Swing State Project

Hey Suzy Creamcheese, what’s got into you?

UPDATE: Suzy Creamcheese says, “Russ Feingold’s got another one of those vote/contest things going on. Link here.”

Well, ain’t this intriguing.  According to Nathan Gonzales of the Rothenberg Political Report, Connecticut Democrats are weighing the possibility of running former NHL superstar Mike Richter against the last Republican House member left standing in New England: the battle-hardened Chris Shays.  As a longtime hockey fan, the idea certainly leaves me feeling a little giddy.  Richter was a career-long member of the New York Rangers, carrying them alongside Mark Messier, Adam Graves and Brian Leetch to a historical Stanley Cup victory in 1994.  His Rangers jersey is only one of four to hang retired in the rafters of the Madison Square Garden.  That’s got to carry at least a little bit of resonance in the NYC metro area, even if hockey hasn’t exactly been the taste du jour of the area in the past few years.

As for his connection to the district, Richter is a recent graduate of Yale, where he obtained a degree in Ethics, Politics & Economics in 2006.  According to Gonzales, he also found the time to campaign for Democrat John Hall in his upset victory over Sue Kelly in NY-19.  Makes you like him even more, doesn’t it?

However, a Shays-Richter matchup isn’t a sure bet:

But Richter […] apparently is looking at a number of districts in more than one state before he makes a final decision.

According to Wikipedia, Richter was born in Abington, Pennsylvania.  There are two Abingtons: a small township in Lackawanna County (PA-11, held by Democrat Paul Kanjorski), and a larger township in Montgomery County (shared between PA-13 and PA-08, both Democrat-held seats).  Perhaps he could be eyeballing a nearby tossup district like PA-06 or PA-15.

He also went to school in Lake Placid, but I believe that that area falls under freshman Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand’s NY-20, although Republican John McHugh’s 23rd district is right next door…

In any case, the idea of having Mike Richter in our arsenal is exciting.  I’d certainly take a fresh face over a third kick at the can by Diane Farrell.  And if there has ever been a more effective American-born goalie at shutting down right-wingers, I’d like you to name one.

(From the diaries with minor editing. – promoted by James L.)

I was asked to repost this from DailyKos, so I thought I would oblige.  Since I havent posted here before, but this isnt my first diary, I will throw some links of past posts I have made to fill in any holes.

This is available at DailyKos and BlueNC.

I have spent most of my past diaries on the topic of Elizabeth Dole in one form of another.  The most common question that people have asked me is, who is going to run against her?  Well, I decided to compile all the possible choices, and see what sort of rumors we could get started.  The simple fact is that we need a challenger.  And, we need that challenger to have raised a ton of cash by the end of this year.  So, lets take a look at the possibilities.

Let me start off by saying that we will beat Elizabeth Dole.  She is being watched by groups across the country, who will jump in once she has a challenger.  More importantly, she is below 50% in the polls, with painful approval rates.  She supports the president’s war in a state with shrinking support for Bush’s failures.  Additionally, at the end of 2006 she had less than $250,000 cash on hand, making her fundraising a big question mark for the first time.

We just have to get someone to run.

Mike Easley
Mike Easley is the current Governor, first elected to office in 2000.  He can not run again in 2008 because of term limit requirement (but could run again in 2012).  Easley’s biggest policy initiatives focus on education, business and law enforcement.  He is a former prosecutor and Attorney General.  His stance on business issues has gotten him a lot of Republican votes and friends, but his education programs have been just plain amazing.
He is the only target for the DSCC as of now, but he has said ‘no’ many times.  Ultimately, his refusal to run is based upon him not wanting to be a legislator.  Current speculation puts him on a list of potential VP candidates, but I put those chances at slim to none.  It is much more likely that he would be appointed AG or given a cabinet post in a Democratic White House.  He leads Dole in polling, and could raise enough money to beat her.  However, he seems uninterested in running, and is often seen as being reclusive.  It is hard to beat the charming (if two-tounged) Dole if you are never seen in public.

