KYLE STANLEY'S PERSPECTIVES

Kyle Stanley's Perspectives...

2009-08-04T18:55:00.003-05:00

...has moved! You can now find me at my new blog over here.

Please make sure to check your bookmarks, blogrolls and vice versa.

Best regards,

Kyle Stanley

Walter Cronkite (1916-2009)

2009-07-17T23:59:00.006-05:00

Tonight, America has lost an icon.

Walter Cronkite, the former CBS newsman and one-time Houstonian that was once billed "the most trusted man in America", passed away this evening at the age of 92.

A native of St. Joseph, Missouri, Cronkite -- the son of a dentist of remote Dutch ancestry, hence the original surname "Krankheyt" -- grew up in Kansas City and later moved to Houston at the age of ten, where he worked for student newspapers attending San Jacinto High School in Houston and the University of Texas at Austin. While Cronkite eventually dropped out of college, his career continued to march on.

After stints in Oklahoma City and Kansas City -- where he met his future wife, the former Betsy Maxwell, Cronkite joined the United Press in 1937 covering World War II battles, the Nuremberg trials, and the Soviet Union while serving as the organization's main reporter in Moscow for two years. Cronkite was recruited by Edward R. Murrow to join CBS News in 1950, and for the next three decades served in a number of roles for the network, including news presenter, documentary host and even game show host (It's News to Me). In one of his earlier roles at CBS, his presence at the Democratic and Republican conventions in the 1952 presidential election that elected Dwight Eisenhower led to the coinage of the term "anchor".

The term "anchor" came in handy on April 16, 1962, when Cronkite took over Douglas Edwards' chair on the CBS Evening News. Despite the wealth of experience Cronkite brought to the table, throughout the 1960s his newscast was often surpassed by The Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC. As CBS developed a reputation of being more accurate in its presentation of the news, fortunes changed and as the 1960s drew to a close, the CBS Evening News surpassed The Huntley-Brinkley Report in viewership.

Many of America's most enduring and breathtaking moments of the 20th Century came during his tenure at CBS. Some of the more noteworthy news stories included space missions including Apollo 11 and Apollo 13, full-blown scandals by the likes of Watergate, foreign policy adventures including the Cuban missile crisis and the Vietnam War, and one of America's darkest events that unfolded on November 22, 1963, when Cronkite uttered these words:

"From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official: "President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time." 2 o'clock Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago."

- Walter Cronkite, November 22, 1963

In 1981, the Presidential Medal of Freedom was awarded to Cronkite, a man who became so much a part of the American lexicon that it even found its way into even CBS programs that had virtually nothing to do with the news, such as All in the Family, where protagonist Archie Bunker referred to the anchor as "Pinko Cronkite" at times. That same year, Cronkite retired from his anchor chair on March 6, 1981 at the age of 65, which at the time was the prerequisite for mandatory retirement at CBS. In his farewell, Cronkite gave his audience a look into what the future held for him:

"Old anchormen, you see, don't fade away; they just keep coming back for more. And that's the way it is: Friday, March 6, 1981."
- Walter Cronkite

After his signature role drew to a close, Cronkite continued to serve a presence -- lending his voice in movies (We're Back: A Dinosaur's Story, Apollo 13), affixing his name to Arizona State University's journalism school and a prestigious journalism award (the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism), becoming the namesake of UT-Austin's Regents Chair in Communication (the College of Communications' dean), and continuing to serve a presence as a special correspondent for CBS, CNN, and NPR -- among other jobs prior to his death from complications due to cerebrovascular disease.

For the most part, I do not remember much of Cronkite, for I was never alive during his time as anchor of the CBS Evening News. However, looking at current events from decades ago -- whether in print, on TV or online, and looking at how Cronkite presented the story as it broke, it was clear that he lived up to his reputation as "the most trusted man in America". While there have been thousands of journalists -- mainstream and independent -- that have left an indelible mark in the minds of their viewers, Cronkite has left behind an unsurpassed legacy in the realm of American journalism, and judging by the current state of the news media -- whether it is as liberal as MSNBC and the New York Times or as conservative as Fox News and The Wall Street Journal -- it is almost impossible to find trust in today's media, which explains a major reason why I run this blog: to offer my own unfettered perspective of the world around me. In short, while there are millions like yours truly who present their own perspectives of the news and thousands who work for America's largest news sources, there will never be another Walter Cronkite.

Walter Cronkite may be gone, but he definitely will not be forgotten...And that's the way it is: Friday, July 17, 2009.

A little touch up here, a little touch up there...

2009-06-02T23:56:00.002-05:00

Sorry for the constant delay, but I have been noticeably busy on a wealth of considerable research that will serve as material for future musings as well as a coming revamp with this site (yes, this blog does need fixing). When all is well with my work, I will jump back into this one-man band.

Jack Kemp (1935-2009)

2009-05-04T05:50:00.000-05:00

One of the more prominent Republicans of the Reagan era has now joined the Gipper in the giant political arena in the sky. Former football star, Republican congressman, presidential candidate, HUD secretary and 1996 vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp passed away on Saturday at the age of 73 after a bout with cancer.

Jack Kemp's life began on July 13, 1935 in Los Angeles, the son of a trucking company owner and a Spanish teacher. Growing up as part of a Christian Science family in the predominantly Jewish Wilshire district, Kemp attended the then-heavily Jewish Fairfax High School and preferred to read books on history and philosophy in his spare time. After graduating in 1953, Kemp chose to attend Occidental College -- which used formations common in professional football -- having considered himself too small (5-10/175) for the football programs at USC and UCLA. A 1957 graduate of Occidental who later married his college sweetheart (the former Joanne Main), Kemp set records in javelin and played a number of football positions, most prominently at quarterback.

Jack Kemp's pro football career began in 1957, as a 17th-round NFL Draft pick of the Detroit Lions, only to be cut from the team before the start of the season. After brief stints with the Pittsburgh Steelers, New York Giants and San Francisco 49ers -- the latter two as part of taxi squads, as well as additional stints as an Army Reservist and a CFL player (the Calgary Stampeders), Kemp was signed in 1960 as a free agent with the AFL's Los Angeles Chargers. That year, Kemp led the Chargers to the AFL Championship (losing to the Houston Oilers), presiding over a high-scoring offense. After the Chargers moved to San Diego the following year, Kemp led his team to an AFL Championship rematch with the Oilers (who again defeated the Chargers).

But that wasn't the last of Jack Kemp the quarterback. In 1962, the Buffalo Bills claimed Kemp on a spectacular waiver fee of $100. While he solved a much-needed deficiency for the Bills at quarterback, Kemp was not particularly thrilled with the move to western New York. After injuries bogged him down early on, he helped the Bills win three of their last four games of the 1962 season. Beginning in 1963, Kemp and newly acquired former Notre Dame quarterback Daryle Lamonica began a battle for starting quarterback that culminated in two AFL championships for the Bills in 1964 and 1965 (Lamonica later left after four seasons for the Oakland Raiders). Kemp ended his career in 1969, having compiled 114 touchdowns and 183 interceptions for 21,218 yards and a QB rating of 57.3 throughout his career.

Yet Kemp still had not yet reached his 15 minutes of fame. As his career on the gridiron came to a close, Erie County Republican Party officials recruited Kemp, who had previous brushes with politics -- including stints as a volunteer for the campaigns of Barry Goldwater in 1964 (for President) and Ronald Reagan in 1966 (for Governor of California) -- and footed his intellectual attributes in the readings of libertarian and conservative stalwarts such as Goldwater and others, to run for the 39th District in New York, based in a traditionally Democratic suburban portion of the Buffalo area known as the Southtowns. This campaign proved successful, and Kemp served in the district from 1971 to 1989.

While his voting record was generally conservative, it contained a noticeable maverick streak. The "bleeding-heart conservative" championed fiscal policies attributed to supply-side and Chicago economics, including free markets and simplifying of the tax code as well as support for a flat tax, and also expressed support for civil rights legislation, public housing enterprise zones, and the gold standard. In fact, one of the most significant pieces of tax cut legislation linked to President Reagan's legacy is the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, also known as the Kemp-Roth Tax Cut, which passed to the consternation of majority Democrats such as Dan Rostenkowski, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee whose own career ended over a decade later in scandal.

In 1988, Kemp ran for President, and would have become the first member of the House of Representatives to move into the White House since James Garfield. Despite assembling a potpourri of supporters who were drawn to his campaign for various reasons to varying degrees, Kemp ended up losing to the eventual Presidential nominee, Vice President George H.W. Bush, in part due to his relatively libertarian social stances which put Kemp at odds with social conservatives and Religious Right activists who flocked to televangelist Pat Robertson that year. Following the landslide election of Bush 41, Kemp became Secretary of Housing and Urban Development with the promise of implementing the enterprise zones and tenant ownership initiatives that he championed in Congress.

Kemp brought a much needed breath of fresh air to HUD following the controversy surrounding his predecessor Samuel Pierce, as corrupt programs were either restructured or closed entirely and anti-drug and anti-gun measures were enacted. But Kemp faced obstacles that ultimately resulted in his failure to accomplish his intended goals, from the Democratic-controlled Congress restricting his proposed $4 billion tenant ownership proposal to a mere $361 million, to constant battles with the Bush 41 Cabinet and the advent of the Persian Gulf War, which resulted in a disproportionate amount of funding going to defense needs. This, along with Bush 41's reluctance to support such a plan, marked Kemp's tenure at HUD unsuccessful, even though many states created empowerment zones eventually.

Following Bush 41's defeat at the hands of Bill Clinton in 1992, Jack Kemp was viewed as a top candidate of choice for the Presidential nomination in 1996. Despite Republicans gaining control of both houses of Congress for the first time since the Eisenhower Administration, Kemp ultimately decided against such a bid, and it was not surprising given that the selection process by this time had become so controversial that many prominent Republicans such as Colin Powell eventually decided against such a run. Despite this, Kemp eventually became the Vice Presidential running mate to the eventual Republican nominee, Senator Bob Dole, a deficit hawk and proponent of balanced budgets. Many Republican strategists hoped the selection of Kemp would draw conservative and libertarian votes to the more moderate Dole. The ticket proved unsuccessful at the polls, as Clinton was heavily re-elected to a second term.

Since then, Jack Kemp served on a number of political, corporate and advisory boards, chaired an NFL advocacy group promoting amateur football, and founded and chaired Kemp Partners, a consulting firm focused on business and public policy consultancy. Kemp's advocacy following the 1996 election ranged from opposition to abortion and support for immigration reform to health concerns regarding retired NFL veterans, and the Jack F. Kemp Institute of Political Economy at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy was established to house Kemp's papers and fund annual lectures, among other initiatives.

In addition to his wife Joanne, Jack was a father to four children: two sons -- both former pro football quarterbacks -- and two daughters, who combined have also contributed 17 grandchildren.

Jack Kemp's own life story carries a lot of similiarities to my own personal life story. He was a person whose father worked hard to make a name for himself as a trucking company entrepreneur, read a variety of books on many topics, charted an unusual voting record in Congress, and put his constituents' needs and the future of America ahead of himself. I have never worked for anyone other than my own family, have sophisticated intellectual and cultural tastes, and if I were to be elected to Congress one of these days, I would chart a voting record highly reminiscent of what Jack Kemp compiled, and put the needs of constituents and the country at large -- as well as my shining vision of the future of America -- ahead of myself. This coming from yours truly, a person who does not put balanced budgets ahead of tax cuts or tax cuts ahead of balanced budgets -- but rather balanced budgets with pro-growth tax measures (a flat tax is one example), zero deficit spending, and restrictions of spending to what unites us as Americans (you will have to ask me what I mean by that).

Given that I hail from Fort Bend, a place noted for its wealthy master-planned communities, relatively conservative economic bent, significant base of families with children, and presence of a wide variety of ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds, this would have been the kind of place that Jack Kemp would have been proud to represent - a true reflection of 21st Century America and the kind of place that should be representative of where the Republican Party wants to go if it wants to win back the hearts of the average American. At a time when the Republican Party is in its seemingly darkest hours, the passing of Kemp should serve as a reminder of how far the party has strayed from reality.

Jack Kemp may have gone home to a better place, but his athletic prowess, political savvy and commitment to a better America will forever live on and will never be forgotten.

The Specter Of What Lies Ahead

2009-04-29T06:40:00.000-05:00

As you probably know by now, Arlen Specter (more on the odd color later) is facing the fight of his life. After all, the Republican Senator from Pennsylvania has been the target of party conservatives for quite some time. Polls even showed Specter losing a primary to conservative former Congressman Pat Toomey.

Now Specter has gotten a break, though not the break I expected.

He's switching to the Democratic Party.

Now, before I get ahead of myself, I will be honest about Specter. While he served as an example of moderation in a party that has become more known for self-serving grandstanders than for promoting efficient, fiscally responsible government -- and I felt a tad disappointed in his decision, Specter was well past his prime and I personally expected him to announce his retirement, as Ohio's George Voinovich and Florida's Mel Martinez among others, have already done. Well before Specter's decision, I have considered supporting Toomey, even though he is rather iffy given his recent service as president of the Club for Growth, which became known under Toomey less for its commitment to limited government and more for its challenges of candidates who fit their districts in favor of ideological purity, which explains the GOP's current abysmal state that has now given the Democrats one of their dream goals: a 60-seat, filibuster-proof Senate majority including Specter and Minnesota Senate candidate Al Franken, whose victory remains tied up in a myriad of controversy that provides the perfect cannon fodder for a blockbuster motion picture.

Rebuilding a Republican majority will not happen overnight, and given how badly maligned the party has become, a lot of painful decisions will have to be made over the course of four years. Breaking from hardcore religious right conservatives will be especially tough, as it will not come without the threat of a mass revolt from such organizations as Focus on the Family. These groups are amongst a number of such groups who claim the GOP has lost by not being "conservative enough" when in fact the GOP has lost ground by siding with such groups who in actuality put themselves out of touch with the average American by straying from the principles of fiscal responsibility, limited government, and sound foreign policy, not to mention the fact because of such "conservatives" the party is standing to lose the business vote, Ron Paul libertarians, and environmental conservatives among others.

And while social conservatives do have a role in the party, the religious right exhibits a holier-than-thou militia mentality which not only turns off many voters who are young, pro-business or representative of a moderate or libertarian bent, but such a mentality would drive away even younger evangelicals and even go as far as resorting to personal attacks on certain religious groups. Mitt Romney, for instance, took heat from evangelicals over his Mormon faith which many regarded as a 'cult'. If this portrayal of Mormons became the party consensus, it would end up costing Republicans the votes of Mormons, a group of people that are committed to fiscal prudence, competence and commitment to service beyond their communities. Catholics, Muslims and Jews -- among others -- have also been unfairly targeted as well to varying degrees, and this combined with a tendency by some organizations which claim to be Christian to embrace money and fame as oppose to ministry and service -- not to mention creating the distorted perception that people of faith are bigoted, mean-spirited and one-sided -- will end up resulting in the Republican Party becoming a permanent minority.

As I go on, where do I stand in the Republican Party? Does the future of the Party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Reagan have to go through me? Will the future of the GOP in my home base of Fort Bend (which barely went for John McCain) be dependent upon what I say? Now, I keep putting my blogging on and off for a number of reasons -- not the least of which is personal family business that I will not discuss (if you ask me what specific "family business" I am doing, I will IGNORE you). But there are a host of other reasons why it is simply so hard to post: too many things to think about, not confident of what to say, trying to make a good blog look marvelous, darting off into other subjects, csaba, csaba, csaba.

One thing is clear, though: if you're a "moderate Republican" who may be disappointed and feel like there is no place for you, you can be assured that I am staying put in the Republican Party, and I am definitely not leaving. I believe that the solutions to America's pressing problems require a center-right perspective that is based not on the views of talk radio or a beltway think tank, but on the sound principles of smaller government, fiscal responsibility, a strong national defense, environmental stewardship, individual liberty, practical and pragmatic solutions, and a united American society. While the road to recovery will be very rocky -- and I'm sure the Vocal Fringe will be ready to attack and discredit me -- I see light on the other end of the tunnel, and it is this light that holds the path to overcome the most daunting of challenges.

As I get a grasp of where the party wants to go, I will be focusing on the good works of some of my preferences in the GOP House -- Paul Ryan, Jeff Flake, Mike Pence, Chris Smith, Peter Roskam, Peter King, Ron Paul, Tom McClintock, Mark Kirk, Scott Garrett, Eric Cantor, Walter Jones, Ted Poe, Tom Price, and of course my own local congressman, Pete Olson (you'll have to ask me A: why my list of congressional favorites is so bizarre? and B: which Democrats in the House I have a preference for?) -- the Senate is just plain uninteresting, boring, and stuffy.

As time goes on, I will let you know where I stand. I have seen worse situations before, I have persevered in challenges like these, and this only emboldens the belief that I clearly represent the future of America. For now, I'm offering free tissues and shoulders to cry on to disenchanted women and free beer and tavern nuts to grumpy men.

After all, it's better than having nothing to offer for the moment.

Goodbye Minneapolis, hello Saratoga Springs

2009-03-31T23:00:00.001-05:00

If you thought the Minnesota Senate race between Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken was political theater, this will have you even more puzzled...

New York's 20th Congressional District
Democrat Scott Murphy - 77,344 (50%)
Republican Jim Tedisco - 77,285 (50%)

It's not going to vindicate Michael Steele, but it's not going to vindicate Obama either. This has to be a comeback story for the Democrats and a disappointment for the GOP, though as Tedisco was leading by a large margin at the beginning.

At least Republicans have two high-stakes gubernatorial elections to look forward to.

Oh, the humanity (of bad habits) and special elections

2009-03-31T16:30:00.000-05:00

Just to keep this blog current, I'm whipping up something for today...albeit in a timely fashion. And yes, for the fourth straight month, it's at the END of the month (pfft).

In the news around my home base...

The EPA is testing air quality at schools across the country...including four in Greater Houston, none in Fort Bend (we're pretty lucky) but two in Deer Park. This is not surprising as Deer Park is located with striking distance of the Port of Houston where many chemical plants are located. Link here.

KHOU (Channel 11/CBS) is bidding farewell to sports director Giff Nielsen...This decision is surprising, as despite parent company Belo's laying off of scores of employees, I did not expect Nielsen to leave anytime soon. Of course, he was not let go by Channel 11, instead it is Nielsen himself that has decided to hang up the mic. I wish the Giffer the best of luck in his future endeavors (and yes, he has plans with his future). Link here.

Could the Med Center lose its standing because of stem cells?...The state legislature could be an obstacle to stem cell research funding in Texas because of a provision attached to a budget bill in the State Senate that would restrict funding for embryonic stem cell research. Now of course, I believe cures should be found, and we must do our part to find cures that save and prolong lives. I have become more open on stem cells, for I have lost loved ones to ailments such as Alzheimer's and my mother is diabetic and would benefit from such research. There is broad consensus in saving lives, and while I personally believe that all life -- born and unborn -- is sacred, I now believe that finding a cure should take no limits. Link here.

Which flavor do you want your ballot dipped in?...Fort Bend County and the DOJ appear to be reaching an agreement after four long years on bilingual (or rather, multilingual) voting rights in Fort Bend. Now, while it may seem confusing and controversial, and I believe that English should be the official language of the land, we must try to ensure that while some voters may not speak our lingo, we should at least try to offer them the right to vote in the meantime while they learn to speak English. I know of people who came to this country without speaking a word of English and many of them have gone on to successful careers. After all, my Irish and English ancestors had to face the same situation when they came to the States, even though it had little to do with language and more to do with adapting to life in America. Link here.

Finally, an out-of-town -- yet important -- special election to watch over...With Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand now serving in the Senate seat that once beared the name Hillary Rodham Clinton, Republican State Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco and Democratic venture capitalist Scott Murphy are battling it out for the open, usually GOP swing seat and a lot is at stake. As a Republican looking to rebuild the party, I had hopes for Tedisco, who started off with a strong lead -- a strong lead that resulted from Murphy's unknown stock. But Murphy has since pulled even with (and jumped ahead of) Tedisco as Murphy's stock rose while Tedisco's role as the insider in a outsider vs. insider catfight have dragged him down.

Personally, I believe the Tedisco campaign is not what I hoped it would be (anyone who knows me can tell you that I never go for anything less than 110% in everything I do). Better yet, if I ran the GOP in the Empire State, I would have opted for open primaries instead of a closed-door selection process (where both Murphy and Tedisco received their nominations). The Virginia GOP made this mistake with former U.S. Senator John Warner's seat last year, and the seat has since gone Democratic. This congressional race will determine, among other factors, the fates of Governor David Paterson, RNC Chairman Michael Steele, Obamanomics and whatever else may come. A Murphy win vindicates Obama, while a Tedisco win vindicates Steele. As for Paterson, I'm not sure, and I would be more than willing to campaign against Paterson.

Anyway, I'll be banging away on my bongos..literally. Later.

Going Under 55 Isn't Enough

2009-02-28T23:00:00.002-06:00

Two months have passed since I last did a real entry (Greetings don't count), so before I write my next musing, I would like to apologize for the delay -- even if I am sick and tired of apologizing on here. Sometimes, trying to make a thoughtful musing can be tedious and consuming, but I also can't just let this puppy sit still for too long a period of time. (I know, I keep forgetting all the time) So, here we go...

2010 is looking to be a year of revenge for Republicans, who look at history -- and tradition -- as a guide. In America, the party not in control of the White House tends to gain seats in midterm elections, largely as a result of controversy and misguided policies involving the White House, such as the tax controversies committed by some members of the Obamastration. For instance, after the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, the GOP went on to win 15 seats in 1978 and then 34 seats in 1980 as Ronald Reagan knocked Carter out of office. The Democrats later gained back 27 of these seats in 1982.

But not all history goes as planned. In 1928, the GOP gained a net 32 seats as it elected Herbert Hoover to the White House on the basis of a strong economy. Then Hoover's popularity crashed as the nation began to experience the Great Depression, and the Democrats gained a staggering 52 seats in 1930 and 97 seats in 1932 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected -- a total of 149 seats. The Democrats then broke with tradition in 1934, gaining 9 more seats, and then gaining an additional 12 in 1936, reducing the GOP to a paltry 88 seats in the ensuing Congress. But Republicans rebounded in the following election, gaining 81 seats in 1938.

Finally, there's two of the last three midterm elections to look at. In 1998, the Democrats gained five seats despite GOP expectations to gain seats as a result of the six year itch, where the party not in control of the Presidency expects to gain seats in the middle of a president's second term. The GOP was hurt by its attacks on the morality of a then-popular President Bill Clinton, which was largely exacerbated by an infamous sex scandal involving a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. In 2002, tradition failed to materialize again as Democrats lost eight seats in the wake of redistricting and the War on Terror, the result of a combination of increased political power in the South and West and perceptions that Democrats were anti-military and anti-security. The odd election out in this bunch was 2006, when Democrats gained 31 seats and control of the House amidst a Bush Administration and congressional leadership mired in controversy from the War in Iraq to Hurricane Katrina to Terri Schiavo (yes, the person writing this is one Republican that wishes it could have been done without the "heckuva job" mentality).

Now, after losing 21 more seats in 2008, the GOP has regrouped and has begun to amplify its own message of change. One notable example of the winds of change that have transpired are those at the Republican National Committee, where former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele became the first African-American to chair the RNC and whose impact has already been felt in GOP circles. Another example is the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is now chaired by Rep. Pete Sessions of Dallas and whose website has been radically transformed -- albeit in a rather minimalist form reminiscent of a very elaborate cell phone website (supposedly aimed at putting the GOP in tune with young voters -- a demographic lost to Obama by a 2-1 margin).

