AD-63	Bill Emmerson	37.90%	40.35%	R+2.45	O+4.1
AD-64	Brian Nestande	36.11%	41.83%	R+5.72	O+1.8
AD-65	Paul Cook	37.14%	41.08%	R+3.94	M+4.1
AD-68	Van Tran	32.82%	41.25%	R+8.43	M+2.9
AD-70	Chuck DeVore	30.19%	43.49%	R+13.30	O+3.9
AD-74	Martin Garrick	30.89%	41.68%	R+10.79	O+2.2
AD-75	Nathan Fletcher	30.71%	39.88%	R+9.17	O+4.1

Democrats (15)

District	Incumbent	DEM	GOP	Margin	2008 Result
AD-07	Noreen Evans	52.81%	23.72%	D+29.09	O+43.3
AD-09	Dave Jones	56.64%	18.71%	D+37.93	O+49.0
AD-10	Alyson Huber	39.32%	39.39%	R+0.07	O+4.0
AD-11	Tom Torlakson	54.23%	22.06%	D+32.17	O+41.2
AD-15	Joan Buchanan	40.60%	36.09%	D+4.51	O+16.9
AD-20	Alberto Torrico	48.65%	20.17%	D+18.48	O+42.3
AD-21	Ira Ruskin	47.22%	26.83%	D+20.39	O+45.8
AD-23	Joe Coto	51.28%	18.96%	D+32.32	O+44.4
AD-31	Juan Arambula	49.07%	33.84%	D+15.23	O+26.1
AD-35	Pedro Nava	48.24%	27.95%	D+20.29	O+35.6
AD-47	Karen Bass	64.93%	11.27%	D+53.66	O+71.9
AD-50	Hector De La Torre	61.92%	16.21%	D+45.71	O+55.9
AD-76	Lori Saldaña	41.96%	26.89%	D+15.07	O+34.4
AD-78	Martin Block	43.09%	31.54%	D+11.55	O+21.8
AD-80	Manuel Perez	45.33%	36.49%	D+8.84	O+20.7

In the Senate, our obvious plan of action is to win the 12th and possibly the 4th if we have a strong candidate, and hold the 34th. In the Assembly, we have a lot of offense opportunities and of course, we will need to defend our 4 freshmen in vulnerable districts (Huber especially, Buchanan, Block, Perez). As for the potentially vulnerable Republican districts we should target, we should prioritize them like this:

(I) Open seats in Obama districts: 5, 33, 37, 63, 70

(II) Incumbents in Obama districts: 26, 30, 36, 38, 64, 74, 75

(III) Open seat in McCain district with small (<6%) registration edge: 25

(IV) Incumbents in McCain districts with small (<6%) registration edge: 3, 65

(V) Other open seat: 68

• CA-45: After years of letting California’s 45th district (the most Democratic-leaning district in California still represented by a Republican, where Obama won 52-47) lay fallow, the Democrats actually seem to have a top-tier (or close to it) challenger lined up. Palm Springs mayor Steve Pougnet just started a campaign committee for a face-off against Mary Bono Mack. The openly gay Pougnet has been mayor of the city of 40,000 since 2007.

• KY-Sen: Dr. Dan may get some company in the primary. 39-year-old Attorney General Jack Conway has announced “there’s a good chance” he’ll run for Senate in 2010. Subtexts in other quotes suggest that he’s been negotiating with Rep. Ben Chandler and Auditor Crit Luallen, who may be stepping aside for him.

• CO-Gov: Now this seems unexpected. Ex-Rep. Scott McInnis, after butting heads with more conservative elements in the state GOP and studiously avoiding the 2008 and 2010 senate races in Colorado, has chosen a much more uphill battle: he’s running for governor against Democratic incumbent Bill Ritter. He may still face a primary battle against up-and-coming state senator Josh Penry (who used to be McInnis’s press secretary).

• PA-Gov, PA-06: Jim Gerlach acknowledged in an interview that people have been soliciting him to run against Arlen Specter in the 2010 senate primary (which would turn it into moderate/moderate/fiscal wingnut/religious wingnut chaos). However, he’s still charging full speed ahead on his gubernatorial bid instead.

• MI-12: Here’s one of the least likely places you could imagine for a heated primary, but it may happen. State senator Mickey Switalski will challenge 14-term incumbent Sander Levin in this reliably Dem (65-33 for Obama) district in the Detroit suburbs. (To give you an idea how long Levin has been around, he’s Carl Levin’s older brother.) This doesn’t seem to be an ideological challenge as much as Switalski is term-limited out of the state senate in 2010 and needs somewhere else to go.

• CA-10: San Francisco city attorney analyst (and former political editor for the San Francisco Examiner) Adriel Hampton has announced his candidacy for the open seat being vacated by Ellen Tauscher. What may be most memorable about this is that his may be the first ever candidacy announcement made by Twitter; he faces long odds against state senator Mark DeSaulnier (who won’t announce until Tauscher’s resignation is official).