Elaine Marshall
  Elaine Marhall is the current Secretary of State.  She is highly respected, and has already won statewide office as a Democrat.  I have yet to see any polling including her name, but I would not be surprised to see her as the best positioned Democrat not named Mike Easley right now.
Being a woman will help cut into Dole’s “crossover appeal”.  However, my concern about Elaine Marshall is whether she would be able to raise the necessary funds.  Additionally she has already taken one shot at this seat, running in a crowded primary field in 2002.  She only managed to garner about 15% of the vote in that primary, far behind both Erskine Bowles and Dan Blue.  Frankly, I doubt that she is interested in running.

Brad Miller
  Brad Miller is a member of the US House.  He is most likely known to everyone on this site, considering his great relationship with bloggers.  I could go on about him, but it is easier to just point you towards his tag and his diary list.  Although I started the Draft Brad Miller movement on BlueNC and here (full disclosure) I am increasingly doubtful that he will be leaving the house anytime soon.  However, there is still hope, and he has not said no.  He has only said that he is busy actually doing work in congress, and has not thought about it.
I believe that Rep Miller would be a great choice against Elizabeth Dole.  His seat would be as easy to protect as any open seat could be.  Additionally, he is a strong progressive, but one with a background and qualities that could appeal to many in North Carolina.  His fundraising would be greatly aided by the fact that he is already in congress.

Bob Etheridge
Bob Etheridge is a US House Member, and has been for a long time.  He is fairly conservative, representing a district with a large amount of farm land.  However, he is far from a DINO, and is a strong member of the caucus.  I would honestly be shocked to ever see a strong challenge to him from either side of the aisle in this district.  Having said that, I find it doubtful that we would be able to protect the seat if he left.  A recent poll shows him far behind Dole, but it is not an insurmountable lead, and mostly is a result of his lack of name id statewide.  He would be able to raise the necessary funds rather easily.  However, he has a lot of seniority built up, and seems more than occupied in the House.  He has said multiple times that he is not interested in running.

Grier Martin
Grier Martin is a relative newcomer to politics.  He is 37, and was first elected to the NC House in 2004.  There are two very important details though.  First, in 2004 he won a very expensive race against an incumbent with a large amount of personal income in a district that leans Republican.  A huge upset.  Just as importantly, he actually has name ID across the state, due to the fact that his father, DG Martin was the Attorney General for many years.  He has also taken some interesting stands in the legislature, including voting against the budget one year and voting against the creation of a lottery.  Additionally, he has military credentials.  After 9/11 he volunteered for the Army, and spent 2003 in Afghanistan.
His name has been mentioned in the rumor mill as someone contemplating a run.  To be honest, after Brad Miller, he is my top choice.  He has a gorgeous family, including a young daughter.  His age puts him square into the only age bracket that showed support for Dole in the last poll.  And, he is the type of candidate that has a background that would allow him to take progressive positions without being called a no good dirty, Washington, liberal.

Kay Hagan
Kay Hagan is a member of the NC Senate.  I admit, I know less about her than anyone else mentioned.  She is a woman of power in the legislature, having been an appropriations chair for a number of years.  Although her name ID across the state is small, she is a mainstream Democrat with an ability to raise a lot of money from sources within the state.  She would have the added benefit of being a woman challenger to Liddy Dole, helping to avoid erosion of the advantage we have in the gender gap.  I do not think that she will run, but her name has been mentioned in the rumor mill, and a run by her would make sense.

Dean Smith
Dean Smith is the only non elected official I have included on this list.  Coach Smith is famous for being the head basketball coach at UNC for a long time.  As such, he already has massive name recognition.  What most people do not know about him is that he is an incredible Democrat.  He has not only given large sums to Democratic Candidates, he has headlined fundraisers, and helped start up the Devout Democrats movement, which is aimed to counter the lie that all Christians are Republicans.