Generally, Hill committees (of which the NRCC is one such committee) tend to emphasize most efforts on incumbents of the opposing party who amassed 55 percent or less of the vote in the last election. The reason is because candidates who finish at such levels are vulnerable and subject to defeat in the next election. For instance, in 2006 a total of 36 Republicans won with 55 percent or less of the vote. Of those, 20 have not come back for the 111th Congress. 12 of them chose to run for reelection and were defeated, while eight others decided not to seek re-election or seek higher office, and of those eight only four of them remain Republican, leaving 16 Republican survivors of the D-Trip's 2008 dodgeball contest.

For 2010, the number of choice for Democrats now applies to a select class of 35 Republicans:

Mike Rogers (Alabama 3, 54.0 percent)
Don Young (Alaska, 50.2 percent)
John Shadegg (Arizona 3, 54.1 percent)
Dan Lungren (California 3, 49.5 percent)
Tom McClintock (California 4, 50.3 percent) - freshman
David Dreier (California 26, 52.7 percent)
Ken Calvert (California 44, 51.2 percent) - was not targeted (by the D-Trip)
Dana Rohrabacher (California 46, 52.6 percent) - was not targeted
Brian Bilbray (California 50, 50.3 percent) - return appearance
Bill Posey (Florida 15, 53.1 percent) - freshman, seat was not targeted
Mario Diaz-Balart (Florida 25, 53.1 percent)
Mark Kirk (Illinois 10, 52.6 percent) - return appearance
Judy Biggert (Illinois 13, 53.6 percent)
Mark Souder (Indiana 3, 55.0 percent)
Lynn Jenkins (Kansas 2, 50.6 percent) - freshman and 2008 gain
Brett Guthrie (Kentucky 2, 52.6 percent)
Joseph Cao (Louisiana 2, 49.5 percent) - freshman and 2008 gain
John Fleming (Louisiana 4, 48.1 percent) - freshman
Bill Cassidy (Louisiana 6, 48.1 percent) - freshman and 2008 gain
Thad McCotter (Michigan 11, 51.4 percent) - return appearance, was not targeted
Erik Paulsen (Minnesota 3, 48.5 percent) - freshman
Michele Bachmann (Minnesota 6, 46.4 percent) - return appearance
Blaine Luetkemeyer (Missouri 9, 50.0 percent) - freshman
Lee Terry (Nebraska 2, 51.9 percent) - return appearance
Dean Heller (Nevada 2, 51.8 percent) - return appearance
Leonard Lance (New Jersey 7, 50.2 percent) - freshman
Christopher Lee (New York 26, 55.0 percent) - freshman
Jean Schmidt (Ohio 2, 44.8 percent) - return appearance
Pat Tiberi (Ohio 12, 54.8 percent) - was not targeted
Jim Gerlach (Pennsylvania 6, 52.1 percent) - return appearance
Henry Brown (South Carolina 1, 51.9 percent)
Joe Wilson (South Carolina 2, 53.7 percent)
Michael McCaul (Texas 10, 53.9 percent)
Pete Olson (Texas 22, 52.4 percent) - freshman; constituents include yours truly
Dave Reichert (Washington 8, 52.8 percent) - return appearance

Those who made return appearances to this dreadful list will need to find new ways to convince voters who took the other side the last two times that they're the right choice for the district, while freshmen who made the list should see the results of this election as a starting point to gain support for future battles. Meanwhile, those who were not even minor cannon fodder for the Democrats in 2008 will especially need to rethink their election strategies as they generally faced minor candidates who did not even attract the allure of the national party and therefore took the last election for granted. Some of these incumbents though are already likely top targets including Bachmann, whose McCarthyite demands for a patriotism test just weeks before the election almost cost her a relatively safe GOP seat in the northern suburbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and Cao, whose inspring election to Congress as the first-ever Vietnamese American on Capitol Hill is clouded by the fact that it happened in a very blue New Orleans seat that was ground zero for Hurricane Katrina and is majority African American, not to mention the fact that Cao wasn't indicted former Congressman William Jefferson. So much for the money in the freezer.

While the strategy of 55-and-under worked for Democrats in 2008 -- and the NRCC is now using the same tack for its 2010 ambitions, Republicans will need a more ambitious strategy if they really want to take a 2010 resurgence seriously that not only plays on the vulnerability of a candidate according to his election totals, but also aims to broaden the GOP base beyond one that is basically seen as older, white and rural -- a recipe for long-term electoral disaster. While the list of Democrats that fall into this trap is very large, it should be large enough to give the GOP an even bigger pool of potential districts to cut the electoral deficit down to 20 points or less -- but Republicans should be running in all 435 districts regardless of the odds stacked for or against them. The following Democrats won in 2008 with no more than 70 percent -- well over two-thirds -- of the vote:

Bobby Bright (Alabama 2, 50.2 percent) - freshman and 2008 pickup
Parker Griffith (Alabama 5, 51.5 percent) - freshman
Ann Kirkpatrick (Arizona 1, 55.9 percent) - freshman and 2008 pickup
Harry Mitchell (Arizona 5, 53.2 percent) - 2006 pickup
Raul Grijalva (Arizona 7, 63.3 percent)
Gabrielle Giffords (Arizona 8, 54.7 percent) - 2006 pickup
Mike Thompson (California 1, 68.2 percent)
Ellen Tauscher (California 10, 65.2 percent)
Jerry McNerney (California 11, 55.3 percent) - 2006 pickup
Anna Eshoo (California 14, 69.8 percent)
Lois Capps (California 23, 68.1 percent)
Brad Sherman (California 27, 68.6 percent)
Adam Schiff (California 29, 69.0 percent)
Jane Harman (California 36, 68.7 percent)
Linda Sanchez (California 39, 69.7 percent)
Joe Baca (California 43, 69.2 percent)
Loretta Sanchez (California 47, 69.5 percent)
Susan Davis (California 53, 68.5 percent)
Jared Polis (Colorado 2, 62.6 percent) - freshman
John Salazar (Colorado 3, 61.6 percent)
Betsy Markey (Colorado 4, 56.2 percent) - freshman and 2008 pickup
Ed Perlmutter (Colorado 7, 63.5 percent) - 2006 pickup
Joe Courtney (Connecticut 2, 65.7 percent) - 2006 pickup
Jim Himes (Connecticut 4, 51.3 percent) - freshman and 2008 pickup
Chris Murphy (Connecticut 5, 59.2 percent) - 2006 pickup
Allen Boyd (Florida 2, 61.9 percent)
Alan Grayson (Florida 8, 52.0 percent) - freshman and 2008 pickup
Robert Wexler (Florida 19, 66.2 percent)
Ron Klein (Florida 22, 54.7 percent) - 2006 pickup
Suzanne Kosmas (Florida 24, 57.2 percent) - freshman and 2008 pickup
Sanford Bishop (Georgia 2, 68.9 percent)
Jim Marshall (Georgia 8, 57.2 percent)
John Barrow (Georgia 12, 66.0 percent)
David Scott (Georgia 13, 69.0 percent)
Walt Minnick (Idaho 1, 50.6 percent) - freshman and 2008 pickup
Melissa Bean (Illinois 8, 60.7 percent)
Debbie Halvorson (Illinois 11, 58.4 percent) - freshman and 2008 pickup
Bill Foster (Illinois 14, 57.7 percent) - midterm pickup in 2008
Joe Donnelly (Indiana 2, 67.1 percent) - 2006 pickup
Andre Carson (Indiana 7, 65.1 percent)
Brad Ellsworth (Indiana 8, 64.7 percent) - 2006 pickup
Baron Hill (Indiana 9, 57.8 percent) - 2006 pickup
Bruce Braley (Iowa 1, 64.6 percent) - 2006 pickup
Dave Loebsack (Iowa 2, 57.2 percent) - 2006 pickup
Leonard Boswell (Iowa 3, 56.4 percent)
Dennis Moore (Kansas 3, 56.4 percent)
John Yarmuth (Kentucky 3, 59.4 percent) - 2006 pickup
Ben Chandler (Kentucky 6, 64.7 percent)
Chellie Pingree (Maine 1, 54.9 percent) - freshman
Mike Michaud (Maine 2, 67.4 percent)
Frank Kratovil (Maryland 1, 49.1 percent) - freshman and 2008 pickup
John Sarbanes (Maryland 3, 69.7 percent)
Barney Frank (Massachusetts 4, 68.0 percent)
Bart Stupak (Michigan 1, 65.0 percent)
Mark Schauer (Michigan 7, 48.8 percent) - freshman and 2008 pickup
Gary Peters (Michigan 9, 52.1 percent) - freshman and 2008 pickup
Tim Walz (Minnesota 1, 62.5 percent) - 2006 pickup
Betty McCollum (Minnesota 4, 68.4 percent)
Jim Oberstar (Minnesota 8, 67.7 percent)
Travis Childers (Mississippi 1, 54.5 percent) - midterm pickup in 2008
Bennie Thompson (Mississippi 2, 69.1 percent)
Russ Carnahan (Missouri 3, 66.4 percent)
Ike Skelton (Missouri 4, 65.9 percent)
Emanuel Cleaver (Missouri 5, 64.4 percent)
Shelley Berkley (Nevada 1, 67.6 percent)
Dina Titus (Nevada 3, 47.4 percent) - freshman and 2008 pickup
Carol Shea-Porter (New Hampshire 1, 51.7 percent)
OPEN SEAT (New Hampshire 2, 56.4 percent) -- Paul Hodes is running for the open U.S. Senate seat of Republican Judd Gregg
John Adler (New Jersey 3, 52.1 percent)
Frank Pallone (New Jersey 6, 66.9 percent)
Steve Rothman (New Jersey 9, 69.5 percent)
Rush Holt (New Jersey 12, 63.1 percent)
Martin Heinrich (New Mexico 1, 55.7 percent)
Harry Teague (New Mexico 2, 56.0 percent)
Ben Lujan (New Mexico 3, 56.7 percent)
Tim Bishop (New York 1, 58.4 percent)
Steve Israel (New York 2, 66.9 percent)
Carolyn McCarthy (New York 4, 64.0 percent)
Michael McMahon (New York 13, 60.9 percent)
Nita Lowey (New York 18, 68.5 percent)
John Hall (New York 19, 58.7 percent)
VACANT SEAT (New York 20, 62.1 percent by now-U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand)
Paul Tonko (New York 21, 62.1 percent)
Maurice Hinchey (New York 22, 66.3 percent)
Mike Arcuri (New York 24, 52.0 percent)
Dan Maffei (New York 25, 54.8 percent)
Eric Massa (New York 29, 51.0 percent)
Bob Etheridge (North Carolina 2, 66.9 percent)
David Price (North Carolina 4, 63.3 percent)
Mike McIntyre (North Carolina 7, 68.8 percent)
Larry Kissell (North Carolina 8, 55.4 percent)
Heath Shuler (North Carolina 11, 62.0 percent)
Brad Miller (North Carolina 13, 65.9 percent)
Earl Pomeroy (North Dakota, 62.0 percent)
Steve Chabot (Ohio 1, 52.4 percent)
Charlie Wilson (Ohio 6, 62.3 percent)
Dennis Kucinich (Ohio 10, 57.0 percent)
Betty Sutton (Ohio 13, 64.5 percent)
Mary Jo Kilroy (Ohio 15, 45.9 percent)
John Boccieri (Ohio 16, 55.4 percent)
Zack Space (Ohio 18, 59.9 percent)
Kurt Schrader (Oregon 5, 54.3 percent)
Kathy Dahlkemper (Pennsylvania 3, 51.2 percent)
Jason Altmire (Pennsylvania 4, 55.9 percent)
Joe Sestak (Pennsylvania 7, 59.6 percent)
Patrick Murphy (Pennsylvania 8, 56.8 percent)
Chris Carney (Pennsylvania 10, 56.3 percent)
Paul Kanjorski (Pennsylvania 11, 51.6 percent)
John Murtha (Pennsylvania 12, 57.9 percent)
Allyson Schwartz (Pennsylvania 13, 62.8 percent)
Tim Holden (Pennsylvania 17, 63.7 percent)
Patrick Kennedy (Rhode Island 1, 68.6 percent)
John Spratt (South Carolina 5, 61.6 percent)
Jim Clyburn (South Carolina 6, 67.5 percent)
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (South Dakota, 67.6 percent)
Lincoln Davis (Tennessee 4, 58.8 percent)
Jim Cooper (Tennessee 5, 65.9 percent)
Ruben Hinojosa (Texas 15, 65.7 percent)
Chet Edwards (Texas 17, 53.0 percent)
Ciro Rodriguez (Texas 23, 55.8 percent)
Lloyd Doggett (Texas 25, 65.8 percent)
Solomon Ortiz (Texas 27, 57.9 percent)
Henry Cuellar (Texas 28, 68.7 percent)
Jim Matheson (Utah 2, 63.4 percent)
Glenn Nye (Virginia 2, 52.4 percent)
Tom Perriello (Virginia 5, 50.1 percent)
Jim Moran (Virginia 8, 67.9 percent)
Gerry Connolly (Virginia 11, 54.7 percent)
Jay Inslee (Washington 1, 67.8 percent)
Rick Larsen (Washington 2, 62.4 percent)
Brian Baird (Washington 3, 64.0 percent)
Norm Dicks (Washington 6, 66.9 percent)
Adam Smith (Washington 9, 65.5 percent)
Nick Rahall (West Virginia 3, 66.9 percent)
Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin 2, 69.3 percent)
Ron Kind (Wisconsin 3, 63.2 percent)
Dave Obey (Wisconsin 7, 60.8 percent)
Steve Kagen (Wisconsin 8, 54.0 percent)

So out of 257 seats held by Democrats (including the three vacant Dem seats in California, Illinois and New York), 138 -- over half -- can be seen as even remotely vulnerable to a challenge from Republicans. In some of these districts, it is impossible in the present for a Republican to compete adequately. And in a select few, the Democratic incumbent's fall under 70 may have been the result of a third-party challenge -- whether from a liberal who considers the incumbent "Republican Lite" or from a conservative who finds the incumbent too extreme. But other seats hold ripe opportunities for Republicans, such as the vacant seat in New York's 20th District that was vacated by Kirsten Gillibrand after her appointment to Hillary Rodham Clinton's former Senate seat when the latter became Secretary of State.

But relying on numbers alone will not expand the GOP base. Republicans need to also reach out to underserved segments of the voter rolls that dot the American political lexicon: the young, the educated, the minorities, the party switchers, the suburbanites, and other groups filled with people who find themselves to be Republicans at heart but are turned off by some of the toxic elements of the GOP stew.

Simply put, if you want a regional party that bleeds members by the minute and imposes litmus tests to please a handful of activists who put themselves ahead of their country, then you are fine with business as usual in the GOP. But if you want a party that appeals to a patchwork quilt of Americans, that offers compelling solutions to both today's problems and what may hold for the future, and that unites us as one America, then Republicans need to get the message if they haven't already, leave the divisive culture wars and wedging of the past behind, and look towards a new day of optimism, strength, freedom and fairness. 2010 will be a very big test to see if that new day will dawn, and if it hasn't by then, we simply have no one to blame but ourselves.

It's a Super Sunday!

2009-01-31T21:00:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow is the day every football fan in America has been waiting for. Super Bowl XLIII will take place this year in Tampa, Florida and will see Ben Roethlisberger and his Pittsburgh Steelers take on Kurt Warner and the Arizona Cardinals. This will be an interesting matchup, and as with every Super Sunday, I will be watching the game.

Where Do We Go From Here?

2008-12-31T06:00:00.004-06:00

With 2008 slipping into the history books, I am now making sense as to how the results of the 2008 election turned out the way they did. From what yours truly can explain and understand, it is neither worth writing home about nor whining and complaining over. It is not a step forward or a step back. And it is definitely not a comparison of one America versus the other America. Instead, it served as the lesson of a year where the overwhelming desire for change and forward progress in America overtook the status quo of experience and jaded reflections of our glorious past.

The Democrats emerged victorious on November 4th with the capture of the White House and the pickup of several GOP seats, some of which elected Republicans for decades. They also made gains in the Senate, gained the Governor's Mansion in the swing state of Missouri, and broke into many reliably Republican suburbs, while sweeping Republicans out of New England in the House, shutting Senate Republicans out of the West Coast, and cutting into vaunted GOP strongholds by the likes of Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana, generally restricting Republican victories to Southern states such as Texas and Georgia and Appalachian states by the likes of West Virginia and Kentucky, and stealing one of Nebraska's five electoral votes in the process. With a bad economy, infighting between Republicans over the presidential ticket, and fatigue from a presidency that was anything but inspiring, I knew it was going to be a disaster waiting to happen, but in the end the disaster turned out to be milder than I thought it would be while also providing the prospects of a new Republican future.

A Personal Reflection

For me, 2008 began with a focus on the GOP primary for the 22nd Congressional District here in Texas. Sprawled out over a narrow strip of four counties (in geographical order): Fort Bend, Brazoria, Harris and Galveston, and taking a mixture of working-class small towns, minority enclaves, and affluent suburbs (one or two of these three clusters is definitely rising in population), it was the "accidental representative" in Democrat Nick Lampson versus a field of ten Republicans whose bases were largely derived from their experiences - and their roots. Shelley Sekula Gibbs was the seat warmer in Christmas of 2006 after a colorful career on Houston City Council, but she already damaged herself with her sloppy handling of the dismissal of Tom DeLay's staff, which is not uncommon with new members of Congress.

Ten candidates filed on my side of the fence to take out Lampson. In the early stages, the candidate I endorsed was Dean Hrbacek, the former mayor of Sugar Land whose six years were marked by a time of prosperity for Fort Bend with the beginning stages of Sugar Land Town Square and a host of other economic development initiatives and continued a long line of steady Sugar Land leadership and growth that continues to this day. While the campaign was short-lived (fifth place courtesy of terrible results in the Harris portion), the effort and hard work espoused by me, his supporters and his staff was nothing less than our 110 percent. In the end, I threw my support in the runoff and general election behind Pete Olson, a former Senatorial aide to Senators Phil Gramm and John Cornyn who quickly locked the establishment vote after the ten candidates were set in stone.

But despite the attention given to this race, the primary was overshadowed by the 2-to-1 Democratic edge in Fort Bend and many other large Texas counties thanks to a competitive primary between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and efforts by talk-radio kingpin Rush Limbaugh and others to entice Republicans to cross over and aid Hillary. I knew this problem was evident at my precinct convention in a wealthy Sugar Land neighborhood where many of the guests were walking into the Democrats' convention (though this has more to do with the fact that Texas Democrats have a hybrid primary/caucus fusion versus our plain GOP primaries, and I know very well that there are some Democrats who want to do away or at least tinker with the Texas Two-Step). The only thing that differentiated us from the crowd was the fact that we generally wore suits, slacks and leather shoes versus the usual commonwealth cloths of the Dem caucusers. My uncle, who can best be classified as a libertarian-leaning, anti-Vocal Fringe Republican but cast his vote for Hillary, neither attended their caucus nor wanted to join my convention.

The problems were further exacerbated by the county convention, where our predominantly affluent and Republican precinct fielded a mere 27 delegates out of 40, and some precincts - even ones that John McCain won - even reported ONE delegate. "If you don't like McCain, get over it" became a rallying cry. Of course, John McCain was not my first choice, for my political capital was behind former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani to begin with, and then after Rudy left the race, rallied to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney on Super Tuesday until he dropped out as well. In my first-ever county convention, while I applied for a state-level delegate slot and lost out to more experienced Republicans, my shortcomings can be seen as only the beginning of my political career as I represent the future of the party.

While I did not campaign between the end of the convention and Election Day (for personal and non-political reasons I am not going to state), I continued to contribute whatever efforts I could through the internet. My curiosity with the nature of the House races and the competitiveness waged by many Democratic candidates inspired me to launch my own research into the most important election in our lifetime. My massive project, cleverly titled The Nifty Fifty House Party, was the end result, and it took an enormous chunk of political capital to do. (As a measure of clarity, the ratings as I predicted then are not what I predicted in the end, for I accidentally erased my final predictions on Election Night.)

A Mixed Blessing

On Election Day, I clicked the vote for McCain on the hope that the old McCain (the earmark-busting maverick who fought for what was right even as his colleagues skewered him) would come back in place of the McCain that emerged (a Bush 43 clone who ditched his maverick image and began to back a great number of the President's flawed "compassionate conservatism" ideals). The campaign received a boost with Sarah Palin who galvanized the conservative base and is now being pegged as the leading GOP candidate for 2012. However, that boost was short-lived as McCain's feeble attempts to galvanize the so-called "base" turned off some more principled conservatives who balked at McCain's support for the artery-clogging $700 billion bailout, while some more sensible Republicans who found fault in Palin's "attack dog" mantra and hardline conservatism shifted their votes to Obama or a third-party candidate. Not all is lost, for Palin will have four more years to cultivate and salvage her image as will many other Republicans who are waiting for their big moment. After all, we may even get a relative unknown to step up to the plate in 2012 just as we did with Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul. Whether or not a resurgence will happen by then depends on GOP efforts in the next four years and Obama's record at the White House.

That being said, this is a historic time for America. Barack Obama has broken barriers that some envisioned would never be broken, and even inspired many of my fellow Republicans, some of whom may have crossed the line to cast their ballots for the Illinois Senator. As someone who had the blessing of attending a high school whose largely affluent student body came from a variety of ethnic, cultural, social, economic and political backgrounds, had enormous respect from various faculty members and parents, and had a variety of friends that ranged from cheerleaders and football players to band leaders and drama superstars, guitar aficionados and hip-hop aspirants to computer buffs and DECA marketers, I celebrate the arrival of a new era in America that is defined by what unites us as one country instead of what divides us, and thus far Obama has put together a blue-ribbon team of Cabinet appointees that spans across the political spectrum. At the same time, the failures of 2008 serve to spark the beginning of a much-needed renewal for the Party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.

The race was a wake-up call for my entire family, which usually votes Republican, albeit in a rather negative fashion. My great-aunt, a former GOP precinct chair in Montgomery County north of Houston, or Monco as I personally like to call it, thought young people who turned out strongly for Obama should not be allowed to vote. Another uncle of mine, himself an intelligent business conservative, thought the GOP may have lost the business vote because of the social conservatives' influence. And my cousin, who like me was somewhat undecided before swinging towards McCain in the end, asked me if I was freaking out. The answer? I definitely did not because it is just plain stupid to assume the sky is falling when the vote doesn't go my way. To me, I saw Barack Obama's historic victory not as a shortcoming of GOP efforts, but rather as a mandate on the negative connotations of a stale, outdated GOP brand in need of a good dose of WD-40, and judging from the Facebook status updates on Election Night, a lot of my old high school friends, Republican and Democrat, espoused many views from being scared about having a Democrat (or in one case, a "babykiller") in the White House, to savoring an Obama victory and declaring "It's a beautiful night". For what it was worth, the election was nothing more than a mixed blessing.

The Meaning of Being Republican

The GOP's problem went well beyond the presidential race. The blame game was alive and well even before the final votes were counted. Moderates want to say that social conservatives' litmus tests and purity police are responsible for the party's decline, while conservatives argue that the party is simply not being conservative or "American" enough. In fact, they are both wrong...they both lost for a variety of circumstances. Some of the moderates that lost either faced difficult situations (especially in regards to the Obama vote and external economic issues which played a role in the defeat of Michigan's Joe Knollenberg and Connecticut's Christopher Shays) or caved in to the Religious Right (as Iowa's Jim Leach did in his support of anti-poker legislation, which I found rather stupid and most likely led to his defeat in 2006). But many moderates also retired as well, among them names like Ohio's Ralph Regula, Minnesota's Jim Ramstad and Virginia's Tom Davis. Meanwhile, for conservatives, it is rather silly that they revel in the increasing conservative ranks of the GOP when in fact a lot of their own went down in defeat as well, from Colorado's Marilyn Musgrave and Idaho's Bill Sali out west to Tim Walberg in Michigan, who was elected in 2006 with help from hardcore conservative groups who helped defeat a more moderate Republican.