• New Dems: One other musical chairs item left in the wake of Tauscher’s resignation is who takes over as the chair of the New Dems. The New Dems have five vice-chairs, but it looks like the hyper-ambitious Joe Crowley has enough support nailed down to take command bloodlessly. The CW is wondering whether this will complicate Crowley’s efforts to join House leadership (he lost a caucus vice-chair bid in 2006), but my question is what the heck is a New Dem doing in NY-07 (which went for Obama 79-20)?

• FL-20: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz told the Miami Herald on Saturday that she successfully battled breast cancer over the past year. We wish her good health as she continues her recovery. (D)

• Maps: For those of you who enjoy seeing maps breaking things down by congressional districts, here’s a new one from real estate site hotpads.com: which CDs have the highest foreclosure rates.

It’s looking increasingly obvious that we have major opportunities opening up nationwide. We have a real chance to expand our Democratic majority in Congress beyond our wildest dreams (back in 2007) while also winning back The White House with Barack Obama. That’s why it’s critical that we take action NOW to take advantage of this unique opportunity we have now.

Want to see where I’m looking?  

Well, let’s start with a race that’s suddenly jumped onto the national radar. Let’s talk about California’s 46th District. I’ve been working this district for a while now, as I live just blocks away from the district boundary. I can’t emphasize enough how good a chance Debbie Cook has to win. I’ve walked the district everywhere from Santa Ana to Long Beach to Costa Mesa to Catalina. I’ve talked to Republicans who are ready to vote for Debbie and Democrats who are excited now like they’ve never been excited before. Now’s our chance to turn this red district blue.

Let’s talk about the 44th District. This race may still be under the radar, but we shouldn’t be ignoring Bill Hedrick. The Republican registration gap has narrowed dramatically, the Inland Empire has been shifting gradually to Democrats, and we have a great candidate running in Corona-Norco School Board Member Bill Hedrick. He’s been winning in a “red district” before, so let’s not underestimate him now.

And of course, we have even more special opportunities in California today. Both Bill Durston in CA-03 (Suburban Sacramento) and Nick Leibham in CA-50 (Suburban San Diego) are in a dead heat against the Republican incumbents. Charlie Brown in CA-04 (Exurban Sacramento) remains poised to send Carpetbagger Tom McClintock packing to the next race he’ll file for. Even supposedly safe Republicans like Mary Bono Mack in CA-45 (Palm Springs Area) are now feeling the heat!

So what can we do to make California bluer? Give! I mean it… Give!

We’re only two weeks away from victory. How big do you want it? Well, we can make it big here in California. Are you ready to make it happen?

Two Republican members of Congress apparently wed over the weekend.  Mary Bono, the widow of Sonny Bono and his successor in Congress wed Connie Mack III, a Florida Republican.  Bono represents CA-45 (R+3) one of the weaker Republican House districts in California.  Mack represents FL-14, one of the more clearly Republican districts in the Sunshine State.

The wedding was clearly reminiscent of the 1994 nuptials of two NY Republican House members: Susan Molinari and Bill Paxon.  Molinari, despite being part of Republican House leadership, resigned her seat just three years later.  Republican Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum married Howard Baker in 1996 and did not seek re-election.

The difficulties of maintaining three households (one in the DC area plus one in each home district) would tend to nudge at least one of the partners to a somewhat speedy retirement.

Democrats would have a much better chance of winning Bono’s district than winning Mack’s.

Already this session, JoAnn Davis of Virginia died and was replaced in a special election by a male Republican and three Republican women in the House (Deb Pryce, Barbara Cubin, and Heather Wilson) have announced their retirement.  Wilson is running for a Senate seat.

Should Bono retire, California would have no Republican women in the Housae (out of 19 seats).  About half of California’s House Democrats, including Speaker nancy Pelosi, are women as are both of its two US Senators.

Hot on the heels of their hard-hitting ads against Republican Senators McConnell (KY), Collins (ME) and Sununu (NH), Americans United For Change is setting its sights on four Republican House incumbents: Heather Wilson (NM-01), Jim Walsh (NY-25), Dean Heller (NV-02), and Tim Johnson (IL-15):

AUFC picked an interesting mix of incumbents here.  While Walsh and Wilson will be two huge Democratic targets next year, Johnson and Heller are completely out of left field.  Raise your hands if you even knew that the Republicans had their own Tim Johnson.  Yeah, I thought so.

As far as an “expanding the playing field” type of move, I remain skeptical that Heller’s district will come into play next year.  At a PVI of R+8.2, the only reason this district was competitive last year was due to its open seat status, a feisty Republican primary, and Democrat Jill Derby’s strengths.  I’m not anticipating that any of these factors will re-emerge in 2008, and I doubt that a top-shelf challenger will emerge.  If I were in charge of these ad buys, I would have gone after Republican Jon Porter in nearby NV-03, whose D+1.0 district and out-of-the-mainstream views on Iraq make his district ripe for another aggressive challenge.

As for Johnson, his Illinois district went to Bush by 11 and 18 point margins in 2000 and 2004, respectively.  I would be surprised if anything happened here, but at least Mr. Johnson will have to feel some deserved heat on Iraq.  Hopefully his ass will get redistricted into oblivion in a few years.

UPDATE: AUFC is also going after Randy Kuhl (NY-29) and Mary Bono (CA-45).