Although the chance that he would run is slim, he would not only be able to self finance a large chunk of the campaign, he would be able to raise both funds and support from both sides of the aisle.  Personally, it would be a little painful to see the face of UNC as our only hope, but this Wolfpack fan could deal with it.  School Pride is a small thing to swallow when trying to get rid of Dole.

Out of nowhere rich guy. It is unlikely, but more than possible that someone like Ned Lamont could come out of nowhere to challenge Dole.  Although it is often said that experience is important, and Dole has a ton of experience in government, this state loves amateurs.  Many of our past elected Senators have been those with little to no experience, whether it is a rich farmer or a rich lawyer.  Additionally, the last incumbent to get reelected to the Senate in this state was Jesse Helms in 1990 and 1996.  We have a record of voting out incumbents.

With no “big names” jumping in, the field would seem to be ripe for a newcomer to politics.

People who I do not think will run no matter what include some who are often asked about in the comments of other diaries I have done.  Richard Moore and Bev Perdue are running for governor, no matter what it would seem.  Roy Cooper, in his decleration that he would not be running for governor, declared he would be seeking reelection for Attorney General.  Erskine Bowles is almost certainly done after 2 shots at Senate.  Especially given his current job, President of the UNC System.  Also, people outside the state often ask about either Larry Kissell or John Edwards.  Even if Edwards doesnt win the nomination, the filing deadline for this seat will probably be the first two weeks of February.  I expect the field to have at least 5 candidates still at that point, so anything that would knock him out before then would knock him out of public life.  In Larry’s case, he is gearing up for another run at Hayes.  He is still in a ton of debt (60,000 plus last I heard), which he still needs help with.

The only question now is who will run.

For a little more info you can check out This Diary questioning where Dole lives or My blog at BlueNC

As we look toward the unsettled Senate race picture of 2008, one of the hot topics of discussion lately has been rampant will-they-or-won’t-they speculation surrounding the potential retirements of Republican Senators like Pete Domenici (NM), Thad Cochran (MS), and John Warner (VA).  All three of these Senators have sent signals with varying degrees of certainty that they will indeed be running again in 2008.  Cochran, for instance, has started to rev up his fundraising engines.  But as we look at these three Republican geezers and others like them, keep in mind the familiar refrain from SSP hero Chuck D: Don’t Believe the Hype!

Senators can be annoyingly coy about seeking re-election, often issuing firm statements and strong signals that they’ll seek another term while postponing a formal retirement announcement.  Let’s look at a few recent examples.

Halfway through his Senate term, Mark Dayton (D-MN) was firmly committed to his re-election prospects (at least publicly).  He hired a new public relations firm and made plans to tour his home state more extensively to increase his visibility, while at the same time hiring top shelf talent to bolster his anemic fundraising (as of January, 2004, he had a scant $60,000 in his re-election coffers).  A year later, he had already announced his retirement.  While Dayton’s move was borne out of a desire to avoid a costly defeat (something that popular Senators Warner, Domenici, and Cochran probably don’t have to worry about), it does illustrate that plans do indeed change.

Take Republican Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee, for instance.  In 2001, he was heavily leaning towards retirement after he lost his chairmanship of the Governmental Affairs Committee when the Democrats took control of the Senate.  However, on September 25 of that same year, he announced quite firmly that the gravity of 9/11 compelled him to seek another Senate term.  It only took a few months before he reneged in March, claiming that he didn’t have “the heart” for another six years.

Or how about Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-CO), who in June of 2003 was fundraising at a decent clip and making statements that he was indeed going to stay on for another Senate term?  It was not until March of 2004 that he decided that another Senate term was not in the cards.

And how’s this for another example?  Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ).  After the 1998 midterms, he quickly promised that he would run for a fourth term.  “I’ve said I’m going to run, and I intend to,” he told the New York Times that November.  Three months later, in February 1999, he threw in the towel.  (But as we all know, it’s funny how these plans go: Lautenberg was Torricelli’s emergency replacement in 2002, and is preparing another run for 2008.)