Republicans will also have to deal with shifting winds in one of its most reliable voting blocs. The evangelical community is moving more towards a Christian Democracy-inspired platform that diversifies beyond gay marriage and abortion to include the environment, poverty and other issues that unite younger evangelicals. Mike Huckabee is one such example. To go further, I would have cast my vote against Prop 8 if I were in California, to the detriment of my own socially conservative family, because we are long past the days of Jim Crow. Imposing a ban on a certain segment of the population for superficial reasons (i.e. our children will lose their innocence, our children will be indoctrinated, etc.) would have created a sheer ripple effect across the deserts and mountains of California on down to its glorious coastline, and it would have also depressed California's already nightmarish financial situation with companies being forced into anti-discrimination lawsuits, among other irregularities. And I personally would never be a homosexual in any way, shape or form.

Going even further into perspective, on my views on abortion lies a fine line between a social conservative and a Religious Right conservative - I am none of the latter and some of the former in the form of my free subscription to the Consistent Life Ethic which contradicts some of the GOP's platform on issues such as the death penalty, and my middling stance on Planned Parenthood (which should focus more on other services such as emergency contraception, cancer screenings, STD testing, and menopause treatments). And if the Vocal Fringe keeps on bastardizing social conservatism and conservatism in general to the point where conservatives of any stripe are seen as a "hate group", then just like Lyndon B. Johnson once told an aide "We have lost the South for a generation", Republicans might as well lose the coastlines, the well-informed, the youth, and more troubling, the business vote and the suburbs, for a generation, and nothing would boil my blood more than for this to happen. To put it in perspective, the government is one nation under God and will continue to be, but the government is not supposed to be God. The Religious Right is more interested in money and power than ministry and scripture.

Additionally, some of these "conservatives" have either turned out to be hypocrites as evidenced by the falls of some social conservative champions. For starters, Idaho's Larry Craig was seen as a family values conservative but later became known for an act of wide stance cottaging in a bathroom stall at the airport in Minneapolis. And there are also many so-called "conservatives" who have been anything but conservative. For me, there is nothing conservative about record deficits, wasteful spending, and butting into the lives of ordinary Americans (whether in the form of religious theocracy or overzealous nanny statism) simply to please the interests of groups that lack patience such as parents who think it is better to invest their life savings in a concert featuring a tween pop sensation (but not necessarily the stars themselves) that will become only a memory come 2012 as opposed to investing in a college education which lasts a lifetime. People will think I am being an anti-family grinch for what I just said, but we must face hard reality: we cannot mortgage our country on our children's backs anymore, and this is NOT a Democrat or Republican position, this is a REAL conservative position. Parents must be parents, not friends, to their children, and must not be afraid to say NO. Yes, your kids might as well go ahead and cry their eyes out, but my TRUE conservative parents taught me to put what matters long-term ahead of any short-term trend that exists. In full, being a Republican is supposed to mean a belief in fiscal restraint, personal responsibility, a strong and prepared defense, and a hearty commitment to the American Dream, NOT attaching costly and unrelated riders to major bills, conquering and dividing electorates, misplacing economic and defense priorities for personal gain, and prodding into the lives of everyday Americans.

As Ronald Reagan put it:

"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is."

- Ronald Reagan, from Reason Magazine, July 1975

Additionally, Reagan also stated that "All great change in America begins at the dinner table". This is personally true for me as change in America begins with a simple family dinner and a nice family conversation, focused on a reinforcement of family tradition and a detailed foresight into tomorrow where good advice and the American Spirit are fostered. While Reagan serves as an inspiration to me and millions of Republicans, a need for a new brand of conservative leadership is needed to continue the conservative legacy. Reagan has died long ago and is not coming back. It is time to adapt the principles of our past to a new generation of Americans committed to the future.

A New Stage Is Being Set

Now if I were to play my cards, conservatism will be entering a new stage: where aiming to reduce the national debt (inevitable given the bailout bonanza on Capitol Hill), provide a clean environment that also benefits our economy (the Pickens Plan is a giant step forward), and offer an improved, efficient infrastructure (but definitely NOT in the form of the pork-laden Trans-Texas Corridor) will become integral parts of the platform, where constructive issues like immigration, education and health care will be offered in the form of sensible, efficient alternatives to the Democrats' expected bureaucracy and bungling courtesy of such committee chairs as House Ways and Means Committee boss Charlie Rangel, and where hot-button social issues will take a more pragmatic turn, including finding innovative ways to reduce abortion as opposed to the Prohibitionist mantra of simply criminalizing the practice, because given the sickening nature of abortion, there will always be women that have to have one regardless of any efforts that aim to put a stop to it.

Summing it up, the GOP needs to regroup and get its ducks in order. Blaming social conservatives will not work because not all are "easy to command" types dictated by figures like James Dobson, but rather tend to follow the same ethically sound message that I follow in what I call The Ethic. Booting out the business Republicans will further depress the ranks because they provide the innovation, charisma and entrepreneurial spirit that sews the fabric of our future (and in a sense, may force such voters to vote against their interests). Telling the libertarian Ron Paul Republicans to hit the road is elitist at best as they share many of the same values of freedom and liberty that many true conservatives do. Attacking moderates will do nothing more than burn down the big tent and will only serve to relegate Republicans to dreaded permanent minority status. And making us believe that "deficits don't matter" will boil fiscal conservatives' blood and force the GOP down the same road as the Whigs, a road that we are not willing to take and which will also doom the American Dream.

As a Republican who stands strong in the face of adversity along the lines of Lincoln, cherishes the benefits of a clean environment ala Roosevelt, praises the effectiveness of a top-shelf infrastructure that partially bears the namesake of Eisenhower, and espouses the sunny optimism and peace through strength as defined by Reagan, I find the party at a troubling crossroads. Members of my family don't even know the Republicans anymore, and it seems sometimes that I am the only Republican left. With that in mind, I am looking forward to helping rebuild the party and restore its commitment to freedom, prosperity and sound policy. The challenges I will have to deal with won't be easy, but I am very optimistic that with a broad coalition of committed Americans who want to see a return to reason, a restoration of common sense, and a renewal of the American Dream, the Republican Party can make a comeback.

Today, I no longer consider myself a Republican. I am a New Republican. And I am ready to make the commitment to bring a New Day to America. The Elephant Stampede will roar more than it ever has before. The big tent will rise again.

Season's Greetings!

2008-12-24T23:15:00.000-06:00

Just to let you, the reader, know...be it Christmas (today), Hanukkah (started at sunset on the 21st, continues through sunset on the 29th), Kwanzaa (26th until New Year's) or whatever holiday you celebrate...Season's Greetings and a Happy (and more optimistic) New Year!

And so Election 2008 comes to a close...

2008-12-16T21:51:00.003-06:00

...with tonight's race in State Senate District 17. With 99 percent of the vote (two precincts still at large) in, my new State Senator is Joan Huffman.

Republican Joan Huffman 24,221 (56.31%)
Democrat Chris Bell 18,792 (43.68%)

The Elephant Stampede holds this one. With that, the most important election season of our time draws to a close.

More Huffin' CowBell...

2008-12-16T21:01:00.002-06:00

It's now just past nine...

With under two-thirds of the precincts reporting...

Joan Huffman 18,796 (56.62%), Chris Bell 14,397 (43.37%)

I expected a competitive race, but given name recognition and overconfident donkeys on parade, not like this.

One last race...

2008-12-16T19:39:00.002-06:00

Hello, it's me again, and while it has been a rather long time since I last truly posted (not including Greetings), I can now report one last race for 2008...which is in my home base.

Between dinner, untangling spare Christmas lights that aren't being used and a showing of a recent film known as The Darjeeling Limited on pay TV (HBO Signature, specifically), I am tracking the Texas Senate runoff in District 17 between Democrat (and former gubernatorial candidate) Chris Bell and Republican Joan Huffman.

As of 7:47 (update and revision)...

Huffman 11,286 (62.33%), Bell 6,820 (37.66%)

There's more to come tonight.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T06:00:00.003-06:00

Today is Thanksgiving Day, and like many Americans I will be spending this day with my extended family. Regardless of whatever situation may come, and even though this may not be the best of times but perhaps instead may turn out to be the worst of times in recent memory, we shall be grateful and give thanks for what we have achieved in our daily lives and shall look forward to the future as we pull through in these trying times with an uncertain economy already in progress, a period of transition and rebuilding within our environs, and a daunting challenge to renew our standing in the world. While I personally find it very difficult to display a sense of optimism with the events that have transpired, being optimistic about the future is one aspect that I take into account every day. After all, there is nothing better for me to think about on this day than being thankful to those who have been thankful to me over the years and to hope for a better tomorrow.

Best regards,

Kyle S.

The results are in!

2008-11-05T02:00:00.001-06:00

Sorry for the delay, but here are the final results from tonight:

Barack Obama is now the 44th President of the United States, having officially been declared the winner of the race just after the West Coast polls closed.

Democrats have picked up Senate seats in Virginia, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Colorado and New Mexico, with competitive races in Georgia, Oregon, Minnesota and Alaska still undecided. The current Senate composition for the 111th Congress is 56 Democrats, 40 Republicans, and 4 seats to be decided.

A number of GOP House seats have gone to the Democrats, though a few seats that were held by Democrats are now in the Republicans' hands (see below for one seat).

The Democrats also picked up a governorship in Missouri.

And here in Fort Bend, the results are a grab bag...

Democrat Chris Bell and Republican Joan Huffman (my two picks) will go to a runoff for the State Senate District 17 seat.

Democrat Richard Morrison has edged Republican Greg Ordeneaux for County Commissioner Precinct 1.

Sugar Land voters supported all four parts of a plan to bring a Cultural Entertainment District here, Missouri City residents voted strongly in favor of a bond issue to improve city parks and the golf course at Quail Valley, and Rosenberg residents (two-thirds in fact) rejected a zoning ordinance proposal.

And in Congressional District 22, Republican Pete Olson defeats incumbent Democrat Nick Lampson to take District 22 back for the Republicans.

As for the White House: John McCain won here...with 50.9 percent compared to 48.6 percent for Obama.

More details later.

Welcome to Election Day 2008

2008-11-04T06:00:00.000-06:00

Today is Tuesday, November 4, 2008...Election Day.

Today, all across the United States, millions of Americans will be casting their votes in a historic election that aims to set public policy for the next generation. There are many scenarios that will arise from today's vote, which will aim to shape the destiny of the United States in the coming years.

In America, we will be deciding a new president, the 44th President of the United States. Democrats will look to make history with Senator Barack Obama, who will aim to become the first African American President of the United States, while Republicans will look to move on after the Bush years with Senator John McCain. In addition, a third of the United States Senate (including two special elections), all 435 seats in the United States House of Representatives, and eleven governorships along with an assortment of ballot initiatives will be at stake. In addition, control of state legislatures is at stake in all 50 states.

In Fort Bend County (my home base), these are the races in my jurisdiction:

Special election for an open State Senate Seat. This is SD17 which used to be the Kyle Janek seat; former Congressman Chris Bell will attempt to pick up the seat against another Democrat (even though Bell is viewed by the Democratic establishment as the only true Democrat in the race) and four Republican opponents; the leading GOP candidates are former Bush 41 staffer/Republican activist Austen Furse and former State District Judge Joan Huffman. Whether or not a runoff ensues depends on tonight.
The Presidency (of course).
U.S. Senate (John Cornyn will fight back a dark horse challenge from Rick Noriega).
Congress (Nick Lampson will attempt to fend off a strong challenge from Pete Olson).
Various statewide offices, judicial offices and county offices, as well as State Representative (My State Representative, Charlie Howard, is unopposed).
Four bond proposals related to a new Cultural Entertainment District in Sugar Land, including a minor league baseball stadium, an indoor concert venue, and other facilities along with tax adjustments to pay for the project.

Finally, in other parts of Fort Bend, a competitive County Commissioner's race is ongoing, and the community of Weston Lakes is looking to build its inaugural municipal government, among other initiatives.

I will be updating this blog to let you know what is going on...stay tuned!

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part L: New York

2008-11-01T10:00:00.001-05:00

And so, after six long months of traversing through the American political landscape, I am proud to say that the Nifty Fifty House Party for 2008 has finally reached its final stop this year. After crossing through the home state of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, the Bullet Train to November heads eastward to a state that plays a significant role in the American and world economy, and this year, a significant role in the future of Congress...

NEW YORK

From its early beginnings in the 1600s as the Dutch colony known as New Netherlands, the Empire State has played a pivotal role in the life of the United States, whose Constitution was ratified by New York, the 11th state to do so, on July 26, 1788. Much of the state is dotted with forests, rivers and farms, and the nation's largest state park, Adirondack Park, is situated here. Despite its relative sparseness, 92 percent of New Yorkers (the whole state) reside in urban areas largely concentrated around New York City. In fact, its center of population is located in Orange County, an exurban county outside New York City, which comprises two-thirds of the state's population and forms the core of the BosWash megalopolis that stretches from the Boston area to the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. While it is a slow growth state with a large out-of-state migration rate, New York is a leading destination for immigrants from all over the world; 20 percent of New Yorkers are foreign-born.

The New York economy is the third largest in America, worth $1.02 trillion, which would be the world's 16th largest economy if New York was an entire nation. The state's agricultural outputs include nursery stock, dairy, cattle, maple syrup and various fruits and vegetables including cabbage (the nation's largest producer), onions, apples, cherries and grapes (including 30,000 acres of vineyards). Its industrial sectors include publishing, auto parts, garments and scientific equipment, largely concentrated in Upstate New York, while nanotechnology is a major sector in the Albany and Hudson Valley regions and imaging equipment serves an integral part of Rochester's economy. New York City, the nation's largest city, is a major global cultural and financial center, home to many of the largest corporations in the world, various financial services firms, exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, and numerous attractions from Lincoln Center and Central Park to Times Square and the Statue of Liberty.

A swing state as recent as 1988, New York has emerged as one of the most Democratic states in the country. The state's political liberalism is largely the result of heavily Democratic New York City, where all but one member of its current congressional delegation is a Democrat, as well as the conservative nature of the current Republican Party establishment. Outside of New York City, its suburbs tend to be swing areas, but have leaned more towards the Democrats in recent years. While Upstate New York tends to be more conservative and Republican than the Big Apple, its Republican base is more moderate in comparison to the national party, while Upstate Democrats tend to do well in more urban areas such as Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester and Albany.

One unique aspect of New York politics is electoral fusion, where multiple political parties (such as the Conservative, Working Families and Independence parties) unite behind one candidate. In New York City, it was used to fight Tammany Hall (via the 1933 election of Republican mayor Fiorello La Guardia), the infamous Democratic machine that controlled the city's political establishment well into the postwar era before collapsing in the 1960s. Conservatives usually back Republicans, while Working Families candidates tend to hand out endorsements to Democrats, and candidates of the Independence Party comprise of candidates from both major parties. This year, Barack Obama is expected to carry New York, which is not surprising given that Republicans last won here in Ronald Reagan's 1984 landslide. Meanwhile, the GOP is being targeted for defeat in four of its six congressional seats, with pickups certain in three cases (and especially in one), and another race being closely fought.

Fusion Legend: R = Republican, D = Democrat, C = Conservative, I = Independence, WF = Working Families

District 1 (S-Factor 3.8 DEM): Since first being elected in 2002, Tim Bishop (D/I/WF) never won this district with more than two-thirds of the vote, and this year, attorney and Iraq War vet Lee Zeldin (R/C) is running a dark horse bid for this otherwise fairly competitive seat based in eastern areas of Long Island, including Riverhead, Centereach, Smithtown, and the Hamptons. In a normal season, it would be a competitive race, but a poor GOP climate nationally will make a pickup opportunity a hard sell. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 2 (S-Factor 8.3 DEM): When Rick Lazio challenged Hillary Clinton for the U.S. Senate seat held by Pat Moynihan in 2000, Steve Israel (D/I/WF) ran for this seat -- and won. Since then, this fairly competitive district, largely based in western Suffolk County including such areas as Huntington, Brentwood, Commack and Babylon, as well as a portion of Oyster Bay in Nassau County, has become a safe seat for the incumbent. Businessman Frank Stalzer (R/C) will try. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 3 (S-Factor 2.5 DEM): In 2006, House Homeland Security Committee Ranking Member Peter King (R/C/I) faced a strong challenge for his historically Republican Long Island seat that includes Levittown, Oyster Bay and Lindenhurst against Nassau County Legislator Dave Mejias, but prevailed with 56 percent of the vote. The only Republican congressman on Long Island, King is heavily favored this year for reelection over economic development consultant Graham Long (D/WF). Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 4 (S-Factor 10.0 DEM): Carolyn McCarthy (D/I/WF) will be favored to defend this seat against Mineola Mayor Jack Martins (R/C), who is running a dark horse campaign for this fairly Democratic district based in southwest Nassau County that includes Valley Stream, Hempstead and Garden City. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 5 (S-Factor 18.0 DEM): Gary Ackerman (D/I/WF) is heavily favored for reelection in this largely liberal district that covers northern areas of Queens (Flushing, Bayside, Jamaica Estates) and Nassau County (Manhasset, Port Washington) over Republican attorney Liz Berney and Conservative retired immigration officer Jun Policarpio. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 6 (S-Factor 38.0 DEM): Gregory Meeks (D/WF) is heavily favored for reelection in this heavily Democratic Queens (Jamaica, Saint Albans, Cambria Heights) district. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 7 (S-Factor 27.5 DEM): Incumbent Joe Crowley (D/WF) will cruise to victory in this Bronx (Pelham Bay, Morris Park)/Queens (Jackson Heights, College Point) district for another term over Bronx Conservative Party Treasurer William Britt (R/C). Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 8 (S-Factor 27.3 DEM): Jerrold Nadler (D/WF) will win another term in this district that cuts across Manhattan's Upper West Side and such neighborhoods as Greenwich Village and SoHo, as well as parts of Brooklyn (Bensonhurst, Seagate, Coney Island) over financial executive Grace Lin (R/C). Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 9 (S-Factor 14.0 DEM): Anthony Weiner (D/WF) is a potential Democratic candidate for Mayor of New York City in 2009. This year, the Brooklyn (Flatlands, Mill Basin) and Queens (Kew Gardens, Forest Hills)-based incumbent will be heavily favored over Alfred Donohue (C). Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 10 (S-Factor 39.8 DEM): Ed Towns (D) fended off a primary challenge from hip hop activist, essayist and former reality TV cast member Kevin Powell in the Democratic primary last month and is now heavily favored to defeat Salvatore Grupico (R/C) in this Brooklyn-based (Bedford-Stuyvesant, Canarsie, Ocean Hill) district. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 11 (S-Factor 39.3 DEM): Freshman Yvette Clarke (D/WF) is strongly favored for reelection in this district that takes in the heart of Brooklyn, including Crown Heights, Flatbush and Prospect Heights. Republicans are fielding Hugh Carr, and Conservatives have realtor Cartrell Gore. Neither one has a shot. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 12 (S-Factor 32.8 DEM): Nydia Velázquez (D/WF), who in 1992 became the first ever Puerto Rican woman elected to Congress and the current chair of the House Small Business Committee, should have no trouble defeating frequent candidate Allan Romaguera (R/C) in this district that splits across the NYC boroughs of Brooklyn (Red Hook, Sunset Park), Queens (Maspeth, Woodside), and Manhattan (part of the Lower East Side). Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 13 (S-Factor 1.3 DEM): While there are many Republican seats that Democrats are targeting this year and have a good shot at snagging, nothing compares to this district based in Staten Island and portions of Brooklyn including Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights. In fact, it was the last seat to become open (minus one death and two primary defeats that took place afterwards). Vito Fossella was favored for reelection to this district, the most Republican of the New York City seats, until he was stopped for a DWI while driving to see his family -- a family other than the one he is actually married to (Fossella was convicted of this charge on October 17th). When it was revealed that he had an extramarital affair and fathered a child out of wedlock, many called for Fossella to resign or retire, the latter of which did happen.

And if Fossella not seeking reelection was enough to turn heads in the "forgotten borough", the process to find a Republican successor was even more startling. One by one, such notables as District Attorney Dan Donovan and State Senator Andrew Lanza passed over the race, and Republicans settled on Wall Street executive Frank Powers, but not without a family feud: his son Fran Powers considered running as the Libertarian nominee. Then, on the morning of June 22nd, the elder Powers died of a heart attack. And so the party started searching again, and a similar crop of candidates (albeit a lower tier) passed on the race as well, leaving the GOP with former State Assemblyman Bob Straniere, who once represented Staten Island, but moved to Manhattan after he was defeated for reelection in a 2004 primary. To quote a former Staten Island Congressman:

"They couldn't have made a worse mistake. The party was already in desperate shape. They've all but buried it."

- Former Congressman Guy Molinari (R-NY, 1981-1989)

Meanwhile, the Democrats came right off the bat with New York City Councilor Mike McMahon (D/WF) who is now favored to win over Conservative high school development director Tim Cochrane and Independence insurance executive Carmine Morano. Given the nature of this odd race and the GOP climate as it stands, I am going to risk my reputation (and me possibly being called a "liberal" which I am certainly not) on this one... Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 14 (S-Factor 26.3 DEM): Carolyn Maloney (D/WF) first assumed this affluent, liberal district in 1992 when she defeated moderate Republican Bill Green for this East Side Manhattan and Queens (Astoria, Sunnyside) district. Republican attorney Robert Heim and Libertarian Isaiah Matos will try. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 15 (S-Factor 42.3 DEM): This district based in Upper Manhattan including Harlem, Washington Heights and Marble Hill has been the domain of House Ways and Means Committee Chair Charlie Rangel (D/WF) since 1971, and Republican paralegal Ed Daniels will find it very difficult to knock off the longtime incumbent. Martín Koppel is running as the Socialist Workers candidate and Craig Schley is running as an independent. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 16 (S-Factor 43.0 DEM): Another tough district for Republicans: José Serrano (D/WF) should have no trouble fending off Ali Mohamed (R/C). George W. Bush only got ten percent here in 2004 and in 2000, six percent in this district based in the Bronx including neighborhoods such as Bedford Park, Melrose, and Fordham. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 17 (S-Factor 21.0 DEM): Eliot Engel (D/I/WF) will easily defeat Robert Goodman (R/C) in a district that covers neighborhoods and towns such as Riverdale and Woodlawn in the Bronx, Nanuet, Suffern and Spring Valley in Rockland County, and Mount Vernon and Yonkers in Westchester County. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 18 (S-Factor 10.5 DEM): Nita Lowey (D/WF) will be heavily favored for another term in this fairly liberal district that covers portions of Westchester (White Plains, Ossining, New Rochelle) and Rockland (New City) counties over Jim Russell (R/C). Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 19 (S-Factor 1.0 GOP): In 2006, Democrat John Hall scored an upset victory over incumbent Republican Sue Kelly in this district that stretches across several of New York's Hudson Valley suburbs including all of Putnam and parts of Westchester, Orange, Rockland and Dutchess counties. Republicans' chances at taking back this seat were sidelined when Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board Chairman Andrew Saul dropped out of the race despite posting receipts of $1.47 million through March of this year. The Republican nominee is Iraq War vet and national security activist Kieran Michael Lalor. Fundraising is a major obstacle: Lalor trails the incumbent both in receipts ($544K versus Hall's $2.17 million) and money in the bank ($40K versus the incumbent's $465K). Prediction: Favor DEM.