My point here is that I highly doubt that John Ensign and the NRSC will escape 2008 without dealing with at least one more retirement (Colorado Senator Wayne Allard has already jumped ship).  With the 2008 and 2010 Senate race maps offering Republicans minimal obvious opportunities to reclaim the majority position, I suspect that we’ll see more retirements on their side of the aisle now that they’ve lost their swanky committee chairmanships and other trappings of power.  They just might not be admitting it yet.

Can anyone think of similar examples of other Senators sending firm re-election signals, only to issue a surprise (or not so surprising) retirement notice?

UPDATE: In the comments over at the Dailykos discussion of this diary, kywddavid takes a look at some historical numbers:

From 1920 through 2006 (the years covered by Wikipedia for this), 215 Senators retired in 44 cycles.  That’s an average of 4.88 Senate retirements per cycle.  The number of retirements has never been lower than two (most recently in 1964) or higher than eleven (1996) [thirteen, not eleven, Senators actually retired in 1996–James].  Over the last ten elections, the average was 5.7 but that included 1996’s eleven.

Senate retirements played a huge role in 2004 as five southern Democrats retired and Republicans won all of those seats.  Retirements have tended to run a tad higher in Presidential election years, maybe because it is [harder] to raise the cash needed to survive.

Even more evidence that lends weight to the theory that Allard probably won’t be the only retirement of the 2008 cycle.

Poor Atrios must be beating his head against the wall dealing with a mental midget like Joe Klein. To recap: Klein is one of those beltway asshats who thinks that primary challenges to incumbents are (to use his reference) something to delight the likes of Robespierre. In other words, anyone who supported Ned Lamont is a  bloodthirsty tyrant and, presumably, deserves to be guillotined. Just call me St. Just.

Anyhow, the immediate context for this non-debate is the possibility of a primary challenge to Rep. Ellen Tauscher (CA-10), who sits in a district that went for Kerry 59-40. Suffice it to say, I’m not worried that, even if Tauscher were to lose a primary, a Republican would win the general. I say that in no small part because the bluest seat currently held by a Republican is DE-AL, which went 53-46 Kerry – and as many of you know, there are only eight GOP-held Kerry districts overall. In short, the GOP no longer plays very well in districts where voters like to pull the Dem lever at the top of the ticket.

But that’s not to say that “lethal” primaries never happen (as in, lethal to the party in which the primary upset took place). Indeed, they occasionally do. One relatively recent example: Party-switcher Michael Forbes (R to D) narrowly lost his primary in 2000, and the woman who beat him, Regina Seltzer, went on to lose to Republican Felix Grucci that fall.

So, going back to, say, 1980 (just to pick an arbitrary limit), what other lethal primaries for Senate and House seats are you aware of? And, so that we have a basis of comparison, how many incumbents lost primaries overall?

Democrats hoping for an open U.S. Senate seat in Mississippi will apparently have to wait a few more election cycles. Incumbent GOP Sen. Thad Cochran started a major fundraising drive with a fundraiser in Jackson Tuesday night and is expected to raise some $650,000.00 this week.

While not yet committing to a 2008 race Cochran indicated he was leaning heavily toward a race despite reports in recent months that he would like to retire. If Cochran had retired the Mississippi Democratic Party had a number of strong candidates who would have a good chance to return the seat to Democratic hands. They included former Gov. Ray Mabus, former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, Cong. Gene Taylor, former Cong. Ronnie Shows, former Sec. of Agriculture and Cong. Mike Espy, and others.

http://bluesunbelt.c…

Yesterday, I posted a diary asking help in formulating a response to an editorial printed in my local newspaper that slanders those who oppose Bush’s escalation.

I have written a draft of a response (quoted over the flip).  There were many things I wanted to talk about such as the fact the all three Iraq war veterans in Congress voted for the resolution, how the Iraq War took time, effort, troops, materiale, and attention away from the hunt for Osama, and so on.  However, I decided to keep in short (158 words) and focus only on the question of supporting the troops, hoping it will increase the chances of getting printed.

This letter is in response to Monday’s editorial by Cal Thomas, an article full of untruths, faulty logic, and distortion.  What I really want to address is Thomas’ main argument that those who oppose Bush’s plan to escalate the Iraq War by sending 20,000 more troops into Iraq do not support the troops.  In fact, quite the opposite is true.  The greatest test of one’s support for the troops is not how fervently one waves the flag or how quickly one gets behind whatever plan the President has, it’s making sure that troops are asked to risk and give their lives only when absolutely necessary and only when some good will come of it. 

So, those of us who oppose escalation support our troops by demanding that they not be sent into the crossfire of a civil war, knowing that past troop increases have not helped and that the President has no clear definition of what constitutes victory.

We still don’t know the date of the special election to fill GA-10, but the field is already taking shape. From CQ Politics, the GOP side:

Republican state Sen. Jim Whitehead announced Monday that he is a candidate for the not-yet-scheduled special election in Georgia’s 10th District, ensuring that there will be competition between politically experienced candidates for the seat left vacant by the death of veteran Republican Rep. Charlie Norwood. …

Whitehead was preceded into the race by a fellow Republican state senator, Ralph T. Hudgens, who lost to Norwood in the 1994 Republican House primary. …

Republican Bob Young, a former mayor of Augusta, is considered a potential candidate. The Athens-Banner Herald reported Monday that Willie Green, a former National Football League player who was born in the district, is interested in running either as a Republican or an independent.

Former Athens-Clarke County Mayor Doc Eldridge is also considering entering the race. Eldridge, who ran for mayor as a Democrat, told local news outlets that he will run as a Republican if he does indeed enter the election.

And the Dem half:

One Democrat moved swiftly to establish a place in the special election contest: Terry Holley, a small-business owner who took 33 percent of the vote in a lopsided loss to Norwood last November. …

Former Athens-Clarke County Commissioner Tom Chasteen is rumored to be weighing a bid, as well as state Rep. Alan Powell and lawyer David Bell, who as the 1996 Democratic challenger gave Norwood the closest race of his House career, holding him to 52 percent.

It’s worth noting that Norwood was a member of the GOP class of 1994 (knocking off one-term incumbent Don Johnson, Jr.). So his relatively weak performance against Bell in 1996 came when he was at his most vulnerable. However, Norwood outspent Bell nearly 3-1 that year (scroll to bottom). On the flipside, this district was a lot more Dem back then – Bill Clinton won it both times, in fact. (It had a PVI of R+1.7 then, but it’s R+12.7 now.) So I don’t know how strongly one can rate Bell’s performance.

Anyhow, got any opinions on any of these candidates?

UPDATE (James): According to CQPolitics, June 19 is the likely date for this election.

I have noticed recently that my local newspaper, The Daily Tribune-News (Cartersville, Georgia) runs only editorials from right-wing talking heads like Mike Reagan, a former chair of the county Republican Party, and the like.  A couple years ago, there was balance.  The chair of the county Democratic Party, Howard Dean, and a local Democratic activist all had columns at one time.  Now, that’s changed.

But I digress.  The object of this diary is not to complain about the right-wing slant of my local paper.  It’s to ask help in formulating a response to one column published recently.

More over the flip.

In this column (linked and quoted), one wingnut spouts out the typical Democrats undermine troop morale bullshit:

http://www.daily-tri…

Before political correctness, a person who gave someone a gift and later took it back was called an “Indian giver.”

This is what a majority in the House did last week when they “gave” their support to American forces fighting to stabilize Iraq and defeat our enemy and then promptly took it back. How else should one interpret this “nonbinding” resolution when part one said, “Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq,” but part two negates part one: “Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on Jan. 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.”

This is like sending your love a valentine last week and this week sending a note withdrawing the sentiment.