District 20 (S-Factor 2.0 GOP): Kirsten Gillibrand (D/WF) was the Democrats' control switcher in 2006, becoming the 15th Democrat to pickup a Republican seat that year by defeating Republican John Sweeney, who came under fire due to an incident of domestic violence in which his wife had called police complaining that Sweeney had been "knocking her around". And 15 was the magic number Democrats needed to obtain a majority. The Republicans are fighting back with former New York Secretary of State and former state Republican Party Chair Sandy Treadwell (R/C/I), a former journalist for Sports Illustrated. While he is one of the stronger Republican recruits in this cycle and has raised a total of $6.9 million ($5.9 million of which came from his own pocket), a trifecta of obstacles exist: Gillibrand has $4.48 million in total receipts this cycle (with $3.15 million coming from individual donors), the power of incumbency, and a toxic GOP atmosphere in her favor. The district covers a large swath of Upstate New York surrounding the capital city of Albany including Glens Falls and Saratoga Springs in the north and Hudson in the south. Prediction: Favor DEM.

District 21 (S-Factor 8.8 DEM): While the retirement slates are filled with Republicans, longtime Democrat Mike McNulty is one clear exception. The 10-term incumbent decided not to seek reelection to his traditionally Democratic Capital District (Albany, Schenectady, Troy) seat. The Democrats are looking to former New York State Energy Research and Development Authority President and former State Assemblyman Paul Tonko (D/WF) to keep the seat blue. Republicans, meanwhile, are offering Schenectady County Legislator Jim Buhrmaster (R/C). The Independence Party candidate is Albany County Legislator Phil Steck, who unsuccessfully challenged Tonko for the Dem nod. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 22 (S-Factor 6.0 DEM): This is a fairly competitive seat situated in such cities as Binghamton, Ithaca, Poughkeepsie and Middletown, but Maurice Hinchey (D/I/WF) with should have no trouble knocking off teacher and former congressional aide George Phillips (R/C). Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 23 (S-Factor 0.0): John McHugh (R/C/I) will be favored for another term against attorney Mike Oot (D/WF) in this split Watertown- and Plattsburgh-centric district. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 24 (S-Factor 0.0): In 2006, when longtime Republican Sherwood Boehlert called it a career after 24 years in this Upstate district based in Utica as well as outlying areas of Syracuse, Oneida County District Attorney Mike Arcuri (D/WF) stepped up to the challenge to flip the seat, facing off against Republican State Senator Ray Meier and winning with 54 percent of the vote in what was seen as a highly competitive seat that year. This year, with the advantage of incumbency, Arcuri will be favored to defeat construction executive Richard Hanna (R/C/I), who has been competitive with $744K in total receipts versus Arcuri's $1.48 million (and outpaces the incumbent in the bank, $345K to $132K), but is facing a difficult GOP climate. Prediction: Favor DEM.

District 25 (S-Factor 3.5 DEM): Longtime Republican incumbent Jim Walsh faced a close race in this swingy Syracuse-to-suburban Rochester district where he was held to 51 percent of the vote. Walsh is retiring, but his 2006 challenger, former congressional aide Dan Maffei (D/WF), is running once again and will aim to flip the seat against former Onondaga County Legislature Chairman Dale Sweetland (R/C) and Green and Socialist candidate Howie Hawkins, a co-founder of the United States Green Party. Sweetland has struggled mightly in fundraising, with only $365K in receipts compared to Maffei's $2.01 million. Based those numbers as well as recent polling (double-digit leads for Maffei), for the Elephant Stampede, this seat can be considered a goner. Prediction: Favor DEM.

District 26 (S-Factor 3.3 GOP): In 2006, then-NRCC Chairman Tom Reynolds barely prevailed against industralist Jack Davis, 52-48 in a district that connects suburbs in the Buffalo and Rochester areas including North Tonawanda, Greece, Lockport and Batavia. This year, Reynolds is retiring and businessman Chris Lee (R/C/I) has stepped up to the plate to hold the seat for the GOP. On the Dem side, Davis ran again while the D-Trip had high hopes for Iraq War vet Jon Powers, who was seen as a stronger candidate to take the seat for the Democrats. However, Powers ended up finishing second in the primary, but the well-funded Davis didn't snag the nomination. Instead, it went to environmental attorney Alice Kryzan, who eventually got the D-Trip's endorsement. So far, Lee maintains a slight advantage as evidenced by polling numbers as well as fundraising totals, with Lee having raised $1.52 million including $620K of his own money and Kryzan raking in $801K including $157K coming from Kryzan herself. Prediction: Leans GOP.

District 27 (S-Factor 7.3 DEM): Buffalo and its southern suburbs dominate the district of Brian Higgins (D/WF), who won this seat in 2004 when Republican Jack Quinn decided to call it a career. Higgins is favored to win over tanning salon entrepreneur Dan Humiston (R/I) and retired PR executive Budd Schroeder (C). Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 28 (S-Factor 15.5 DEM): Incumbent Louise Slaughter (D/I/WF), Chairwoman of the House Rules Committee, will be favored in her bid for a 12th term in this district that stretches out from Niagara Falls to the Rochester area. Accountant David Crimmen (R/C) will try to prove otherwise. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 29 (S-Factor 4.8 GOP): Randy Kuhl (R/C/I) represents the most conservative district in the Empire State, situated in the Southern Tier of the state including the Elmira, Corning and Olean areas, as well as suburbs south of Rochester. Kuhl came to Congress in 2004 to succeed moderate Republican Amo Houghton as the standard bearer for this district. But getting reelected has not been easy for Kuhl; in 2006 he only won 52 percent against retired naval officer Eric Massa (D/WF) a former aide to four-star General and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark who left the GOP over the war in Iraq. Massa is running again, and the fundraising picture tells a story: both men are waging competitive bids with Massa posting $1.79 million in total receipts and $234K cash on hand and Kuhl racking up $1.35 million with $209K in the bank. One recent independent poll shows Kuhl trailing Massa in recent polling, albeit by single digits. Not surprisingly, this is a bad GOP year: a toxic climate, a shaky economy, a fundraising crisis, and squandered and ineffective political ideas will make reelection difficult for even the safest elephants all across America. As for this race, it will be tough to a T. Prediction: Tossup.

CONCLUSION

After six months of going through 50 states, a third of the Senate, and non-voting delegates (one of which will be brand new going into the 111th Congress), all I can say is that it has been a pleasure to cover the arduous task of taking a look at every congressional seat in the United States. It was not an easy job taking a closer look at what will amount to be our most important election in a lifetime, and in fact, given the rigors of this series, the blog's priorities were heavily shifted from the local political scene in my home base (as well as other topics of my blog), which personally made my blog look somewhat out of place.

In the end, after tinkering and experimenting with various features, the final five states in this segment set the formula: each segment began with one or two opening paragraphs that focused largely on aspects of that state's economic base because the economy is the dominant and number one issue on the minds of American voters this year. Then it focused on one or two paragraphs relating to the political situation both traditionally and in the current year. Finally, the districts were reviewed, and in reviewing everything from fundraising totals to voter trends to the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates, I did the best I could to make my analysis as credible, informative, and unbiased as possible, even though there were times when I let out my inner partisan, which was the last thing I would have wanted in my analysis.

As the 2008 election season draws to a close, I clearly understand that competing with a flurry of more established (and in some cases, more biased, whether left or right) sources was not very easy, but as I look back at the last six months, all I can say is that I am very proud of the analysis I have done and regret nothing. This was the very first time I had ever embarked upon such an ambitious project, and while it was not perfect in the end, the one thing that does matter is that all I tried to be in my analysis was honest, because in a world where one slip of the tongue can deliver a crushing blow to one's credibility and self-esteem, honesty matters more than anything.

As for 2008, this year will be a historic election, and one that will set the stage for the direction of the next generation of Americans. I am looking forward to Election Day, and I am sure the same rings true for millions of Americans across the entire country who feel just as optimistic about the future of their country as I do.

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XLIX: Illinois

2008-10-31T06:00:00.003-05:00

After traversing through the beaches and citrus groves of Florida, the Bullet Train to November now heads to a very familiar state in the 2008 race for the White House, where this year the political message runs on a message of change...

ILLINOIS

The largest state in the Midwestern United States, Illinois is often seen as a microcosm of the entire country. One such example is the city of Peoria, where it was said within Vaudeville circles that a certain act's success in Peoria would guarantee it success anywhere. The question "Will it play in Peoria?" now applies to test marketing on various subjects from household products to policy polls, of which Peoria remains a frequent test market despite recent demographic changes in other parts of the country.

Illinois boasts the nation's fifth-largest economy worth $589 billion, with leading industries including chemicals, food processing, plastics, coal mining, and electronics, as well as a significant agriculture base that produces soybeans, corn, dairy and cattle among other crops. In fact, the state's corn crops produce 40 percent of the nation's ethanol and its soybean crops rank first among the 50 states in most years. The state is also fifth in electricity production (first in nuclear power capacity) and seventh in consumption, and serves as a major hub for transportation due to its centralized location. While a largely rural state, the state's population is dominated by Chicago, the nation's third-largest city where over one-fifth of the state's 12.8 million residents reside and which serves as a major center of financial services, tourism and publishing.

Illinois has historically been a swing state, but in recent years has become the Midwest's most Democratic state, largely due to the influence of heavily Democratic Chicago as well as recent inroads by Democrats in the traditionally Republican suburbs of Chicago. Outside of Chicagoland, the northern and central portions of the state tend to be more Republican while southern Illinois has traditionally voted Democratic. The state served as the political base of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, and the birth state of another president, Ronald Reagan. This year, Barack Obama will attempt to become the third president from the Land of Lincoln and make history as the first African American elected to hold the White House. With that in mind, Illinois' other U.S. Senator, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin will be up for reelection and is heavily favored, and the state's congressional delegation, particularly on the Republican side, will aim to fight back against an expected Obama wave.

District 1 (S-Factor 34.5 DEM): Democrat Bobby Rush has been the standard-bearer for this staunchly Democratic district that covers much of Chicago's South Side as well as such south Cook County suburbs as Evergreen Park and Blue Island. He should have no trouble defeating Republican Cook County correctional officer Antoine Members this year. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 2 (S-Factor 34.5 DEM): In this heavily liberal and Democratic district based in southern suburbs of Chicago including Calumet City, Harvey and Chicago Heights, Democrat Jesse Jackson Jr. (that's right, the son of Jesse Jackson) is heavily favored over Republican Anthony Williams. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 3 (S-Factor 10.5 DEM): Dan Lipinski is a moderate by Chicago Democratic standards, and it subjected him to primary challenges from more liberal Democrats in this western Cook County district that includes parts of Chicago and suburbs such as Berwyn, Palos Hills and Oak Lawn. However, they have not been successful with Lipinski pulling off 53 percent of the vote against more liberal competition and the incumbent is now favored to defeat Republican realtor Michael Hawkins. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 4 (S-Factor 30.3 DEM): This unusual district connects two heavily Hispanic portions of Chicago through a narrow strip along Interstate 294, with the northern portion containing a significant Puerto Rican population and the southern part including a large Mexican population. Incumbent Democrat Luis Gutiérrez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, will be heavily favored to win another term over Republican Daniel Cunningham. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 5 (S-Factor 17.5 DEM): Four years after succeeding Governor Rod Blagojevich in this North Side Chicago district that includes the friendly confines of Wrigley Field, Democrat Rahm Emanuel was rewarded for his work as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (the D-Trip) in the 2006 Dem takeover with the position of House Democratic Caucus Chairman. This year, Emanuel is favored to defeat Republican commercial real estate broker Tom Hanson. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 6 (S-Factor 2.5 GOP): This historically Republican seat is situated in the bulk of the affluent DuPage County suburbs of Chicago, including such towns as Wheaton, Lombard and Carol Stream as well as parts of northwestern Cook County. After a 32-year reign by the late Henry Hyde, Republican Peter Roskam stepped in to succeed the former Chairman of the House Judiciary (1995-2001) and Foreign Affairs (2001-2007) Committees and notable pro-life advocate (known for the Hyde Amendment), but not without a fight: Roskam had to fend off decorated Iraq War vet and Democrat Tammy Duckworth in a race that some thought would swing in Duckworth's favor due to her enormous war chest ($4.52 million versus Roskam's $3.44 million). In the end, Roskam prevailed with 51 percent of the vote. This year, Roskam will face another Democratic Iraq War vet, former Illinois Homeland Security Advisor Jill Morgenthaler, who the D-Trip has hailed as an "emerging" candidate but lacks the warchest of Duckworth (only $740K in total receipts and $101K cash on hand compared to Roskam's warchest of $2.39 million and COH totals of $694K). Then again, imagine what the impact of an Obama campaign in the Senator's home state can do... Prediction: Favor GOP.

District 7 (S-Factor 34.5 DEM): This district is situated in the downtown and west and south sides of Chicago and some western Cook County suburbs. Longtime Democrat Danny Davis will be heavily favored to knock off Republican businessman and Navy vet Steve Miller. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 8 (S-Factor 4.5 GOP): Democrat Melissa Bean entered Congress in 2004 by upending longtime (think 35 years) Republican Phil Crane in a district that covers several northwestern suburbs of Chicago, including Schaumburg, Palatine and McHenry. Republicans have tried unsuccessfully to unseat Bean, who has crafted a more moderate image in comparison to most other Chicagoland Democrats. Wholesaler and former minor league hockey player Steve Greenberg is the GOP candidate in a district that is historically Republican, but compared to Bean's $3 million in receipts, and $349K cash on hand, Greenberg has raised $940K and has only $24K left in the bank. With Obama at the top of the ballot, it will not be easy to wrest this one out of the Donkey Brigade. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 9 (S-Factor 19.8 DEM): This covers some of Chicago's North Shore suburbs, including Evanston, Skokie, Des Plaines and Niles, as well as part of Chicago's North Side. Generally liberal in orientation, it is heavily favorable territory for Democrat Jan Schakowsky over Republican businessman and Air Force vet Michael Younan. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 10 (S-Factor 3.8 DEM): Parts of Lake County (Waukegan, Highland Park) and some other affluent northern Chicago suburbs (Northbrook, Arlington Heights) fall into this historically Republican district situated along the North Shore that has been the domain of moderate Republican Mark Kirk since he succeeded John Edward Porter in 2000. In 2006, Kirk faced a strong challenge from marketing executive Dan Seals who held the incumbent to 53 percent in 2006. There will be a rematch this time, and with Obama at the top of the ticket, Kirk will need every bit of the $4.83 million he has raised to knock off Seals and his $3 million. Prediction: Tossup.

District 11 (S-Factor 0.8 GOP): With Jerry Weller getting roasted over land deals in Nicaragua among other issues, the incumbent Republican has decided to call it a career after seven terms in this district that largely sits in burgeoning Will County (Joliet) as well as some areas of north central Illinois including Bloomington. The Democrats have scored a major coup with State Senate Majority Leader Debbie Halvorson, while Republicans have had quite a scenario: losing its initial nominee, Chicago Ridge police chief and New Lenox mayor Tim Baldermann, when he pulled out of the race. Now they have another, much more well-heeled candidate in businessman Marty Ozinga, who runs a family-owned concrete business. Halvorson is aided by political experience and the ballot presence of Obama, while cash competitiveness (as well as the unpopularity of Governor Blagojevich) may help Ozinga. The polls tell a different story...Halvorson has consistently been in the lead. Prediction: Leans DEM.

District 12 (S-Factor 5.0 DEM): Longtime Democrat Jerry Costello will be favored for another term in this southern Illinois district (East St. Louis, Belleville, Carbondale) over college student and Navy vet Tim Richardson. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 13 (S-Factor 4.3 GOP): Moderate Republican Judy Biggert has generally won reelection without difficulty in this historically Republican seat based in Chicago's southwestern suburbs including Naperville, Downers Grove, Bolingbrook and Orland Park. Obama's presence at the top of the ticket along with the usual playbook of the Democrats (tie the incumbent to a president who isn't even on the ballot) could be beneficial to marketing executive Scott Harper, who the D-Trip is hailing as an "emerging" candidate. Money talks: Biggert has $1.25 million in receipts, $405K cash on hand, and experience. Harper has $873K raised, $253K available, and the prospect of Obamatails. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 14 (S-Factor 4.3 GOP): When former House Speaker Dennis Hastert bid adieu to his historically Republican seat, it launched a free-for-all of sorts with a number of candidates from both parties apiece seeking this district situated largely in the growing Fox Valley exurbs of Chicago (Aurora, Elgin) and stretching out to towns such as DeKalb and Dixon. The Republicans nominated investment banker and dairy magnate Jim Oberweis, a former candidate for U.S. Senate in 2002 and 2004 and for Governor in 2006, to run in a district that also includes the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab. And out of the Fermilab came physicist and businessman Bill Foster, who snagged the nomination for the Democrats. In the end, Foster defeated Oberweis in a special election where he won 53 percent of the vote. Both men are running again, this time with Foster having the advantages of incumbency (and Obamatails present). Prediction: Favor DEM.

District 15 (S-Factor 5.8 GOP): Moderate Republican Tim Johnson will be favored for another term in this Central Illinois district that includes areas such as Champaign, Mattoon and Danville over Vietnam vet and retired State Department employee Steve Cox. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 16 (S-Factor 4.0 GOP): Don Manzullo has represented this northern Illinois seat that stretches out from the Rockford area eastward to some suburbs of Chicago such as Crystal Lake since 1992. Barrington Hills Village President Bob Abboud is the Democrat-in-waiting. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 17 (S-Factor 4.8 DEM): Freshman Democrat Phil Hare has no opponents in this district that includes the Decatur, Quincy and Quad Cities (Moline, Rock Island) areas. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 18 (S-Factor 5.3 GOP): Ray LaHood is leaving behind this historically Republican seat based in Peoria and Springfield that landed in his hands in 1994 when he succeeded then-outgoing House Minority Leader Bob Michel in a year when Republicans took control of the House. A wunderkind is the GOP nominee this time around in 27-year old State Representative Aaron Schock, who started his career as a member of the Peoria School Board when he was a 19-year-old Bradley University student and later served as its President before entering his current position in 2004. The Democrats had a rockier situation with finding a nominee, first settling on former NBA coach and TV commentator Dick Versace until he bowed out of the race. Substituting Versace is former radio and television broadcaster Colleen Callahan, who will have an uphill battle of sorts going up against Schock. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 19 (S-Factor 7.5 GOP): John Shimkus represents the most conservative district in Illinois, situated in rural southern Illinois including Springfield, Centralia and Collinsville. The Democrat-in-waiting is Illinois Department of Public Health official Daniel Davis. Prediction: Solid GOP.

Next stop: The last state...

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XLVIII: Florida

2008-10-30T06:00:00.002-05:00

With only six days left before America decides, the Bullet Train to November now heads southeast from the rugged terrain of Utah to a state marked by rapid growth, an economy of leisure, and a reputation for not being your normal swing state...

FLORIDA

Once home to Spanish, English and French settlements centuries ago, Florida became the 27th state admitted to the Union on March 3, 1845, and seceded just 16 years later to briefly join the Confederate States of America. Since returning to the Union following the end of the Civil War, Florida has emerged as one of the fastest-growing states in the country, having grown with each Census by over 20 percent over its history, and is now the fourth most populous state, on the verge of surpassing New York to become number three on the rankings of largest states within a few years.

The state's economy, the nation's fourth largest, is largely defined by a tourist economy of 60 million visitors annually; such attractions include amusement parks such as Walt Disney World, Busch Gardens, SeaWorld and Universal Orlando, Major League Baseball spring training particularly in the central portion of the state, cruise ship ports at the Port of Miami, auto racing events such as the Daytona 500, and hundreds of miles of beaches throughout the state. Other major industries include international banking in Miami, a large aerospace economy buoyed by the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, and agriculture including two-thirds of America's citrus production.

As opposed to its strongly Democratic past, present-day Florida is best defined as a swing state, having only voted for the Democrat in 1964, 1976 and 1996. South Florida, including the Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach areas which have a significant Jewish population, has traditionally voted more liberal and Democratic compared with the rest of the state, with a notable exception being its Cuban American population which has historically been more conservative and Republican in comparison. Meanwhile, northern areas of the state such as Pensacola and Jacksonville with significant military voting blocs as well as the Fort Myers area in southwest Florida tend to vote Republican. The swing area in Florida is along the burgeoning jurisdiction of Interstate 4, which connects the rather competitive Orlando and Tampa/St. Petersburg areas (though most of the suburbs in both metro areas tend to vote Republican whereas the larger cities are more Democratic). Senior citizens, who make up a quarter of the state's population, are also a key and growing voting bloc in Florida which makes issues such as retirement security highly important.

In the race for the White House, the 2000 election was especially controversial as recount proceedings dragged on into December of that year, with the final result being a 537-vote margin in favor of George W. Bush, who would also go on to win the 2004 election by a more comfortable five percent margin. This year, recent polls have been slightly favoring Barack Obama over John McCain for the state's 27 electoral votes, while several House seats across the state are facing some competition in one form or another.

District 1 (S-Factor 18.8 GOP): This is Joe Scarborough's old congressional district, based in Pensacola, Fort Walton Beach and Destin and largely influenced by military and veterans' issues. While Democrats have a plurality in this conservative district, it has proven to be favorable territory for Jeff Miller, who should have no troubling defeating Democratic businessman and Vietnam vet Jim Bryan. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 2 (S-Factor 2.0 GOP): The capital city of Tallahassee and Panama City dominate this rather competitive district that has been held by Democrat Allen Boyd since 1996. Marketing executive Mark Mulligan is the GOP nominee. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 3 (S-Factor 16.5 DEM): This is the most unusual district outside of South Florida, taking in majority African-American segments of Jacksonville and Orlando, as well as parts of Gainesville. Corrine Brown, the only person ever to hold the seat since the creation of its current incarnation, is running unopposed. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 4 (S-Factor 15.0 GOP): Ander Crenshaw will be favored for re-election in this conservative district based in Jacksonville and some of its surrounding areas including Atlantic Beach, Yulee, Lake City, and areas east of Tallahassee. Democrats will try with professional engineer and Navy vet Jay McGovern. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 5 (S-Factor 4.5 GOP): Ginny Brown-Waite seized this district from Democrat Karen Thurman in 2002. It is based in the southern tail of the Nature Coast region that includes much of Tampa's northern suburban areas including Brooksville, Homosassa Springs and Zephyrhills. Her 2006 Democratic opponent, John Russell is running again. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 6 (S-Factor 8.3 GOP): Cliff Stearns represents a district that includes Ocala and western areas of Jacksonville, as well as the portion of Gainesville that includes the University of Florida, Stearns is favored for re-election against Democratic entrepreneur and attorney Tim Cunha. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 7 (S-Factor 4.0 GOP): Republican John Mica, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, will be favored for re-election in this district, which stretches from St. Augustine southward to Palm Coast, Daytona Beach, and northern suburbs of Orlando including Deltona and Altamonte Springs, against Democrat Faye Armitage. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 8 (S-Factor 3.3 GOP): This competitive district, based in Orlando and some of its surrounding suburbs (Eustis, Conway, Ocoee), has been the domain of Republican Ric Keller since 2000. But Keller, who faced a close challenge from Democratic businessman Charlie Stuart in 2006, has alienated some voters in part due to his breaking of a pledge to serve no more than four terms, and faced another close call -- this time in the GOP primary -- against scandal-plagued radio talker Todd Long, winning with only 53 percent of the vote. As for the Democrats, Stuart lost this year's primary, but their nominee is of note: attorney and former telecom executive Alan Grayson is best known for his recent crusade against fraudulent contractors in Iraq. Grayson may also benefit from a growing Hispanic population (particularly Puerto Ricans). While Keller is not to be counted out, the prospects for reelection already are dimming, if they haven't already. Prediction: Tossup.