Last Saturday, Republicans managed to block a similar effort in the Senate, but by only four votes. Senate Democrats — and a few like-minded Republicans — vowed to try again.

Once, most members of Congress supported the president’s prosecution of the war. That was when his approval numbers were sky-high. Now that those numbers have fallen, so has congressional support. Most Democrats claim, falsely, that the November election was a referendum on the war. If the president’s policy succeeds, though, two things will happen. First, some members who opposed him will claim they were behind the troop surge all along. Second, most Democrats will assert that success is actually failure because they can’t afford politically to admit they were wrong.

Do the troops feel supported by this House resolution? There are no opinion polls of military and civilian workers in Iraq, but two comments have come to my attention. One is a letter to the editor of The Washington Times from John McFarlane, a military trainer for Northrop-Grumman Technical Services in Elizabethtown, Ky. McFarlane writes that he has just returned from Iraq “after coming out of retirement to go there … I can tell you that the greatest fear of the young service members over there is that the American public will fail to pursue total victory and will leave early, thereby wasting their battle buddies’ life and blood. They feel pain every time somebody pays lip service to his or her conscience with the line: ‘I support the troops, but not the policy.’ (They) know they are the policy and that you should feel shame if you as an American would commit them to anything less than total victory.”

The second letter is from Army Sgt. Daniel Dobson, about whom I wrote in a column last week. Sgt. Dobson says he was in the chow hall in Mosul, watching CNN on the day of the House vote. He writes in an e-mail, “…it made me furious to see congressmen unashamedly proclaim their cowardice, but the reaction of the soldiers tore my heart in two. The faces were that of men that looked as if they were just told there is no United States to go home to. The fury gives way to depression: the thought alone that our elected representatives do not represent us anymore is more than depressing. We see cowardice, sickening spineless cowardice and it makes soldiers sick.”

So much for the assertion by some members of Congress that the House resolution, with the promise of more and binding ones to come, will have no affect on troop morale. How many other soldiers feel this way? How many others might be affected by these “no-confidence” votes? Of equal importance, how emboldened does the enemy feel as he sees the prophecy of Osama bin Laden coming true, that America doesn’t have the stomach or staying power for a long war and will eventually give up if enough death and injury is inflicted upon American troops?

If Congress wants to end this war, it should immediately vote to cutoff funds and receive whatever benefits, or consequences, that result. But too many who lack the spine to win also lack the spine to accept accountability for defeat. The only victory they appear committed to is the next election.

Some points I would like to make:
1. Thomas leaves out that all three Iraq war veterans in Congress are Democrats and all three voted for the resolution.

2. Voting for this resolution does support the troops by saying they should not be thrown into the middle of a civil war.  What is so hard to comprehend about that?

3. He leaves out the fact that most Americans oppose the escalation.

4. His saying the election was not a referendum on the war is bullshit and the exit polls say so.

5. Keeping point four in mind, is he saying that most Americans don’t support the troops and are enabling the terroists.

Please chime in with points, information (citations especially), ways to word things, etc.

(The importance of holding on to what we can in Louisiana is critical. This will be a make-or-break year for Louisiana Democrats. Are we ready? – promoted by James L.)

Having had penned multiple diaries on Louisiana politics and the plight of the Democratic party in my state here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here, I am elated Thomas F. Schaller of Whistling Past Dixie fame has written this 20 FEB 2007 article for Salon.com on the GOP’s planned 2007 sweep of Louisiana.  The situation is grim, and the graphic accompanying his article, a blue Louisiana in the process of being delaminated into a red Louisiana, aptly summarizes the state of affairs in my state.

Here are some of the key passages from Schaller’s article, key passages I hope will compel my readers to begin participating in the mobilization project on behalf of Louisiana Democrats I am trying to enact here and elsewhere in the blogosphere:

“The polls show him [Bobby Jindal] ahead big.” Not surprisingly, state Republicans are licking their chops. “The GOP is very organized and aggressively fundraising,” says a top Louisiana Democrat, who asked not to be named. “They will be well financed and looking to use a big gubernatorial win [in 2007] to catapult other GOP wins down ballot.” Louisiana is, in short, perhaps the only state in the nation where George W. Bush’s policies may end up creating a permanent Republican majority.