District 9 (S-Factor 4.3 GOP): After succeeding his father Michael Bilirakis in 2006, incumbent Gus Bilirakis will be favored over attorney Bill Mitchell in this north suburban Tampa district. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 10 (S-Factor 1.3 DEM): Since 1970, Republican Bill Young has been the standard bearer in this swing district based in much of Pinellas County including St. Petersburg and some of its surrounding areas including Pinellas Park, Largo and Dunedin. Young will face Dunedin mayor Bob Hackworth. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 11 (S-Factor 11.8 DEM): Freshman Democrat Kathy Castor is safe in this district based in Tampa and St. Petersburg. She will easily defeat Republican architect Eddie Adams Jr., whom Castor defeated in 2006. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 12 (S-Factor 5.0 GOP): In this district centered in suburbs east of Tampa including Lakeland, Brandon and Winter Haven, Republican Adam Putnam, who first came to this district in 2001 as the youngest member of Congress and is now House Republican Conference Chairman, will be favored over Democratic Navy vet Doug Tudor. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 13 (S-Factor 4.0 GOP): Something must be fishy about this Sarasota-centric district. In 2002, Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State who became famous for her role in the 2000 election snafu, became the district's representative. Then, while Harris became the GOP U.S. Senate nominee -- and lost -- against incumbent Bill Nelson in 2006, Republican auto dealer Vern Buchanan barely held on to victory over Democratic banker Christine Jennings with a mere 369 votes. The recount, triggered by Jennings, dragged on into the new Congress. Jennings is running once again, but Buchanan will have the advantages of incumbency and favorable polling numbers aiding him in this fairly competitive district. Prediction: Favor GOP.

District 14 (S-Factor 9.8 GOP): The name Cornelius Harvey McGillicuddy, while it is a rather unusual name, has some meaning in the early-20th century sports world. The first Connie Mack was the longtime two score and a half manager of the Philadelphia Athletics long before they moved to California, and the second served as an executive for that team before going into real estate in Fort Myers. The third became a U.S. Senator from Florida, and the fourth came to Congress in 2004 to replace then-newly minted CIA Director Porter Goss in this strongly Republican Fort Myers-based district and is now heavily favored to defeat businessman Robert Neeld. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 15 (S-Factor 3.8 GOP): After 14 years in Congress, Republican Dave Weldon has decided to go back to his medical practice, putting his district situated in such cities as Vero Beach, Kissimmee and Melbourne in play. Republicans have recruited State Senator Bill Posey for this seat, while physician Steve Blythe has the Democrats' nomination. The D-Trip is not watching this race. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 16 (S-Factor 2.5 GOP): This historically Republican district that serves as a boundary of sorts between Central and South Florida, going from Port Charlotte to Punta Gorda and parts of the West Palm Beach area, became competitive in 2006 when then-incumbent Republican Mark Foley came under the microscope for sending explicit e-mails to former Congressional pages and turned what would have evolved as an "emerging race" by the D-Trip in 2006 into a full-fledged battle as Foley resigned. Democratic entrepreneur Tim Mahoney wound up benefitting, defeating Republican State Representative Joe Negron, whose name could not replace Foley on the ballot despite holding Mahoney to 49.5 percent and a margin of 1.8 percent. On the GOP side, Negron is not running again, but the Elephant Stampede is still targeting this seat with Army vet and attorney Tom Rooney, who beat two other well-funded challengers to win a very expensive primary. The nastiness enabled Mahoney to become a slight favorite until revelations that Mahoney himself had an affair with a mistress (and at least one other) began to emerge. Now Mahoney is damaged goods with only a few days remaining 'til the Sunshine State decides. Prediction: Favor GOP.

District 17 (S-Factor 35.3 DEM): This is one of two majority African-American districts in South Florida, taking in northern areas of Miami and stretching northward to Hollywood and Pembroke Pines. Kendrick Meek is unopposed. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 18 (S-Factor 4.3 GOP): Ileana Ros-Lehtinen made history in 1989 by becoming the first Cuban American woman ever to be elected to Congress. Her district covers much of Miami, Coral Gables and the Florida Keys. The D-Trip is targeting this race with Colombian American businesswoman Annette Taddeo, who has raised an impressive warchest of $966K and has the backing of the D-Trip. But Ros-Lehtinen's warchest is more significant ($1.64 million and $730K cash on hand versus Taddeo's COH of $5K) and polls have shown Ros-Lehtinen with a double-digit advantage. Prediction: Favor GOP.

District 19 (S-Factor 20.8 DEM): Robert Wexler will be heavily favored for re-election in his strongly Democratic West Palm Beach-area district (which also includes Greenacres, Margate and Coral Springs) against building contractor Edward Lynch. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 20 (S-Factor 17.8 DEM): Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who first represented this Fort Lauderdale-area district (which also includes Aventura, Dania Beach, Weston and Wilton Manors) in 2004 to succeed unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate Peter Deutsch, will be favored for re-election without a Republican opponent. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 21 (S-Factor 5.8 GOP): Democrats are targeting all three of South Florida's Cuban-American districts, and of the three, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, whose district is situated in areas west of Miami including Hialeah, Kendall and Olympia Heights, is the most vulnerable. Former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez is running a strong campaign against the eight-term incumbent in a race that pits two of the most prominent Cuban American leaders in all of South Florida. On the financial front, Diaz-Balart has amassed a warchest of $2.74 million and has $2.63 million cash on hand (the latter from previous races), while Martinez has been competitive with $1.77 million raised and $693K in the bank. For the most part, Diaz-Balart has been barely ahead of Martinez with polling margins generally in the single digits. But in a poor GOP climate, Martinez could pull off an upset. Prediction: Leans GOP.

District 22 (S-Factor 3.3 DEM): Being the former State Senate Minority Leader and the best-financed challenger in the nation in 2006, Ron Klein was the perfect candidate for Democrats in this district that stretches southward along the Atlantic Ocean from West Palm Beach to Boca Raton. Klein used his enormous warchest which eventually amounted to $4.19 million to take out longtime Republican Clay Shaw. This year, he will face Iraq War vet Allen West, a retired Army officer and African American Republican whose fundraising has struggled to keep pace with Klein (the incumbent has $3.79 million in receipts and $1.82 million cash on hand while West has only $476K in funds raised and $129K COH). Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 23 (S-Factor 30.5 DEM): One bad apple spoiled the resume for Alcee Hastings, who was being sought for the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee, as revelations of his 1989 conviction for corruption and perjury that resulted in the loss of his federal judgeship came back to haunt him. But Hastings is a safe bet for reelection in this heavily Democratic, majority African American district situated in the Florida Everglades against med school professor and physician Marion Thorpe Jr. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 24 (S-Factor 3.0 GOP): This suburban Orlando/Space Coast district (Winter Park, Titusville, Port Orange) was drawn to elect then-Florida House Speaker Tom Feeney, who served in this position during the controversial 2000 Florida recount, in which Feeney was in charge of efforts to certify Florida's Republican electors to the Electoral College. Now Feeney is facing controversy over reports that, among other controversies, Feeney went to Scotland on a golfing trip paid for by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. In fact, Feeney recently put out an ad apologizing for the trip. The D-Trip is targeting this seat with former State Representative Suzanne Kosmas whose warchest of $1.71 million in receipts has been competitive with Feeney's $1.99 million. However, with a Dem internal showing Kosmas with a double-digit lead (23 points to be specific) and the NRCC pulling the plug on Feeney, a pickup appears likely. Prediction: Leans DEM.

District 25 (S-Factor 4.0 GOP): This is the newest of the three Cuban-American seats in South Florida, situated in the southern end of the state between Fort Myers and Miami. Mario Diaz-Balart has represented this seat from the start (the district was created following the 2000 Census). The D-Trip is also targeting the seat, with the former chair of Miami-Dade's Democratic establishment, Joe Garcia, who also happens to be the former Executive Director of the Cuban American National Foundation. This profile has bolstered Garcia's campaign, which has amassed $1.48 million in total receipts. But the younger Diaz-Balart also has a strong warchest, boasting a total of $2.3 million raised and a huge cash on hand advantage: $1.62 million to Garcia's $235K. Like the race in the nearby 21st District, this race will also be close. Prediction: Leans GOP.

Next stop: 2 states left...and they are big ones!

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XLVII: Utah

2008-10-29T06:00:00.001-05:00

With just under a week left before America goes to the polls, the Bullet Train to November crosses into a western state marked by diverse topography and a common leap of faith...

UTAH

The 45th state admitted to the Union (January 4, 1896), Utah is one of the fastest growing states in the country, having only grown by less than 10 percent once, in the 1940 Census when it grew by 8.4 percent from 1930. In fact, the state as of 2007 grew by 18.5 percent compared to its population in 2000. The state's beginnings are traced to Brigham Young, leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who led Mormon pioneers to what eventually became Salt Lake City, now the capital of Utah. Today, the Mormon Church makes up around three-fifths of adult Utahns. The Beehive State contains a variety of geographical features, including the Wasatch and Uinta mountain ranges in the north, the Four Corners Monument at its southeast corner, the valleys and basins of the Wasatch Front (home to three-quarters of the state's population), five national parks (Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and Zion), and the Great Salt Lake, the largest salt lake in the western hemisphere. And in a state where the motto is Industry, the economy is powered by information technology, ranching, mining (including coal), petroleum refining, government services, and tourism, from the powdery snows of the Wasatch Range's ski resorts to the Sundance Film Festival. In 2002, Salt Lake City hosted the Winter Olympics.

Utah's large Mormon population and dynamic economy makes it a stronghold for the Republican Party. In fact, Democrats last carried Utah in the 1964 landslide by President Lyndon B. Johnson over Republican candidate Barry Goldwater, and in 2004 it was George W. Bush's best state, winning its five electoral votes with 71.5 percent of the vote. Given the conservative nature of the state's political lexicon, Democrats in the state tend to be more conservative than the national party. This year, Utah is expected to go to John McCain in the Electoral College, Jon Huntsman, Jr. is heavily favored to win another term as Governor, and the congressional delegation is predictable in partisan terms -- with a new name in one case.

District 1 (S-Factor 20.5 GOP): Rob Bishop should be heavily favored for re-election in this strongly conservative district that covers northwestern Utah, including the entire Great Salt Lake and its surrounding environs including Ogden, Layton, Logan and Tooele as well as northwest Salt Lake City. The Democrats are fielding Morgan Bowen, a former corporate executive who is now a teacher for a Mormon seminary. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 2 (S-Factor 15.8 GOP): This is also a strongly conservative district, but not as much as the other two, containing the capital city of Salt Lake City as well as eastern and southern areas such as Murray, Sandy, Moab and St. George. Incumbent Democrat Jim Matheson will be favored for another term against homebuilder Bill Dew. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 3 (S-Factor 25.0 GOP): Immigration turned out to be Chris Cannon's Achilles' heel in this cycle as the incumbent Republican went down in defeat against Jason Chaffetz, a former Chief of Staff to Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr. and former BYU football player who has a rather colorful political past: he once served as a statewide co-chairman of the 1988 presidential bid of Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis, and later converted to the GOP after the campaign was over. Chaffetz, whose father was briefly married to Dukakis' wife, is now heavily favored to win this seat over Democratic professor and TV journalist Bennion Spencer in a district that stretches southward from outlying areas around Salt Lake City such as West Valley City and Provo to Richfield in west central Utah. Prediction: Solid GOP.

Next stop: Florida.

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XLVI: North Carolina

2008-10-27T12:00:00.002-05:00

In eight days, America will be deciding who will go to the White House, Congress and everywhere else in between. Today, the Bullet Train to November heads into the homestretch heading to a state that was once part of the Solid South and has now emerged as a prosperous, diverse state...

NORTH CAROLINA

Situated on the Atlantic Seaboard and stretching westward to the Appalachian Mountains, North Carolina has emerged into one of the largest states in the Union, having experienced double-digit population growth since Reconstruction, a fact reflected in the 2000 Census where the population of the Tar Heel State swelled by over 1.4 million, or 21 percent. Historically a rural state, North Carolina has emerged into a growing, diverse and affluent state with emerging numbers of Hispanic and Asian immigrants as well as transplants from across the country transforming the state as a whole. Charlotte and Raleigh have become major economic centers with jobs in a variety of service sectors such as banking in Charlotte and biotechnology in Raleigh. On the agricultural front, it is the nation's leading producer of tobacco, and also counts dairy products, nursery stock and sweet potatoes among its outputs. Not all economic news is positive; its textile and furniture sectors, two historically strong suits of North Carolina's economy, have experienced a downturn due to jobs moving overseas which have impacted many of the state's small towns.

Politically, North Carolina, the 12th state admitted to the Union on November 21, 1789, was once considered part of the Democrats' Solid South, but it is now a Republican-leaning state, having voted Republican since 1968 in all but one case: 1976, when it gave its electoral votes to Jimmy Carter of neighboring Georgia (the western edge of North Carolina makes up part of Georgia's northern border). At the state level, Democrats hold their own with the Governor's Mansion, a majority in the state legislature, and a 7-6 majority in the state's congressional delegation. This year, John McCain and Barack Obama will do battle for the state's 15 electoral votes, while the race for Governor pits Lieutenant Governor Bev Perdue and Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory against one another, and Elizabeth Dole fights to defend her Senate seat against State Senator Kay Hagan. In the House, two races are being watched, one is a real race and the other is a dark horse.

District 1 (S-Factor 9.3 DEM): This district, based in such eastern North Carolina cities as Rocky Mount, Kinston, New Bern and Roanoke Rapids, is about equally split in demographics between Anglos and African Americans (with a five percent advantage for the latter group) and is favorable for Democrats. The incumbent, Democrat G.K. Butterfield, is heavily favored over Republican businessman Dean Stephens. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 2 (S-Factor 2.5 GOP): Democrat Bob Etheridge should have no trouble dispatching Republican contractor Dan Mansell in this south Triangle area district that covers the southern and eastern areas outside Raleigh as well as a portion of the capital city itself. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 3 (S-Factor 15.0 GOP): Walter Jones is a former Democrat who became a Republican after an unsuccessful 1992 congressional bid and won this seat in the 1994 GOP landslide. But some conservatives were turned off by the fact that Jones, who previously had supported the war in Iraq and even went as far as leading the effort to relabel french fries as "freedom fries" in response to opposition by France, now rallied against the war. That prompted a challenge from Onslow County (Jacksonville) Commissioner Joe McLaughlin, but Jones prevailed with 60 percent of the vote. Now Jones is heavily favored for re-election in his eastern North Carolina (Jacksonville, Greenville, Morehead City and the Pamlico Sound) district against USMC vet and meteorologist Craig Weber. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 4 (S-Factor 5.5 DEM): This fairly Democratic district that connects the Triangle area cities of Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill is being sought after by businessman B.J. Lawson, a libertarian Republican who is running in a district that has traditionally voted Democrat. But Lawson, a businessman and physician by trade, will have a tough time trying to get past longtime incumbent David Price, who lost this seat once to a Republican in '94 -- and got it back in '96. The Ron Paul crowd will definitely be watching this race as a dark horse opportunity. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 5 (S-Factor 15.8 GOP): Virginia Foxx came to Congress in 2004 when this northwestern district stretching from Boone and Mount Airy to the suburbs of Winston-Salem was vacated by eventual U.S. Senator Richard Burr. Teacher Roy Carter is the Democrat nominee. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 6 (S-Factor 17.3 GOP): Longtime Republican Howard Coble will be favored for another term against med school professor Teresa Sue Bratton in this Piedmont Triad district wrapped around Greensboro that stretches southward to Pinehurst. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 7 (S-Factor 2.3 GOP): While competitive on paper, this district based in Wilmington area should remain safely in the hands of Democrat Mike McIntyre. The Republican nominee is airline pilot Will Breazeale, a veteran of the Iraq War. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 8 (S-Factor 2.5 GOP): Robin Hayes faced a nailbiter in this swing district that covers southern areas of North Carolina between the Charlotte and Fayetteville areas. Teacher and former textile worker Larry Kissell held the incumbent, hurt by his last-minute vote for CAFTA that he initially opposed until House leadership urged him to change his vote (which was the decider in a 217-215 decision), to 329 votes in 2006. This year, Kissell is running again and recent polling has been favorable towards the Democrat, while Hayes leads Kissell in funds, $3.15 million to $1.16 million. Which side has the mojo? Prediction: Tossup.

District 9 (S-Factor 12.5 GOP): Sue Myrick has had no trouble winning in this heavily Republican district based in Charlotte and some of its surrounding suburbs such as Gastonia, Mint Hill and Belmont. Businessman Harry Taylor is the Democrat-in-waiting. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 10 (S-Factor 14.8 GOP): Patrick McHenry represents this heavily Republican district based in west central parts of North Carolina including Hickory, Mooresville, Lenoir and Shelby. Democrat Dan Johnson, an attorney by trade and a former congressional aide, is running a dark horse campaign against the two-term incumbent and has more cash-on-hand than McHenry: $398K to $362K despite McHenry outraising Johnson, $1.42 million to $626K). However, the D-Trip is highlighting this race on its Red to Blue slate, even though polling has for the most part favored McHenry. Prediction: Favor GOP.

District 11 (S-Factor 6.3 GOP): Democrat Heath Shuler was a star quarterback at the University of Tennessee before the arrival of Peyton Manning. But in the NFL as the quarterback of the Washington Redskins, Shuler stumbled and was even called out by ESPN as the all-time ninth biggest bust in the history of the NFL Draft. Shuler is now back in Washington, after knocking off Republican incumbent Charles Taylor in 2006. His western North Carolina district that is centered on Asheville is conservative by nature, but Shuler has managed to steer ahead of the course due to his somewhat conservative voting record, particularly in regards to social issues. Asheville City Councilman Carl Mumpower is the elephant-in-waiting. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 12 (S-Factor 13.3 DEM): This was the poster child for gerrymandering in the 1990s. Following the 1990 Census, the Justice Department ordered the creation of majority African-American districts (to comply with the Voting Rights Act) mostly in the South. One such district was this one which was drawn to take in majority black areas across the state in Charlotte, the Piedmont Triad (Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point) and the Triangle (Raleigh/Durham). That version, criticized as "political pornography" by the Wall Street Journal, unconstitutional in Shaw v. Reno (in 1993) and triggered another redraw in North Carolina and other states. From the beginning (1992), the district's representative has been Mel Watt, who is heavily favored for re-election against retired businessman Ty Cobb Jr. in this ethnically split (47 percent white, 45 percent black) district that now connects African-American population centers in Charlotte and Greensboro. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 13 (S-Factor 3.3 DEM): Meanwhile, parts of Raleigh and Greensboro are connected by this district that is fairly competitive, but has been represented by Brad Miller since it was created in 2002. Former State Senator Hugh Webster is the Republican-in-waiting. Prediction: Solid DEM.

Next stop: Utah.

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XLV: Arkansas

2008-10-24T18:00:00.001-05:00

As the Bullet Train to November nears Election Day, the journey continues to a state that is home to strange regional political bedfellows, a well-recognizable mass merchant, and a town that is perhaps one of the best places to give birth if your baby wants to become President...

ARKANSAS

One of many states derived from the Louisiana Purchase, Arkansas was admitted as the 25th state to the Union on June 15, 1836. Today, Arkansas serves as part of the Bible Belt and is three-quarters Protestant, with 39 percent of Arkansans affiliated with the Baptists. Economically, the state is powered agriculturally by poultry, cattle, rice, eggs and soybeans among others, and also industrially by auto parts factories, food processing (Tyson Foods is based here), tourism, and of course, Wal-Mart. That's right, the world's largest retailer, founded at the hands of retail pioneer Sam Walton in 1962, is based in Bentonville.

There are some interesting facts about this state: some of Arkansas' counties have two county seats, the result of past travel difficulties from generations past, and there are few efforts to eliminate such an arrangement despite dramatic improvements in transportation over generations. Additionally, it is the only state with a law specifying its pronunciation, the result of Kansas residents who pronounced the state as ar-KANSAS instead of the official pronunciation, AR-kan-saw. And the small city of Hope (pop. 10,467) gave the world former Governor and 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, as well as former Governor and 2008 Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who ran a surprisingly strong campaign emphasizing on a socially conservative, economically populist message.

In the modern South, Republicans tend to dominate the political conversation. That is not the case in Arkansas, where Democrats run the show at the state level, with super-majorities in the Arkansas General Assembly, control of most local offices, the Governor's Mansion, both U.S. Senate seats (the only state among the former Confederate states with this distinction) and an overwhelming majority of registered voters. However, Democrats as a whole tend to be more conservative, as it is a social conservative stronghold with 74 percent voting for a gay marriage ban and has proposed legislation banning abortion if Roe v. Wade ever gets overturned. The Republicans perform strongest in the state's northwestern corner around the Fort Smith area and in the north central region around Mountain Home. While it was the only state in the country to give a majority (50 percent) of the presidential vote to one candidate in 1992 (Clinton), George W. Bush won the Natural State by a nine-point margin in 2004. This year, Arkansas' congressional delegation is especially predictable.

District 1 (S-Factor 0.8 DEM): Democrat Marion Berry is unopposed in this district based in the state's northeastern areas including Jonesboro and the Arkansas Delta region. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 2 (S-Factor 0.5 DEM): While competitive on paper, this Little Rock-centric seat has been a generally easy call for Vic Snyder. Only a Green Party candidate (Deb McFarland) is challenging him. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 3 (S-Factor 10.8 GOP): This heavily Republican seat, situated in northwest Arkansas including Fort Smith and Fayetteville, makes for a safe seat for incumbent John Boozman. There is only one candidate challenging Boozman: a Green Party candidate in Abel Tomlinson. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 4 (S-Factor 1.0 DEM): Mike Ross is overwhelmingly favored to win another term in his somewhat split southern Arkansas (Pine Bluff, Texarkana, Hot Springs, El Dorado and of course Hope) district against...you guessed it, a Green Party candidate in Joshua Drake. Prediction: Solid DEM.

Next stop: North Carolina.

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XLIV: Nebraska

2008-10-24T09:00:00.001-05:00

After traversing across the oceanic landscape of New England via Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the Bullet Train to November is roaring west this time, heading to a state in the heartland with perhaps the most unusual state legislature of any in America...

NEBRASKA

The 37th State admitted to the Union on March 1, 1867, Nebraska marks the beginning of the Arbor Day holiday, and Nebraska City is home to the headquarters of the National Arbor Day Foundation. The state's economy revolves around an agricultural sector focused on beef, soybeans, corn and pork and also on such manufacturing and service industries as telecommunications, freight transport, and insurance. While Hastings marks the birthplace of Kool-Aid, and CliffsNotes originated out of Rising City, Omaha, the largest city in the state, is home to one of the world's wealthiest persons, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, whose holdings range from GEICO insurance and Dairy Queen restaurants to Benjamin Moore paints and one of the largest furniture chains in my home base, Star Furniture.

Since 1940, Democrats have only carried Nebraska in the electoral college once -- in 1964 during Lyndon B. Johnson's landslide. In 2004, George W. Bush won the Cornhusker State with 66 percent of the vote and this year is expected to be no different with John McCain favored to win comfortably here even as his campaign is running into obstacles of various sorts. Two things come to define Nebraska politics: it is the only state in the Union with a unicameral, or one house, legislature, and also the only nonpartisan state legislature as well. Additionally, it is one of two states that splits its electoral votes -- two to the statewide winner and the rest by congressional district. This situation has yet to occur. In 2008, one House seat is up for grabs courtesy of a repeat challenger.

District 1 (S-Factor 11.0 GOP): The state capital of Lincoln as well as the eastern Nebraska cities of Beatrice, South Sioux City, Fremont and Norfolk fall into this heavily Republican district. Jeff Fortenberry will be favored over Iraq War vet Max Yashirin. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 2 (S-Factor 8.8 GOP): Omaha dominates this district which has been held by Republican Lee Terry since he first won it in 1998. In 2006, Terry was held to 55 percent against businessman Jim Esch, who is running as the Democrat nominee once again this year. A Dem internal suggests a competitive race with the Democrat trailing by only one point. Prediction: Leans GOP.

District 3 (S-Factor 22.8 GOP): Adrian Smith did not win the former seat of former Nebraska Cornhuskers football coach Tom Osborne (who ran unsuccessfully for Governor) easily in 2006, as Smith faced an unexpectedly competitive race against Yale-educated ranch hand and professor Scott Kleeb, but came out a winner anyway with 55 percent. Kleeb is now running for Chuck Hagel's open U.S. Senate against former Governor and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, while Smith is now favored to defeat former Grand Island School Board Member Jay Stoddard. Prediction: Solid GOP.

Next stop: Arkansas.

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XLIII: Rhode Island

2008-10-23T12:00:00.002-05:00

After crossing through the state of Massachusetts, the Bullet Train to November now shifts southward -- without leaving the region -- to the smallest state in the Union, the first of the 13 original colonies to declare independence, and the last to ratify the Constitution...

RHODE ISLAND

The Ocean State is known for its independence streak, a fact marked by the roots of its forefathers. In 1524, an Italian navigator by the name of Giovanni de Verrazzano was in search of an all-water route to China and landed in present-day Block Island, and was guided with Native Americans to present-day Newport Harbor, where his crew surveyed the land. The same Block Island was later visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. In 1636, a colonist banished from Massachusetts for his religious views by the name of Roger Williams settled here, along with various others over the years. In 1663, a Charter uniting Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (the state's mainland) was granted, and over a century later, on May 4, 1776, Rhode Island became the first of the 13 original colonies to declare its independence from Great Britain, and the last of the thirteen (to avoid having its exports taxed) to ratify the Constitution on May 29, 1790.

Rhode Island in the present day is shaped a diverse population, with the largest percentage of Portuguese Americans of any state, largely concentrated in Bristol County, in the eastern portion of the state. Large communities of Irish, Italian and French Canadian populations, along with Portuguese and Hispanic groups, have contributed to the state's Roman Catholic dominance, which amounts to nearly 64 percent of the state, the highest in the nation. However, none of the state's counties are among the ten most Catholic, as its parishioners are spread out across Rhode Island. Utah is the only other state with such a one-faith dominance. On the economy, health services, tourism and manufacturing (including fashion jewelry, electrical equipment and shipbuilding) are among the state's leading sectors, along with agricultural outputs in dairy (including eggs), vegetables and nursery stock.

Democrats have dominated the Ocean State since the Great Depression, largely centered in the state's urban areas. The party dominates the Rhode Island General Assembly, controls both U.S. Senate seats and holds both U.S. House seats. Republicans have won campaigns in the past with reform candidates critical of one-party rule and the state's tax rates, which are among the highest in the nation. Governor Donald Carcieri, who has called for tax reductions to improve the business climate here, is one such example. It is one of the Democrats' strongest suits in presidential elections, giving John Kerry 59 percent of the vote in 2004, one of his strongest performances. The state offers comprehensive health insurance to low-income children, abolished the death penalty in the 1840s, and is one of two states with legal indoor prostitution. This year, the political storm here is relatively quiet.

District 1 (S-Factor 16.0 DEM): The Kennedy empire is alive and well here in this district that covers northern and eastern portions of this state including Newport, Bristol, Woonsocket, Pawtucket and parts of Providence. Patrick Kennedy, son of Massachusetts U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, will be heavily favored for another term against Republican Jon Scott. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 2 (S-Factor 12.0 DEM): Jim Langevin is the only paraplegic member of Congress as the result of an accidental shooting in 1980 that left him paralyzed from the waist down. Langevin will be favored over Republican Mark Zaccaria in this district that covers Cranston, Westerly, Warwick, and parts of Providence. Prediction: Solid DEM.

Next stop: Nebraska.

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XLII: Massachusetts

2008-10-22T15:00:00.003-05:00

After traversing through the conservative landscape of Oklahoma, the Bullet Train to November now steers northeast to one of the, if not, the most historical states in the country, the "Cradle of Liberty"...

MASSACHUSETTS

One of the most historic states in the Union, Massachusetts has been a crucial pillar to the life of America. The land, which also included present-day Maine, was inhabited by Native American tribes of the Algonquian kind. Things dramatically changed in 1620 with the Pilgrims' settlement at Plymouth, the second successful permanent English colony in North America. More Puritans joined in 1630 to establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but their rigid religious beliefs resulted in dissenters leaving the colony, two of whom, Roger Williams and Thomas Hooker, founded the respective colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut. In 1692, it became the largest colony in New England, and became a focal point of independence from Great Britain. Such famous incidents as the Boston Tea Party and Boston Massacre paved the way for the American Revolution, which resulted in the formation of the United States, of which the Bay State became the sixth to ratify the Constitution on February 6, 1788.

Today, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has evolved into a diverse landscape, with the largest percentage of Irish Americans of any state, as well as significant communities of various ethnic groups including Italian, French, Finnish, Swedish, Haitian, Portuguese, Greek and Polish Americans, as well as colonial English American "Yankees". The state is now predominantly Roman Catholic as a result of this immigration, though various faiths maintain a presence here, and the world headquarters of Christian Science and the Unitarian-Universalist Church are situated here. An established leader in education, Massachusetts is home to the nation's first public library (and its oldest municipal free library), the first state to require each municipality to establish a grammar school, the nation's oldest high school (Boston Latin School) and oldest college (Harvard University), and the town of Franklin, the birthplace of education pioneer Horace Mann, is noted as the North American birthplace of public education. The Bay State economy is also fixated around biotechnology, financial services, tourism, and health care, as well as agricultural outputs including seafood, dairy, and cranberries (second largest producer courtesy of the Ocean Spray cooperative in Lakeville), and industrial outputs in publishing, electronics, scientific instruments, and machinery. Among the more well-known Bay Staters: comedians Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien and Steve Carell, children's bookwriter Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss), and transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

The Massachusetts political landscape of today, in contrast to its puritanical past, is marked by liberalism as evidenced by its overwhelmingly Democratic Massachusetts General Court (the state legislature), where Democrats hold supermajorities in the House and Senate, as well as the Governor's Mansion (since 2007). Democrats also control both U.S. Senate seats and all ten U.S. House seats, the largest state with such a delegation. Republicans last won the Bay State in 1984 with Ronald Reagan's landslide, and it was the only state in 1972 to go to George McGovern (along with the District of Columbia) while Richard Nixon carried the other 49 states. John Kerry won his home state of Massachusetts with nearly 62 percent of the vote, the largest margin of any state outside of the heavily Democratic District of Columbia. The state is also known for one of the most enduring families in recent American politics, the Kennedy family, who introduced the world to President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and longtime Massachusetts U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, among others, affiliated with the Democrats and political liberalism.

This year, Kerry is expected to win reelection to his Senate seat for a fifth term, while Barack Obama is expected to win the state's 12 electoral votes, possibly by a smaller margin than Kerry in 2004. There are no competitive House races this year despite the state's delegation to Congress being of one party. A major reason for this one-party dominance in the House is the practice of gerrymandering in which districts are drawn for partisan and personal gain for the incumbents. Massachusetts has perhaps one of the worst examples of this shoddy practice, and going through these districts will give readers a textbook example of what this practice has resulted in.

District 1 (S-Factor 14.3 DEM): John Olver represents this heavily liberal district based in the Berkshires and such western and central Massachusetts cities and towns as Holyoke, Fitchburg, and West Springfield. The Republican nominee is Army vet Nate Bech. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 2 (S-Factor 12.0 DEM): Richard Neal is unopposed in this Springfield-based district that stretches eastward to areas south of Worcester. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 3 (S-Factor 12.3 DEM): Jim McGovern has no opposition. His linear district includes Worcester and stretches in a southeasterly direction to Marlborough, Attleboro, Somerset and portions of Fall River. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 4 (S-Factor 18.3 DEM): House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank is favored for yet another term (this will be his 15th) in this district that starts in Brookline and Newton, and stretches southward across a narrow strip of southwestern suburbs of Boston to reach Taunton, Fall River, and New Bedford. Businessman Earl Sholley will try. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 5 (S-Factor 10.3 DEM): Winning this seat was not easy for Niki Tsongas, who succeeded Marty Meehan after the latter became Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The widow of one-time U.S. Senator and 1992 presidential candidate Paul Tsongas faced a strong challenge from Republican former Air Force Lt. Col. Jim Ogonowski, whose brother piloted the American Airlines flight that crashed into the World Trade Center in New York on 9/11. Tsongas won, but with only 51 percent of the vote, in this district which covers Boston's northwestern suburban areas along Interstate 495 (from east to west: Haverhill, Methuen, Lawrence, Lowell and Chelmsford). Ogonowski instead chose to run for the Senate against John Kerry, but got snubbed for falling short of required signatures needed to challenge Senator Kerry. Now there is no Republican to challenge Tsongas for this seat. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 6 (S-Factor 11.0 DEM): Since 1996, John Tierney has represented this district based along the North Shore region in most of Essex County (Gloucester, Lynn, Peabody) as well as a portion of Middlesex County. Inventor and software engineer Rich Baker is the Republican nominee. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 7 (S-Factor 18.5 DEM): Ed Markey, the Dean of the Massachusetts and New England House delegations, chairs the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. He has represented inner northwestern suburbs of Boston including Malden, Medford, Waltham and Framingham since 1976. Libertarian Republican businessman John Cunningham is running for this seat. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 8 (S-Factor 32.8 DEM): This overwhelmingly Democratic district based in much of Boston and the adjacent cities of Chelsea, Cambridge and Somerville should be piece of cake for incumbent Democrat Mike Capuano. There are no Republicans running for this seat. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 9 (S-Factor 13.5 DEM): Stephen Lynch is unopposed in this district that stretches southward from Boston to some of its southern suburbs including Braintree, Norwood, Randolph and Brockton. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 10 (S-Factor 8.5 DEM): This is the most conservative district in all of Massachusetts, which stretches along the South Shore including Quincy, Plymouth and Cape Cod, but even Bill Delahunt is unopposed. Prediction: Solid DEM.

Next stop: Rhode Island.

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XLI: Oklahoma

2008-10-22T06:00:00.002-05:00

After going through Bleeding Kansas, home to a Republican majority so strong -- and divisive -- that it is actually home to a three-party system, the Bullet Train to November heads southward to a state whose history can be traced to the Trail of Tears, the rewards of black gold, and landowners who gave this state its nickname...

OKLAHOMA

Named after the Choctaw translation of 'red people': 'okla humma', and boasting of over 25 Native American languages, Oklahoma is situated at the lower end of the Great Plains, which makes the state prone to severe weather as it is situated in an area that produces frequent collisions of cold and warm air masses known as Tornado Alley; an average of 54 tornadoes occur annually in Oklahoma. The state was traversed by Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in 1541, eventually becoming part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. While Native Americans had crossed through and even inhabited the area in the past, it was not until the 1830s that tribes began to move here via the Trail of Tears. Coming from southern states such as Florida, Georgia and Mississippi, thousands of Native Americans moved to an area designated as Indian Territory in 1830. By 1890, over 30 tribes were allocated federal land in this territory, which had opened to white settlers through a series of land runs where land was allocated to settlers on the hour, first come, first served. Some of these settlers broke the rules by entering the border sooner, which eventually as the basis for the state's nickname, the Sooner State. Oklahoma became the 46th state admitted to the Union on November 16, 1907, and became home to an economy fueled by oil.

Today, Oklahoma is defined economically by such sectors as energy, food processing, telecommunications and transportation equipment, and serves as a key producer of natural gas (second in the nation) and aircraft. Oklahoma is one of the nation's most pro-business states, with the nation's seventh-lowest tax burden and the nation's fifth-fastest growing gross domestic product from 2000 to 2006. The nation's number two natural gas producer and number five crude oil producer, Oklahoma got 96 percent of its electricity from non-renewable sources (64% coal, 32% natural gas), the highest total of any state, in 2002. Despite this fact, in 2005, Oklahoma ranked fifth in capacity of installed wind energy. Oklahomans of note include country musicians Garth Brooks, Carrie Underwood, Vince Gill and Toby Keith, televangelist Oral Roberts, Baseball Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle, BMX rider Mat Hoffman, and actor and humorist Will Rogers.

Oklahoma is seen as a strongly conservative state, and last gave its electoral votes to a Democrat in 1964, when Lyndon B. Johnson of neighboring Texas defeated Barry Goldwater en route to a national landslide. While it is part of the Bible Belt and tied with Arkansas for the largest percentage of evangelical Protestants (53 percent) in the country, Democrats hold most of the state's voter registration totals, with 11.6 percent more registered Democrats than Republicans, as well as the Governor's Mansion (occupied by Democrat Brad Henry). Despite this fact, George W. Bush carried every county in Oklahoma en route to winning nearly 66 percent of the vote in 2004. This year, conservative Republican Jim Inhofe is favored to win reelection to his Senate seat, while John McCain is expected to carry the state's seven electoral votes. The House delegation is also highly predictable.

District 1 (S-Factor 12.0 GOP): John Sullivan came to Congress from this Tulsa-centric district in 2002 after fellow Republican Steve Largent resigned to focus on his gubernatorial run (he lost to current Governor Brad Henry). Technology consultant Georgianna Oliver is the Democrat running in this race, and while the D-Trip recently listed her campaign as an "emerging race", 80 percent of the $527K raised came from the candidate herself, compared to Sullivan getting 44 percent of his totals from individuals. And in the realm of campaigning, individual donations will hold bigger sway than personal funds will. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 2 (S-Factor 4.5 GOP): This is the most Democratic district in Oklahoma, situated in the eastern portion of the state (Muskogee, Claremore, McAlester and Durant). Tom Coburn and Brad Carson both held this seat and both ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004, with Coburn snagging the seat. The incumbent is now Democrat Dan Boren, son of former Oklahoma Governor and U.S. Senator David Boren. Raymond Wickson is the GOP nominee. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 3 (S-Factor 17.5 GOP): Frank Lucas represents western Oklahoma including the Oklahoma Panhandle, as well as Altus, Stillwater, Enid, western suburbs of Tulsa and suburban counties north and west of Oklahoma City. The Republican should have no trouble defeating Democrat Frankie Robbins. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 4 (S-Factor 12.5 GOP): NRCC Chairman Tom Cole is the incumbent in this southern Oklahoma district that includes southern suburbs of Oklahoma City (including Norman, Moore and Midwest City) as well as southern parts of the state including Lawton, Ardmore and Ada. Energy consultant Blake Cummings is the donkey-in-waiting. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 5 (S-Factor 11.5 GOP): Oklahoma City and several of its surrounding areas, including Edmond and Shawnee, dominate this district held by Mary Fallin, a former Lieutenant Governor (1995-2007) who succeeded 2006 GOP gubernatorial nominee Ernest Istook (who lost badly to incumbent Governor Henry). Democrats will try with attorney Steve Perry. Prediction: Solid GOP.

Next stop: Massachusetts.

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XL: Kansas

2008-10-20T20:00:00.003-05:00

In Montana, Democrats have benefited in the traditionally Republican state from ticket-splitters. Now, the Bullet Train to November heads to this state where the Donkey Brigade prides its success on what I call a defacto three-party system, even though there are only really two parties...

KANSAS

Centered in the Heartland of America, Kansas contains the very center of the continental United States (48 states), located near the town of Lebanon in Smith County. The land was home to Native Americans before the area was explored in 1541 by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado. In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase was secured including most of what would become Kansas; a southwestern portion of the present-day state was a portion of the Republic of Texas until the Mexican-American War ended in 1848. In 1854, the Kansas Territory was formed, at the time stretching to the Continental Divide, and sparking a debate over whether to declare itself a free state or a slave state, as New England abolitionists collided with pro-slavery settlers from Arkansas and Missouri. This fight resulted in the territory earning the nickname of Bleeding Kansas. In the end, Kansas was admitted to Union on January 29, 1861 as the 34th state, a free state.

Present-day Kansas has a split profile when it comes to its population growth. It is one of the slowest growing states in the country, the result of rural flight, and over 6,000 ghost towns are believed to exist here. The Kansas economy is marked on the agricultural side by wheat and sunflower production in most years (as well as cattle, soybeans, corn and other crops), and on the industrial side by the aerospace, food processing, publishing and petroleum sectors, among others.

In Kansas, the Republican Party has long dominated the political situation, as evidenced by the fact that no Democrat has been elected to the Senate from the Sunflower State since 1932, the longest partisan shutout for any state from the Senate. In 2004, George W. Bush only lost Douglas (Lawrence, home of the University of Kansas) and Wyandotte (Kansas City) counties en route to winning 62 percent of the vote. In recent years, while the GOP continues to dominate politics here, Democrats have won in Kansas by winning over disillusioned moderate Republicans, who often squabble with more conservative Republicans over control of their party. For example, Governor Kathleen Sebelius' victories in 2002 and 2006 have been attributed largely to this split, which has created a defacto three-party system of sorts: Democrats, moderate Republicans and conservative Republicans. The split played a role in the election of two Democrats to the state's congressional delegation in 1998 and again in 2006, and those two seats are being challenged this year, especially in one case.

District 1 (S-Factor 19.8 GOP): Jerry Moran's district, known as the Big First, covers the rural bulk of Kansas, including Dodge City, Salina, Emporia, and Hutchinson. He will be heavily favored in this strongly Republican seat over attorney James Bordonaro. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 2 (S-Factor 6.8 GOP): This was one of the big upsets of 2006, where conservative incumbent Jim Ryun lost to Democrat (and former Republican) Nancy Boyda, 51 to 47 percent. While Boyda is vulnerable, Kansas Republican primaries are known for their infamous battles between religious conservatives and more traditional Republicans, a divide that often has left the latter cluster of moderate Republicans no choice but to cast protest votes for Democrats, all because of the right wing of the Vocal Fringe having to have their cake and eat it, too. Ryun, a former distance runner who had set a number of world track and field records in the 1960s, ran in the primary in a bid to reclaim his old seat, but lost to the more moderate State Treasurer, Lynn Jenkins. This race is definitely competitive, with Boyda raking in $1.54 million and Jenkins posting $1.4 million as of last September and Boyda leading Jenkins in the cash on hand department, $622K to $553K. Whose side will prevail? Prediction: Leans DEM.

District 3 (S-Factor 4.0 GOP): Even further evidence of the Kansas Elephant Divide: in 1998, former Johnson County District Attorney Dennis Moore became the first Democrat to represent this suburban Kansas City district (Kansas City, Overland Park, Olathe, Lawrence) since 1960 by defeating conservative Vince Snowbarger in a district that had long voted for moderate Republicans. Moore has held on to this seat in large part due to his relatively moderate voting record and the Republicans' continuous infighting. State Senator Nick Jordan is this year's Republican nominee and only faced nominal opposition in the primary. Already, Jordan has raised $1.02 million and has $430K cash on hand. Moore's warchest is comparable: $1.69 million in total receipts and $380K cash on hand. But in a toxic GOP climate, will the fifth takeback opportunity be the charm for the GOP? Prediction: Favor DEM.

District 4 (S-Factor 11.5 GOP): Wichita and Sedgwick County dominate this district which Todd Tiahrt has held since knocking off longtime incumbent Democrat Dan Glickman in 1994. State Senator Donald Betts is the Democrats' nominee this year. Prediction: Solid GOP.

Next stop: Oklahoma.

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XXXIX: Montana

2008-10-18T21:00:00.003-05:00

After crossing through some unexpected presidential swing territory in North Dakota, the Bullet Train to November now crosses westward to the Treasure State, a state filled with natural beauty...

MONTANA

The 41st state in the Union (November 8, 1889) and originally part of the Louisiana Purchase east of the continental divide, Montana contains the third lowest population density in the country, but makes up for its sparseness with its diverse topography. 77 ranges of the Rocky Mountains are situated here, along with three of Yellowstone National Park's five entrances, eight National Forests, and Glacier National Park, home to Triple Divide Peak, whose water flows into the Pacific, Arctic (Hudson Bay), and Atlantic (Gulf of Mexico) oceans. Forestry makes up a quarter of the state, with various varieties of trees such as douglas firs, spruces, birches, red cedars and cottonwoods dotting the landscape. Given the magnitude of Montana's landscape, tourism serves a major part of the state economy, along with agriculture (wheat, oats, honey, cherries, etc.), ranching, lumber, oil, and minerals (gold, silver).

Here in Big Sky Country, the landscape is dominated by ticket-splitters who have created long-term party control shifts: Democrats in the 1970s, Republicans in the 1994 Republican Revolution, and the 2004 election of Democrat Brian Schweitzer as Governor, followed by the 2006 election of U.S. Senator Jon Tester over incumbent Republican Conrad Burns. Montana was also one of the first states to give women the right to vote and the first to elect a woman to Congress (Jeannette Rankin, in 1916). Currently, Democrats control the State Senate while the Republicans run the show in the State House of Representatives. This year, while Montana's other U.S. Senator, Max Baucus is expected to win reelection and both John McCain and Barack Obama are battling for the state's three electoral votes, the race for the state's only U.S. House seat is easy to predict.

At-Large (S-Factor 9.8 GOP): Montana's congressman, Republican Denny Rehberg, will be facing former State House Speaker John Driscoll and Montana Libertarian Party Chair Mike Fellows. Both challengers are frequent candidates. Prediction: Solid GOP.

Next stop: Kansas.

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XXXVIII: North Dakota

2008-10-18T18:00:00.002-05:00

After pulling through the home state of the Amtrak Senator, Joe Biden, the Bullet Train to November now departs north and west to a state that holds the potential to make a difference on one of today's biggest issues...

NORTH DAKOTA

Originally inhabited by Native American for centuries, North Dakota was originally part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and eventually became part of Dakota Territory on March 2, 1861. It was admitted as the 39th state to the Union on November 2, 1889 alongside South Dakota, but an air of controversy remains as to which state was the 39th admitted: President Benjamin Harrison's Secretary of State, James G. Blaine, shuffled the papers declaring the two states' admittance and Harrison signed partially obscured papers declaring their statehood, and it is unclear to this day as to which state went first. North Dakota's population has fluctuated over the years; it has not broken its highest Census population of 680,845 from 1930 in the last seven Censuses, largely the result of emigration of younger college-educated residents to other states. This has prompted proposals for economic development that have yet to come to fruitition, but there is one solution that does exist: the state is capable of producing 1.2 billion kilowatt hours of wind energy - 25 percent of the energy needs of the entire United States.

In presidential politics, Republicans have typically run the show: Lyndon B. Johnson was the last donkey to win here, in 1964. North Dakota is pretty much a split state as far as its state and federal leadership goes. At the state level, Republicans have held the Governor's Mansion since 1992 and control a majority of statewide offices and the state legislature. At the federal level, since 1986, Democrats have dominated and like its eastern neighbor Minnesota, operates under a unique title: The North Dakota Democratic Non-Partisan League Party, or simply Dem-NPL. No Senate seat is up for reelection this year, and the state's lone House seat is predictable while the race for the White House is not: Barack Obama has the potential to turn North Dakota blue this year, and is fighting with John McCain for its three electoral votes.