In fact, however, Louisiana was trending away from Democrats even before the hurricane. Bill Clinton carried the state in both 1992 and 1996. But Al Gore — who spent little time there, despite the fact that his campaign manager, Donna Brazile, knows the state’s politics better than almost anyone — received just 45 percent of the vote in 2000. Four years later John Kerry slipped to 42 percent. So recently a swing state, Louisiana will be on neither party’s 2008 target list.

Notice how the second paragraph establishes a causal connection between the national Democratic party’s lack of investment in Louisiana and the state’s rightward trend.  Somehow the fifty-state strategy of Dr. Dean flew over Louisiana, and state Democrats on the local, state and federal level are paying dearly.  And 2007 will be no different.  All statewide, executive offices are on the ballot, as is the entire state legislature, and I have written many diaries that are cited above on the 2007 situation.  Republicans can sweep both state legislative chambers and control redistricting after the 2010 census, lending them the opportunity to gerrymander districts to the favor of the Republicans.  And if a Republican governor in Bobby Jindal is elected, the gerrymander will be especially damaging to Democrats, as he and Sen. David Vitter (R) have been planning the 2007 collapse of the Louisiana Democratic Party for many years.  Discussion of this latest installment of the Southern Strategy can be found in the diaries I cite above, which contain links to other writers who have elaborated on the cynicism undergirding the Republicans’ power grab in Louisiana.

So Schaller has alerted a broader audience of a problem about which I have been writing for at least three months.  What can be done?  Will we bring the fight to the Louisiana GOP?  Or will we allow them to steamroll over our state? 

The first step would be donating to a grassroots Democratic candidate who is running in a special election to be held on 10 March for Louisiana House District Seat 94, a seat vacated by a Republican named Peppi Bruneau, who has held that seat since 1974.  I have penned a long article about this race here, noting how the grassroots, Democratic challenger, Deborah Langhoff, who in my opinion is an excellent candidate we should all support, has a real chance at winning this race.  Her strongest opponent, Jeb Bruneau, Peppi Bruneau’s son, has raised a lot of money with the help of his father and lobbyists in Baton Rouge.  But the cynicism of his father’s last minute retirement has upset voters in District 94, and this gives Langhoff a chance to win this race with her compelling message of governmental reform and change.  

Langhoff’s race is important, as this is one of the first competitive races in 2007.  With the entire legislature up for reelection in November,  a Langhoff victory will send the Louisiana GOP a signal that they have a very big fight on their hands if they want to change this state red.  It will also give beleaguered voters the hope that they will have representatives in Baton Rouge who understand their plight.  

Louisiana, as many of you may recall, was a swing state in 2000.  Clinton won the state in 1992 and 1996, and Mary Landrieu managed to eke out wins for her Senate seat in 1996 and 2002.  If Louisiana falls to the GOP, Arkansas will be the only Democratic leaning state in the South, and the GOP will eventually focus their efforts there.  We must stop the Southern Strategy, and this begins with supporting Deborah Langhoff now.  

Schaller claims that John Breaux, who may run for Governor, may be the only hope for the Louisiana Democratic Party.  Perhaps he is.  But we can also help out by participating in races such as LA-HD94 that may at first seem very insignificant.

Expect more diaries on Louisiana politics.  If the GOP sweeps the state, our displaced residents will most probably never be able to return home.  The GOP has been cynically exploiting Katrina and Rita for political gain, and it is incumbent upon us to inform them that we as citizens will not allow them to destroy a wonderful state in order to expand their political power.  I hope you will join me on behalf of this beautiful albeit struggling state.  And please accept my apologies for the rushed diary.