At-Large (S-Factor 12.5 GOP): North Dakota is relatively Republican, but Earl Pomeroy has represented this district since first winning it in 1992. The Republicans have a dark horse nominee in retired naval officer Duane Sand, who has raised a total of $1.49 million (98.7% individual donors, 0.82% PAC money) versus Pomeroy's $1.95 million (24% indie, 73.3% PAC). Two problems: Pomeroy is entrenched and Sand's cash on hand has practically disappeared ($153K versus Pomeroy's $1.25 million). Prediction: Solid Dem-NPL.

Next stop: Montana.

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XXXVII: Delaware

2008-10-18T15:00:00.002-05:00

The Bullet Train to November is now pulling out of the sands of New Mexico and speeding back to the East Coast to a state that is number one in one aspect, for one historic reason...

DELAWARE

That's right, The First State, the very first state to ratify the Constitution on December 7, 1787. It is a tiny state: 45th in population, but sixth in density with 60% situated in New Castle County, home to Wilmington. The state's economy has historically been linked to E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, one of the largest chemical companies in the world. But the company that put the du Pont family on the map is only part of what is usually an above-average economy for Delaware, where over half of publicly-traded U.S. corporations and three-fifths of Fortune 500 companies are incorporated due to its pro-business legal climate; other sectors besides chemicals include pharmaceuticals, banking, chicken farming, dairy, and auto manufacturing. Traditionally, Delaware has been seen as a bellwether in presidential elections, but 2000 and 2004 turned out to be deviations from the normal as Al Gore and John Kerry won the state while George W. Bush won twice nationally. This year, Barack Obama is expected to carry Delaware with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden (who is also heavily favored for reelection to the Senate if Obama loses) as his running mate. As for its only congressional seat, it is a different story.

At-Large (S-Factor 6.5 DEM): Despite what the S-Factor suggests, Biden on the ballot twice, and a bad GOP stew, centrist Republican Mike Castle is in no trouble whatsoever against children's rights advocate Karen Hartley-Nagle. Prediction: Solid GOP.

Next stop: North Dakota.

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XXXVI: New Mexico

2008-10-18T12:00:00.003-05:00

After passing through the vast corn fields and rampant populism of Iowa, the Bullet Train to November has now shifted southward to a state that sits just west of the home base of yours truly, a state with an enchanting history...

NEW MEXICO

The Land of Enchantment was originally inhabited by Paleo-Indians of the Clovis culture, who were eventually joined by various other Native American clusters such as the Anasazi and Mogollon. When Europeans explored this land in the 1500s, Navajos, Apaches and Utes along with Pueblo villages were present. In the 1540s, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado created a team of explorers to discover Marcos de Niza's described Seven Cities of Gold. In 1598, the Province of New Mexico was established, and that same year its first permanent European colony, San Juan de los Caballeros, was founded. Eventually, following the Mexican War of Independence, what was known as New Spain became part of Mexico in 1821, and areas north and east of the Rio Grande were ceded to the Republic of Texas in 1836 (In 1850, Texas ceded its share of this area in exchange for $10 million). In 1848, the Mexican government ceded its northern areas to the United States, of which New Mexico eventually became one of them on January 6, 1912, the 47th state admitted to the Union.

New Mexico is the sixth most sparsely populated state (15 for every square mile), but its demographic landscape is impressive. Spanish, Mexican and Native American cultures have played a major role in the culture of New Mexico. It has the largest percentage of Hispanics, both descendants of colonists and recent immigrants, and the third largest percentage (and fifth largest number) of Native Americans. New Mexico's diverse landscape is comprised of rosy deserts and mesas combined with forested mountains with snowy peaks, particularly in the northern areas of the state. The federal government ($2.03 for every tax dollar) plays a significant role in military spending (three Air Force bases, research labs at Los Alamos and Sandia, and the White Sands Missile Range), which contributes to the state economy along with tourism and oil and gas production. The state also has a slate of tax credits and assistance to promote business investment (particularly in the technology sector) in the state.

Politically, New Mexico tends to favor Democrats at the state level: half of the state's registered voters are Democrats, a third are Republicans, and the rest are clumped into other groups (third parties and independents). The Governor is a notable name in former United Nations Ambassador and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 but later pulled out after some poor showings in the early contests. At the presidential level, it is a bellwether state of sorts. New Mexico has only deviated from the national course twice since statehood: Gerald Ford in 1976 and Al Gore in 2000. George W. Bush only won the state by less than one percent in 2004, and this year the Land of Enchantment has been swinging towards Barack Obama with polls indicating favorable margins for the Democrat. In perhaps the most unusual fashion, the entire New Mexico congressional delegation is vacant as all three incumbents bolted to run for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by retiring Republican Pete Domenici, leaving competitive races in two of the state's three seats.

District 1 (S-Factor 2.5 DEM): Of the three seats in New Mexico's now open congressional delegation, this is the most competitive seat, based in the Albuquerque area, the home base of centrist Republican Heather Wilson who vacated this seat to run for Pete Domenici's open Senate seat -- and lost. The Democrats are hungry for this seat with Albuquerque Councilor Martin Heinrich who beat a slew of other Democrats to win his party's nomination. Meanwhile, the Republicans have put up a top-shelf candidate in Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White, who has been competitive with Heinrich on the money trail with over $1.5 million in receipts and $678K cash on hand, behind the nearly $2 million warchest of Heinrich (who trails White in cash on hand at $328K). Of the three districts in the Land of Enchantment, this is seen as the swing district. So far, the polls appear to be narrowly favoring Heinrich. Prediction: Tossup.

District 2 (S-Factor 5.5 GOP): This is the more conservative of the three New Mexico districts, based in southern New Mexico including Roswell, Alamogordo, Silver City, Las Cruces and Hobbs. Steve Pearce is the Republican nominee for Domenici's U.S. Senate seat, and that puts this district in the open column. The Republican nominee is Ed Tinsley, a restaurant chain owner who ran for this seat in 2002. The Democrats are fielding former Lea County Commissioner Harry Teague, owner of a well servicing business. The fundraising numbers speak for themselves: $1.15 million individual donors in Teague's camp compared $1.04 million in Tinsley's, $1.26 million in personal funds from Teague compared to $735K out of Tinsley's pocket, and $456K cash on hand for Tinsley compared to $147K for Teague. Recent polls suggest a competitive race. Prediction: Tossup.

District 3 (S-Factor 6.0 DEM): Finally, there's this liberal-leaning but fairly competitive Santa Fe, Clovis and Farmington-based district, which Democrat Tom Udall is vacating to run as his party's nominee for Domenici's Senate seat. The Democrats have put up State Public Regulation Commission Chair Ben Ray Luján, who happens to be the son of State House Speaker Ben Lujan. Unlike the other two districts, there is nothing competitive about this seat. Republican contractor Dan East will try to make it so. Prediction: Solid DEM.

Next stop: Delaware.

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XXXV: Iowa

2008-10-14T15:00:00.002-05:00

After traversing through the prosperous towns of Connecticut, the Bullet Train to November now heads to one state that owns a special place in the lexicon of political populism, a very common sight in presidential years...

IOWA

Named for a Siouan tribe known as the Ioway people who once occupied this landscape, Iowa was hundreds of decades ago (over 13,000 years ago) a glacial landscape comprised of Native American hunters. When European explorers first came here, the same hunters had become settled farmers, and demographics changed dramatically with the arrival of the explorers, their associated traders, and new tribes. French citizens first discovered the state, followed by American settlers in 1833 who came mostly from the nearby Midwestern states of Illinois, Missouri and Indiana, and Iowa became the 29th state admitted to the Union on December 28, 1846.

Today, Iowa remains a major agricultural state (corn, soybeans, and dairy, among other products), though industry has also been successful here with farming equipment, chemical products, publishing and food processing among the more significant non-agricultural sectors. Insurance also plays a significant part in the economy of Des Moines, home to Principal Financial Group, the nation's leading 401(k) provider. Iowans of note include Arizona Cardinals quarterback and two-time NFL MVP Kurt Warner, actors Elijah Wood and Ashton Kutcher, 2008 Olympic gold medal (and individual all-around silver medal) gymnast Shawn Johnson, pioneering pollster George Gallup, who invented the Gallup poll, and Herbert Hoover, the 31st President of the United States, who was born and buried in West Branch.

Owing to its traditional populist politics that emphasize domestic issues such as the economy, Iowa is a swing state in presidential elections. Additionally, more ethanol is produced in Iowa than in any other state, which makes Iowa a key focal point in the ongoing energy debate. It voted Republican during the Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan eras, then voted for Democrats Michael Dukakis in 1988, Bill Clinton in the 1990s, and Al Gore in 2000. In 2004, it swung Republican, reelecting George W. Bush by a margin of less than one percent. The Hawkeye State holds the first presidential caucuses, where delegates (either at homes or at public gatherings) are selected to their parties' respective state conventions. The caucuses, along with the primary in New Hampshire, are considered key barometers of the presidential candidates' strength, as evidenced by Barack Obama's victory in the Democratic caucuses here which eventually led to his nomination for the White House. Obama is now leading John McCain (who finished fourth in his party's caucuses here) in some cases by double-digit margins. With Democrats expected to retain U.S. Senator Tom Harkin, the Donkey Brigade in Iowa is focusing more on the distant possibility of sweeping Iowa's House delegation after taking two seats from Republicans just two years ago.

District 1 (S-Factor 5.0 DEM): When Jim Nussle decided to run for Governor in 2006 (losing to Chet Culver, and now serving as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget), this Quad Cities (Davenport) and Waterloo-centric seat fell into the hands of Democrat Bruce Braley. Despite the fact that this is a fairly competitive seat on paper, State Senator David Hartsuch, a last minute entry into the race, has struggled to raise funds. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 2 (S-Factor 6.8 DEM): Jim Leach was well respected in Congress and in this otherwise fairly Democratic district, where his moderate Republican views prevailed in this southeastern Iowa district that includes Cedar Rapids and Ottumwa. But the 2006 wave proved to be too much as Leach fell in a shocking upset to political science professor Dave Loebsack, and what may have hurt him was his support of an anti-online gambling bill (a pet project of the right wing of the Vocal Fringe) as well as a generally poor climate for Republicans that year. While Leach is now one of Obama's Republican supporters, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, the former President of a State Medical Society, will attempt to take back this seat in a bad GOP stew. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 3 (S-Factor 1.7 DEM): Longtime Democrat Leonard Boswell did not face an easy race in 2006, facing off against State Senator Jeff Lamberti and winning with only 52 percent of the vote. And Boswell, who voted for the PATRIOT Act (and its reauthorization four years later) as well as for the invasion of Iraq, recently fought off a challenge from liberal former State Representative and 2006 gubernatorial candidate Ed Fallon with 61 percent of the vote. Republican Kim Schmett, an attorney and former congressional aide, will try to unseat Boswell in this competitive Des Moines-centric district. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 4 (S-Factor 0.5 DEM): Republican Tom Latham has generally been reelected without considerable trouble to this northern Iowa district situated in Ames, Fort Dodge and Mason City as well as suburban counties outside Des Moines. Democrats have a dark horse candidate in Becky Greenwald, the chair of the Democratic establishment in Dallas County, which comprises of suburbs and rural areas west of the capital city. Obama's coattails could benefit Greenwald, but Latham should otherwise be favored. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 5 (S-Factor 8.0 GOP): This is Iowa's most conservative district, based in western Iowa including Council Bluffs and Sioux City. Steve King has emerged as a conservative stalwart on such issues as illegal immigration. Former State Representative Rob Hubler is challenging King. Prediction: Solid GOP.

Next stop: New Mexico.

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XXXIV: Connecticut

2008-10-09T06:00:00.003-05:00

Last time, the Bullet Train to November roared through the coal fields of West Virginia in search of potential competition that yielded one fairly competitive race. This time, the train roars through one of the nation's wealthiest states, a state that marked the early beginnings of the life of two recent Presidents...

CONNECTICUT

It is the state where Prescott Bush served as a U.S. Senator, where George H.W. Bush spent part of his childhood, and where George W. Bush was born. The state is known as the Constitution State due to its historic role in the formation of the United States Constitution based on the Fundamental Orders of 1638-39 which created the state's first formal government, though the state's key role in the United States' 1787 constitutional convention that led to the Connecticut Compromise which created a bicameral legislature now common in all but one state and in the United States Congress also serves as a basis for its nickname.

Connecticut's beginning can be traced to its inhabitation by the Mohegan tribe and its discovery in 1614 by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block, whose exploration led to the construction of a Dutch fort near what is now Hartford; this fort was abandoned in 1654. Three English colonies, Saybrook (1635, created at Old Saybrook by John Winthrop), Connecticut (1636, established at Hartford by Thomas Hooker), and New Haven (1638, based at New Haven and formed by John Davenport, among others), emerged during this time, with Saybrook merging with Connecticut in 1644 and the latter merging with New Haven to form one colony under a royal charter in 1662. This made Connecticut a crown colony, one of thirteen that revolted against the British during the American Revolution, and eventually the fifth state admitted to the Union, on January 9, 1788.

Present-day Connecticut has a relatively diverse economy that includes financial services (particularly in insurance and hedge funds), transportation (including nuclear submarines), military weaponry, scientific instruments, and agricultural products such as dairy, shellfish and tobacco, among other industries, and the state has one of the highest median incomes in the country at $60,551, fourth in the nation. Education is another key measure of life in Connecticut, with the world renowned Yale University in New Haven that has played a role in the formation of dozens of biotechnology firms, and the University of Connecticut that according to U.S. News and World Report has been New England's top-ranked public university for the last eight years. Besides a strong economic and educational pedigree, the Nutmeg State (this is another slogan) has had its share of Nutmeggers: actress Katherine Heigl, ESPN anchor Chris Berman, conservative commentators Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham, actor Paul Giamatti, National Review founder William Buckley, Jr., Family Guy and American Dad! creator Seth MacFarlane, tennis star James Blake, and musician John Mayer, the latter two of whom attended high school together in Fairfield.

From a political perspective, most towns in Connecticut tend to prefer moderates regardless of their party affiliation; many voters here are not registered with either major party (44 percent to be specific). Connecticut has voted for Democrats in the presidential election since 1992, and in 2004, John Kerry won the state by a 10 percent margin. Democrats are strongest in larger cities such as Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven, whereas the Republicans' strong spots can be spotted in affluent Fairfield County, rural Litchfield County, towns to the west of Hartford and in the Naugatuck River Valley's industrial towns. Currently, both of Connecticut's U.S. Senators caucus with the Democrats, with Chris Dodd serving as a Democrat and Joe Lieberman as an Independent Democrat following his loss in the 2006 Democrat primary to anti-war candidate Ned Lamont, and four out of Connecticut's five congressional seats are held by Democrats. At the state level, Republican Jodi Rell controls the governorship while both houses of the Connecticut General Assembly are controlled by veto-proof Democrat majorities. New England's lone Republican Congressman is situated in this state, and Democrats will be working overtime to color the entire region blue as Republicans field dark horse attempts to take back two seats it lost in 2006.

District 1 (S-Factor 13.8 DEM): This is what I would call the ESPN district, situated in the largely Democratic Hartford area and surrounding suburbs, including Windsor Locks, Newington, and ESPN's home city of Bristol. John Larson, the fifth highest ranking House Democrat (he is Vice Chair of the House Democratic Caucus), will be favored against West Hartford Town Councilman Joseph Visconti. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 2 (S-Factor 7.5 DEM): Joe Courtney had the closest victory of any incumbent, winning by a mere 83 votes against Rob Simmons in this eastern Connecticut seat that includes such towns as Groton, Waterford, New London, Norwich and Storrs. The Republican opponent, attorney and retired naval officer Sean Sullivan, has struggled in the fundraising department despite his background as a former Commander of the naval submarine base in New London that was saved from the wrath of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC): he has raised $305K in individual donors and has $155K cash on hand money versus Courtney's respective totals of $1.06 million and $1.44 million. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 3 (S-Factor 11.5 DEM): The New Haven area dominates the heavily Democratic district of nine-term Democrat Rosa DeLauro, who is expected to fend off Bo Itshaky, an acupuncturist by trade. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 4 (S-Factor 5.5 DEM): It has not been easy for Connecticut Republicans in recent years (very sad), and it's not easy being the lone Republican in New England if you're Christopher Shays. This district is based in the Bridgeport and Stamford areas and includes the wealthy, historically Republican town of Greenwich. Politically, the district is favorable to moderates like Shays. But hungry Democrats, eager to shut the Elephant Stampede out of New England's congressional delegation, are targeting it once again, not with 2004 and 2006 opponent Diane Farrell, but with the Chair of the Greenwich Democratic Town Committee, Jim Himes, a former Goldman Sachs executive who now serves as an executive for a non-profit organization that specializes in low-income housing. The totals tell the tale of a competitive race. Individual donors: Himes leads Shays $1.94 million to $1.71 million, PAC money: Shays outpaces Himes $607K to $138K, and when it comes to cash on hand, Shays has more: $1.7 million versus $1.25 million for Himes. This will be a fight worth watching. Prediction: Tossup.

District 5 (S-Factor 3.8 DEM): This historically Republican seat is Connecticut's most conservative district, and even it voted for John Kerry, albeit by 1100 votes in 2004. The incumbent, Democrat Chris Murphy, came in to the picture by knocking off longtime Republican Nancy Johnson, whose negative ad strategy (a dirty tactic that is the product of the Vocal Fringe) backfired in a district that stretches from New Britain and Meriden westward to towns in the Farmington Valley and Litchfield Hills such as Waterbury, Danbury and Torrington. The GOP is fighting back with State Senator David Cappiello, who has raised respectable amounts of individual and PAC donations at $617K and $148K. But a huge hurdle exists in Murphy's warchest: $1.45 million in indie donors and $798K in PAC money. But even in an affluent state like this, money can't but you a congressional seat. Or can it? At this point, Murphy is in the catbird's seat. Prediction: Favor DEM.

Next stop: Iowa.

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XXXIII: West Virginia

2008-10-08T19:30:00.000-05:00

Last week, a sweltering trip through Arizona yielded two races targeted by Democrats and another pair being pined for by Republicans. This time, the Bullet Train to November roars through a state that splits across several regions, that is in other words simply Wild and Wonderful...

WEST VIRGINIA

Located in the heart of a region known as Appalachia that describes the Appalachian Mountains, West Virginia is noted for its mountainous terrain and natural beauty, hence its nickname The Mountain State. Before the English Colony of Virginia discovered what eventually became of this state, Native American tribes commonly used this area as a hunting ground; many man-made mounds exist to this day. While originally part of Virginia, this part of the state had its differences: with significant German and Ulster-Scots immigration from Pennsylvania existent during the early days of the United States as well as a secessionist movement aimed at creating the state of Westsylvania due to concerns regarding the unprofitability of slavery in this region. Eventually, various socioeconomic tensions accelerated by the region's pro-Union bent during the Civil War led to the formation and admittance of West Virginia on June 20, 1863 as the 35th state admitted to the Union.

West Virginia cuts across various regions (though it is entirely within the jurisdiction of the Appalachian Regional Commission), but it is commonly associated with the South due to its location that puts it largely to the south of the Mason-Dixon line. There are some areas of the state that align itself with other regions: northern areas intertwine with the Midwest as well as the Pittsburgh area, while its Eastern Panhandle is geographically considered part of the Washington, D.C. region. Economically, coal mining is a major source of the state's economy, as it is used to produce electricity for West Virginia and surrounding states. Some of West Virginia's more prominent past and present citizens: Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, televangelist T.D. Jakes, and Iraq War POW Jessica Lynch, whose ordeal and injuries have played a key role in recent criticism surrounding the war, as well as Basketball Hall of Famer Jerry West, whose silhouette during his All-Star career with the Los Angeles Lakers is outlined in the logo of the National Basketball Association.

In West Virginia, Democrats hold the upper hand at the state level with control of the governorship and both houses of the state legislature, and also at the congressional level with both Senate seats and two of the three House seats in their hands. It fits the description of a traditional blue-collar state: union membership is common here and coal interests have contributed to many of West Virginia's recent state (including the Governor's Mansion) campaigns. However, West Virginia has recently trended towards the GOP in the race for the White House, electing George W. Bush in 2000 and again in 2004, winning the latter by a larger margin. While polling in West Virginia has shown John McCain slightly outperforming Barack Obama this year, a bad economic situation nationally will not make a win here easy. Senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat in an otherwise moderate-to-liberal Republican political family, is up for reelection this year and heavily favored, and the same situation can be said for pro-life Governor Joe Manchin. Meanwhile, one member of its congressional delegation is being challenged.

District 1 (S-Factor 5.5 GOP): And no, it's not Alan Mollohan who's facing a challenge; he has no major party opposition in this northern West Virginia (Clarksburg, Morgantown, Parkersburg, Wheeling) district. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 2 (S-Factor 4.8 GOP): Shelley Moore Capito is a pro-choice Republican representing a district based in Charleston as well as West Virginia's share of the Washington, D.C. suburbs (Martinsburg). The Democrats targeted this seat with State Senator John Unger, who then surprisingly dropped the ball by pulling out of the race. But Democrats still have a sizable candidate in Anne Barth, a former state director for venerable U.S. Senator Robert Byrd. The D-Trip is watching this race closely and as of last June (September reports have yet to show up) Barth has raised $425K and $205K in respective individual and PAC donations. But Capito has more of it: $824K indie donors and $627K PAC donors. Cash on hand totals: Capito $1.24 million, Barth $353K. The Barth camp has a challenge: the expensive Washington television market cuts into the district's eastern counties. For the Capito camp: a wishy-washy GOP climate aims to produce a tidalwave large enough to wipe out the incumbent. Prediction: Favor GOP.

District 3 (S-Factor 0.8 DEM): Longtime Democrat Nick Rahall, the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, will be heavily favored in his southern West Virginia (Bluefield, Beckley, Huntington) seat against sign company executive Marty Gearheart. Prediction: Solid DEM.

Next stop: Connecticut.

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XXXII: Arizona

2008-10-03T23:45:00.003-05:00

With Election Day now four weeks away, the Bullet Train to November is speeding fast and showing no signs of stopping. Today, the train rolls westward from the Southern charm of Georgia to a landscape familiar to one very familiar face in the 2008 election...

ARIZONA

The last of the contiguous 48 states (and comprising the southwestern arm of the Four Corners), Arizona was the fastest growing state in the Union in 2006. What became Arizona was first part of Spain, and later evolved into part of Mexico. The Mexican-American War led to Mexico surrendering its northern territories to the United States which almost went bankrupt due to the purchase, followed by the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 which involved the acquisition of areas south of the Gila River. What was the western half of the Territory of New Mexico eventually became the Arizona Territory which evolved into the 48th state in the Union on February 14, 1912.

The landscape of Arizona is diverse, with two metropolitan areas that have dramatically different climates: Flagstaff, situated in northern Arizona, tends to have many days where the low temperature is below freezing, while the Phoenix and Yuma areas further south are home to some of the hottest temperatures (over 100°F) in the country during the summer months. Additionally, a monsoon season is present in this state during the summer which produces a significant amount of the state's rainfall. Many diverse geographical features exist here as well, including the Grand Canyon, a colorful gorge created by the Colorado River that is one of the seven natural wonders of the world situated in a namesake national park that is one of the nation's first, as well as various mountains and plateaus. Spring training is also a common sight in Arizona, as it is home to the Cactus League that plays host to such teams as the Chicago Cubs, San Francisco Giants, Milwaukee Brewers and its home team, the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Since the 1950s, Arizona has largely voted for Republicans at the presidential level with the exception of Bill Clinton's 1996 victory here. The Grand Canyon State introduced America to U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, whose 1964 presidential campaign revived American conservatism and paved the way for a foundation that culminated in the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. This year, Arizona's senior U.S. Senator (and Goldwater's successor at this position), John McCain is the Republican presidential nominee. Not all in Arizona is red, though. Governor Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, was reelected in 2006 with 62.6 percent of the vote, and the state's congressional delegation is split at 4-4. Additionally, southern Arizona has been more favorable to Democrats as well as moderate Republicans. This year, with McCain at the top of the GOP ticket, Republicans will attempt to take back two seats it lost in 2006, while Democrats look to build on their recent gains.

District 1 (S-Factor 2.0 GOP): Plagued by scandal (plus indictments) and a poor GOP climate, Rick Renzi is calling it a career after three terms in a district that includes much of Northern Arizona (Flagstaff, Casa Grande, Prescott and the Navajo Nation). The Democrats are thrilled about their candidate, State Representative Ann Kirkpatrick, who has
raised $768K in individual funds and $197K in PAC money (as of June 2008), and has the support of the D-Trip. The Republicans are fielding Sydney Hay, who is President of the Arizona Mining Association. Compared to Kirkpatrick, however, fundraising totals for Hay have not been as rosy: $242K indie, $52K PAC, also as of last June. Prediction: Leans DEM.

District 2 (S-Factor 8.0 GOP): Trent Franks has represented this northwestern Arizona district that cuts across northwestern suburbs of Phoenix (Glendale, Peoria, Surprise), Lake Havasu City, and includes a small strip that stretches eastward to take in the Hopi reservation (which is separate from the Navajo reservation due to longstanding tensions between the two tribes). Franks is favored to win re-election over retired professor and music conductor John Thrasher, who challenged Franks in 2006. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 3 (S-Factor 5.8 GOP): John Shadegg has generally had no trouble winning this district that stretches across northern areas of Phoenix and Maricopa County. Democrat and tax attorney Bob Lord has raised impressive numbers against Shadegg, has garnered the attention of the D-Trip, and looks to gain voters disillusioned with Shadegg's initial decision not to seek re-election earlier this year...and then un-retire. However, the district's Republican leanings give Shadegg the edge. Prediction: Favor GOP.

District 4 (S-Factor 14.5 DEM): Ed Pastor should have no trouble defeating manufacturing executive Don Karg in this heavily Hispanic district situated in the heart of Phoenix. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 5 (S-Factor 3.3 GOP): While libertarian-leaning and conservative in nature, this Scottsdale- and Tempe-based district in northeastern Maricopa County fell to the Democrats as former Tempe mayor and State Senator Harry Mitchell defeated conservative Republican J.D. Hayworth in the 2006 electoral bloodbath. Given the nature of his district, Mitchell will face a strong challenge from Maricopa County Treasurer David Schweikert, who beat five other Republicans to win the party's nomination and could be helped by John McCain's presidential bid. But Mitchell has a warchest large enough to stay competitive ($1.07 million indie, $628K PAC, and $1.37 million cash on hand vs. Schweikert's $560K indie, $12K PAC, $272K in personal funds, and $521K COH.). Time will tell if McCain's coattails will be of any help to Schweikert. Prediction: Leans DEM.

District 6 (S-Factor 11.5 GOP): Jeff Flake has emerged as one of the most vocal fiscal hawks in Congress, consistently opposing many pork barrel projects and offering up amendments to strike them. Love him or hate him, Flake has emerged as an emerging star in the GOP and his district, based in Phoenix's eastern suburbs (including Mesa and Chandler), is heavily Republican and safe for Flake over university librarian Rebecca Schneider. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 7 (S-Factor 9.3 DEM): This largely Democratic, majority-Hispanic district, based in Arizona's southwestern areas, including south Maricopa County, west Tucson and the Yuma area, favor Raúl Grijalva for another term against contractor Joseph Sweeney. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 8 (S-Factor 0.8 GOP): Gabrielle Giffords snagged this competitive southeast Arizona seat that covers parts of Tucson and its suburbs in 2006 by defeating conservative former State Senator Randy Graf, who beat another candidate backed by Giffords' moderate predecessor, Jim Kolbe, the only openly gay Republican in the House at the time. Republicans have recruited a strong candidate in State Senate President Tim Bee, who had the endorsement of Kolbe -- and later lost it. While this bit of news may be quite disappointing, a competitive race will be expected -- with one hurdle -- Giffords has raised a combined total of $2.47 million in individual and PAC donations versus Bee's $1.12 million. Cash on hand: Giffords $2.08 million, Bee $688K. But still a fight worth watching. Prediction: Leans DEM.

Next stop: West Virginia.

UPDATE: Things have gotten more competitive in Pennsylvania's 3rd District. In this Erie-centric district, a poll has recently come out that shows Lake Erie Arboretum Director Kathy Dahlkemper with a slight lead over incumbent Phil English, 49-45. That, along with an increased shot of attention by the D-Trip, bumps the race to Leans GOP. There will be more updates in states that have already gone under the knife with new fundraising totals and plunny of polls coming out in the coming days. Stay tuned!

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XXXI: Georgia

2008-09-30T18:00:00.002-05:00

Last time, the Bullet Train to November crossed through the green and unusually independent landscape that is Vermont, a state with only one Congressman. Today, the train rolls down the Atlantic Seaboard (well, almost) to the Empire State of the South, a state older than the actual Empire State itself...

GEORGIA

The southernmost of the original Thirteen Colonies, Georgia was also the last to establish (1733). The area was initially explored by Spanish explorers for over a century before a dispute emerged in 1670 with the English founding of what eventually became South Carolina and the settling of Spanish missionaries on Georgia's Sea Islands. A proposed British colony, the Province of Georgia (named for King George II) was first brought up in 1724 as Spanish Florida and an associated runaway slave concern in South Carolina, combined with the establishment of a French fort near what is now Montgomery, Alabama threatened to harm British trade interests in the region. On February 12, 1733, 113 British colonists arrived at what eventually became Savannah. Georgia became the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution on January 2, 1788, but broke from the Union to join the Confederate States of America in January 21, 1861 and was the last state to be readmitted, on July 15, 1870. Georgia has established ten state constitutions, the most recent coming in 1983. Only Louisiana (11) has had more state constitutions.

Today, Georgia is the ninth largest, and third fastest-growing state with 18 of America's 100 fastest-growing counties situated in the state, dominated by the rapidly growing suburbs of Atlanta, whose metropolitan area is home to over 5 million Georgians (over half of the state), a tenth of which reside in the actual capital city itself. The move of hundreds of thousands to the Peach State has been accelerated by the state's emerging economy, especially in and around Metro Atlanta, home to Coca-Cola, Home Depot, United Parcel Service, Chick-fil-A, Georgia Pacific and Delta Air Lines (among others). Atlanta is a popular sight in the cable television industry with media mogul Ted Turner's cable empire which includes CNN and TBS, and the headquarters of The Weather Channel in suburban Atlanta. Tourism, agriculture (including tobacco, poultry and peaches), textiles, food processing and electric equipment are among the key industries of Georgia's economy, and the world's busiest passenger airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, is located south of downtown Atlanta. One notable fact: the Girl Scouts were founded in Savannah in 1912 (and yes, when it comes to their cookies, I traditionally get the Thin Mints).

Among the more well-known Georgians: pianist/singer Ray Charles (whose rendition of Georgia On My Mind is the state song), libertarian commentator and radio talker Neal Boortz, Blue Collar comedian Jeff Foxworthy, civil rights leader and NAACP chairman Julian Bond, R&B singer James Brown (the Godfather of Soul), Baseball Hall of Famer Ty Cobb (The Georgia Peach), actress Julia Roberts, various rappers with ties to what is known as ATL such as Ludacris and Big Boi, American Idol host Ryan Seacrest, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Historically, Georgia has been a stronghold for Democrats (who were more conservative than the national party) who dominated state government from 1872 after Reconstruction until 2003. Following the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, the state emerged as a cornerstone of the "New South" with foresight towards a future of economic prosperity and tolerance, culminating in the 1976 election of one-time Governor Jimmy Carter to the White House. In 2003, the one-party dominance ended with the defeat of Governor Roy Barnes by Republican Sonny Perdue in an upset, which later resulted in the loss of the State Senate and State House, leading today to Georgia's current Republican leanings, and many conservative Democrats have crossed over to support Republicans such as one-time U.S. Senator and Governor Zell Miller. Republicans dominate in the suburbs of Metro Atlanta and in rural areas statewide, while Democrats perform best within Atlanta and other cities and regions (such as the Black Belt which encompasses central and southwest Georgia) that have significant African American populations.

But the Peach State will be more competitive in this year's presidential election: over 30 percent of Georgia is African American (fourth largest in the country) and Bob Barr, a former Congressman from the Atlanta suburbs, is running as the Libertarian Party's nominee. Both of these factors could help Barack Obama and produce a close race that could still favor John McCain, but not overwhelmingly so. Class 2 Senator Saxby Chambliss will be up for reelection this year and will be favored against former State Human Resources Commissioner Jim Martin, but unlike most states, Republicans have the upper hand in House pickup opportunities with two Democrats who faced defeat in 2006 repeating the same process this year, more so in one case.

NOTE: Due to a recent redistricting that took effect with this Congress and because the S-Factors reflect those of the old districts from the 109th Congress, there will be no S-Factors on this segment.

District 1: Jack Kingston represents a conservative district situated in southeast Georgia, including Brunswick, Valdosta, St. Simon's Island and parts of Savannah, and should be safe for another term (he has been reelected with no less than two-thirds of the vote each time) against retired Army officer and Iraq War vet Bill Gillespie. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 2: Sanford Bishop is perhaps the most conservative African American Democrat in all of Congress, representing a relatively competitive district based in southwest Georgia including Columbus, Americus, Albany, Bainbridge and Thomasville. Republicans will try with disabled vet Lee Ferrell. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 3: This is a heavily Republican district in western Georgia that cuts across the Columbus area and stretches northward to the southern edge of Metro Atlanta (Newnan, Peachtree City). Republican Lynn Westmoreland represents this district and is heavily favored for another term over attorney Stephen Camp. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 4: This heavily African American suburban Atlanta seat, based largely in central and southern DeKalb County, is represented by Hank Johnson, one of the first two Buddhists to serve in Congress. Johnson won this seat in 2006 by defeating controversial incumbent Cynthia McKinney in the Democrat primary, aided by unease with McKinney's controversial mannerisms (most notably the assault of a Capitol Police officer). Johnson then won the general election easily in 2006 and will easily be re-elected this year with no Republican on the ballot. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 5: This heavily Democratic district is situated in the heart of Atlanta. The Republicans are not fielding a candidate to challenge African American Democrat John Lewis, who once served as the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Civil Rights Movement. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 6: Most of Atlanta's affluent northern suburbs (including Sandy Springs, Alpharetta, Dunwoody, Canton and Roswell) are situated in this heavily Republican district that has quite a history to it: it was represented previously by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and current U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson. The current representative is Tom Price, who won the seat with no Democrat on the ballot in 2004 and easily won in 2006 over a Democrat opponent. The Democrat this year is businessman and Air Force vet Bill Jones. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 7: John Linder represents a heavily conservative district situated in Atlanta's northeastern suburbs around Gwinnett County, including Duluth and Lawrenceville. Since his first election in 1992, Linder has become known nationally for his advocacy of the FairTax, which aims to replace the current tax code with a 23 percent national sales tax. Financial executive Doug Heckman, a veteran of the Iraq War, is the Democrat nominee. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 8: While most Democrats enjoyed relatively good results last year, Jim Marshall faced a tough race in 2006 against former Congressman Mac Collins, who nearly defeated Marshall in this Macon-centric district. Republicans have recruited Mercer University Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Rick Goddard, a retired Air Force officer, to challenge Marshall in what is being touted as one of the better pickup opportunities for the GOP. Goddard has raised more individual funds than Marshall, who leads in cash on hand. However, Marshall's background as a Vietnam Veteran and one-time stint as mayor of Macon could be beneficial. Prediction: Leans DEM.

District 9: Republican Nathan Deal represents much of northern Georgia, including some northern exurbs of Atlanta and areas south of Chattanooga, Tennessee. He will be heavily favored over teacher Jeff Scott. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 10: Paul Broun Jr. came to Congress in 2007 from this heavily Republican district based in northeast Georgia and including Augusta, Toccoa and Athens, after Charlie Norwood died from cancer. Broun is now heavily favored to win the seat for a full term over Iraq War vet Bobby Saxon. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 11: Phil Gingrey is a safe bet for re-election over pilot and Air Force veteran Bud Gammon in this strongly conservative district based in Marietta, Rome and other areas to the west and northwest of Atlanta. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 12: John Barrow faced a very close race in 2006, fending off a challenge from former Congressman Max Burns, who won the seat over a scandal-plagued Democrat opponent in 2002 and whom Barrow knocked off in 2004. This year, radio announcer John Stone, a former congressional aide, is stepping up to the plate in this rather competitive Savannah-to-Augusta district that also includes Milledgeville, Vidalia and Statesboro. Barrow has the edge. Prediction: Favor DEM.

District 13: This has to be confusing...I don't get it. David Scott first won this seat that cuts across the southern edge of Atlanta as well as several western and southern suburbs such as Smyrna, Douglasville, Union City and Riverdale. Physician and clinic director Deborah Honeycutt has raised an enormous amount of individual donations, totaling $2.72 million ($290K cash on hand) compared to Scott's $119K ($139K cash on hand). However, this is not a competitive race as the district is very favorable if not safe for Democrats: the population is 44 percent African American and 10 percent Hispanic. Even more bizarre: an ethics watchdog group named Scott one of the most corrupt members of Congress in 2007. Prediction: Solid DEM.

Next stop: Arizona.

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XXX: Vermont

2008-09-26T12:00:00.000-05:00

Last time, it was a quick race and fast break through the state of Indiana, a traditional red state in a sea of blue. Now, the Bullet Train to November is taking another trip eastward, going to a small state that differs geographically (in a sense) from its regional brethren but has a very unusual political perspective...

VERMONT

Originally part of a French colony that became known as New France in 1609, Dutch and British settlers, along with more French settlers, began to arrive here. Eventually, New York, New Hampshire and (for a while) Massachusetts laid claim to the land leading up to the creation of the New Hampshire Grants which led to an independent Vermont on January 18, 1777. On March 4, 1791, Vermont became the 14th state (and the first outside of the original 13 colonies) admitted to the Union.

Today, while Vermont may not have a coastline unlike the rest of New England, it makes up for it with the geographical feature in its nickname, the Green Mountains, which are part of the Appalachian Mountains and are described as such due to their extensive forests which withstand even the harshest conditions in the winter such as snowfall. Another prominent geographical feature is Lake Champlain, which covers half of the state's western border with New York. The state also produces one-quarter of the nation's maple syrup (275,000 US gallons to be specific) and has a growing base of specialty foods and novelties exported nationally such as Ben & Jerry's ice cream products.

Vermont's political attitudes are unique. The state, one of four that previously was its own country, was a Republican stronghold (even consistently voting against Franklin D. Roosevelt in each of his elections) until the 1970s and is now a favorably (but not overwhelmingly) Democratic state. Voters here have many choices when it comes to their candidates, as there are no laws that restrict the participation of third parties in elections, the largest being the Liberty Union and Vermont Progressive parties. Interesting facts: Vermont is the only state that has not been visited by President George W. Bush, and the town of Brattleboro recently voted for a petition calling for the indictments of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for violations of the U.S. Constitution. With only one congressional seat, no Senate seat up for grabs this year, and a fairly notable gubernatorial race (incumbent Republican Jim Douglas is favored, but not guaranteed, to win re-election), not much is happening this year in Vermont.

At-Large (S-Factor 9.0 DEM): When self-described Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders jumped to the U.S. Senate to succeed Republican-turned-independent Jim Jeffords, this race became a relatively competitive one with Democrats offering up Senate President Pro Tempore Peter Welch and Republicans recruiting Martha Rainville, then the Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard (yes, the Green Mountain Boys). Both candidates promised clean campaigns, with Welch prevailing 53%-45%. No Republican is on the ballot this year, but two third-party candidates are on the ballot, typical given the nature of Vermont's unpredictable politics: retired nurse and Socialist activist Jane Newton (Liberty Union) and Iraq War vet Thomas James Hermann (Progressive). Also running: independents Mike Bethel (a community activist), Cris Ericson (a pro-marijuana activist), and Jerry Trudell (a photographer). Prediction: Solid DEM.

Next stop: Georgia.

The Nifty Fifty House Party - Part XXIX: Indiana

2008-09-26T06:30:00.002-05:00

Last time, we focused on California, the largest of the 50 states with 53 congressional districts but few races of interest. Now, the Bullet Train to November roars east to the Midwest -- to a traditional red state situated in a sea of blue and swing states...

INDIANA

Living up to its motto, The Crossroads of America, Indiana is filled with many villages and industrial towns intertwined within a vast landscape of urban landscapes and rural spaces, but not too vast -- the state is the smallest in the contiguous United States west of the Appalachian Mountains. Home to Native American tribes as far back as 8000 B.C., Indiana was claimed by French settlers in the 1670s and later by Great Britain a century later. The United States claimed the territory at the end of the American Revolution and in 1816, Indiana was annexed as the 19th state admitted to the Union.

Today, Indiana boasts a significant manufacturing base with the nation's largest steel producer situated in northwest Indiana, along with pharmaceuticals (Eli Lilly is based in Indianapolis), transportation, machinery and electrical equipment. Situated in the Corn Belt, Indiana is a major agricultural producer of corn (as well as ethanol and biodiesel), soybeans, dairy and specialties such as melons and mint. All of this is attributed to a low-tax, business-friendly economy. In sports, Indiana is known for a rich basketball heritage and is known as the birthplace of high school basketball, which was best exemplified in the 1954 state championship won by tiny Milan High School which beat the much larger Muncie Central High School and was the basis for the 1986 film Hoosiers. In auto racing, the world's largest one-day sporting event, the legendary Indianapolis 500, takes place at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, known popularly as The Brickyard. Some of the more well-known Hoosiers include 9/11 Commission vice chairman Lee Hamilton, Basketball Hall of Famers Larry Bird and John Wooden, musician John Mellencamp, political commentator Tavis Smiley, late night talk show host David Letterman, novelist Kurt Vonnegut, and musician and "King of Pop" Michael Jackson, as well as several astronauts, including seven-time spaceflight record holder Jerry Ross and Frank Borman, one of the first (out of 24) men to fly around the Moon.

Compared to other midwestern states, Indiana is a reliably Republican and conservative state; 1912, 1932, 1936 and 1964 have been the only times since 1900 where the Democrat nominee for President carried the Hoosier State. The GOP fares best in the suburbs of major cities such as Indianapolis as well as eastern Indiana and Fort Wayne while Democrats perform best in the city of Indianapolis and in northwestern and southern Indiana (the latter area of which tends to elect conservative Democrats). The state's congressional delegation is usually reflective of the national political mood, and is currently a 5-4 majority in the Democrats' favor. Democrat prospects are limited this year, as the Donkey Brigade has already picked up three seats in 2006, leaving only a lone dark horse opportunity in the House, a competitive gubernatorial race, and stronger-than-average polling numbers for Barack Obama as their only key bellwethers in 2008. For the GOP, at least one of the three seats it lost in the last cycle is in their crosshairs while at the same time defending Governor Mitch Daniels.

District 1 (S-Factor 8.0 DEM): This is one of the more liberal districts in an otherwise conservative-leaning state, taking in areas close to Chicago including the gritty industrial town of Gary and such surrounding cities as Hammond and Merrillville. Longtime incumbent Peter Visclosky is heavily favored for another term against carpenter Mark Leyva. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 2 (S-Factor 4.0 GOP): Joe Donnelly was one of the first Democrats nationally, and second in Indiana, to pick up a Republican congressional seat in 2006, knocking off Chris Chocola in this South Bend-based district. Businessman Luke Puckett is the Republican nominee, but has not generated much enthusiasm. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 3 (S-Factor 16.0 GOP): Democrats' three-seat pickup in the Hoosier State almost became a four-seat grab bag when Mark Souder faced a surprisingly close race against Fort Wayne City Councilman Tom Hayhurst last time, winning with only 54% of the vote in a district concentrated around Fort Wayne and northeast Indiana that gave 68% of the vote to President Bush. Hayhurst is not running this year, but 27-year old attorney Mike Montagano is and has raised respectable amounts as well, with $309K in individual donations to Souder's $287K. Montagano also has $352K cash on hand compared to Souder's $323K. But time will tell if Montagano can repeat the surprise of 2006. The D-Trip views this race as "emerging", but will it be enough to pull off a shocker? Prediction: Favor GOP.

District 4 (S-Factor 17.0 GOP): House Veterans' Affairs Committee Ranking Member Steve Buyer represents a strongly Republican western Indiana seat based in Lafayette, Bedford and suburbs south and west of Indianapolis (but not Terre Haute), and should be a sure bet for re-election. Attorney Nels Ackerson has had decent fundraising numbers (Ackerson leads Buyer in individual donations $347K to $119K), but the D-Trip isn't even watching and Buyer's cash on hand totals of $629K far outpace Ackerson's $178K. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 5 (S-Factor 19.0 GOP): This is one of the nation's most Republican districts, based in Indianapolis' heavily Republican and affluent northern and eastern suburbs (Carmel, Shelbyville) as well as areas southwest of Fort Wayne such as Huntington. But Dan Burton himself almost didn't make it past this year's GOP primary, winning by only seven points against former Marion County Coroner John McGoff, a margin that is not surprising given Burton's AWOL status on 11 percent of votes in 2006 and his casting the only nay vote on a rule banning members of Congress from accepting gifts from lobbyists. Still, Burton is definitely not in any trouble against businesswoman and former congressional aide Mary Etta Ruley, but his weak primary showing could suggest retirement in 2010. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 6 (S-Factor 10.5 GOP): Mike Pence has emerged as one of the more well-known conservatives in all of Congress, having previously chaired the Republican Study Committee (now headed by Texas' Jeb Hensarling). His eastern Indiana district, based in the Richmond and Muncie areas, should deliver the former attorney and talk radio host another term over Methodist minister Barry Welsh. Prediction: Solid GOP.

District 7 (S-Factor 8.8 DEM): Following the death of Julia Carson last December, Indianapolis City-County Councillor André Carson stepped in to succeed his grandmother, and becoming only the second congressional Muslim in the process (as well as the youngest Democrat in Congress). He defeated his young Republican opponent, State Representative Jon Elrod, with 54 percent of the vote in this Indianapolis-centric district. However, Elrod ended his 2008 bid for the seat. While this is not a terribly safe district for Democrats, Carson can now be expected to win a full term against the new GOP opponent, social worker Gabrielle Campo. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 8 (S-Factor 8.3 GOP): This was the first district to flip Democrat in 2006, with Brad Ellsworth pulling off a surprisingly large 61-39 victory over John Hostettler, who was known for his select base of campaign donors and consistent close races. The former Sheriff of Vanderburgh County (which includes Evansville), Ellsworth is now favored for another term against former congressional aide Greg Goode, but is not necessarily safe given the district's history of competitiveness. Remember, this is the "Bloody Eighth" which in addition to Evansville also includes Terre Haute and Vincennes and where close races and "throwing out the bums" is a common occurrence. Prediction: Solid DEM.

District 9 (S-Factor 6.8 GOP): This is the marquee congressional race in Indiana, and the fourth race pitting former State Representative Baron Hill against trucking executive Mike Sodrel in this southeastern Indiana seat stretching from the Indiana University campus in Bloomington to the Indiana suburbs of Louisville (New Albany, Jeffersonville), Kentucky. In 2002, Hill won it. In 2004, Sodrel did. In 2006, Hill took it back as one of the first 15 before Democrats were projected to take over the House. And now, despite Hill having the edge, Sodrel's electoral strength keeps the race interesting. And I am getting dizzy. Prediction: Leans DEM.

Next stop: Vermont.