Posted on 08/20/2006 4:28:21 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
I just want to add that Pryce, Chabot, and DeWine face what are generally considered as first-tier opponents, or at least high second tier. By contrast, Zach Space is a third-tier candidate (on a good day).
Ah candidate quality and money. That is just so micro of you to bring up. Why complicate matters? :)
And there you have it. :)
Unfortunately, Franklin County has gone Red and the City of Columbus may well give 65% of the vote to O'Shaughnessy.
When I move, it will be to another county.
Thanks for the great synopsis! That sounds about like what I've gathered with regard to Huffman and Graf. I'm unfamiliar with Hellon but a quick review of recent articles suggest that the race is currently thought to be a three-way toss up. The 'military guy' is probably Frank Antenori, and it doesn't sound as if he has a chance.
You are correct. Thanks. It is odd someone so informed and smart, and with a good resume, would drop in with no money, and raise no money, but such is life. Antenori is not a player, but in a red meat setting, he got nearly as many straw votes of the attendees as Graf, so I read. And so it goes.
Bellaire, Bridgeport and Martins Ferry are no longer in the (now comfortably Republican, giving President Bush 55% in 2000 and 57% in 2004) OH-18; in the 1992 redistricting, those towns were placed in the swing OH-06 (which gave President Bush 49% in 2000 and 51% in 2004 and will have a competitive general election this year between Democrat Charlie Wilson and Republican Chuck Blasdel). Here's the map of the current OH-18: http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/images/preview/congdist/OH18_109.gif
BTW, Torie, the old 18th didn't quite stretch to the Youngstown area, but it did include a lot of blue-collar, historically Democrat towns on the Ohio River between East Liverpool and Monroe County.
where do you rank Gutknecht and the Harris open now, with the developments in both those places?
OK, I believe you. The new Strickland district does, and I just transposed. Actually the Youngstown suburbs are also rather marginal. It is Youngstown itself that is the Dem bastion, and that was neither in the old Ney district, or the new Strickland district, that just takes in some of the suburbs, and perhaps still rural areas of the county.
Florida is safe Dem period, absent very surprising developments, even if Harris goes down in the primary. The Minnesota thingy turns on the legal merits, about which I don't have a clue. If the incumbent is bounced from the ballot, then we need to know the quality of the Dem, and whether the incumbent can run as a write in. This district is about even in partisan balance (lean Dem in this toxic year), so if the Dem candidate is creditable, it flips into the Dem column somewhere down the line. How far down, I have no idea.
I meant the Harris open House seat and the statement made by the person who is apparently our front-runner there. You sold me on the Senate seat.
What was said in beautiful Sarasota, or whatever, by the Pubbie "frontrunner?" I am behind the curve on this one.
Now, one key question would be whether the Dems would be underhanded and find another Gutknecht (or homophone) to run in the election. I know that I've written Gutknecht's name plenty of times yet I still spelled it Gutneckt just now before I looked it up. The MN election law disregards misspelled write-in votes so long as it's clear for whom the vote was intended.
So, having said all that, I think that if Gutknecht is disqualified from the ballot, the seat will be a Toss Up at the least, and quite possibly Lean Dem. It was only a 51.1% Bush district in '04 and a 49.3% Bush district in '00. I think Tim Walz is more than credible enough to win if Gutknecht is not on the ballot. One caveat: It's unclear to me whether Gutknecht could still be a write-in candidate for the primary election.
As for the FL-13 open seat, crasher is referring to this by Tramm Hudson: "I grew up in Alabama. I understand, uh, I know from experience that blacks are not the greatest swimmers or may not even know how to swim."
My view is that Vern Buchanan and Tramm Hudson, the two frontrunning rivals, are already trashing one another quite viciously, and that was well-factored into my rankings. At #29 I already have this open seat at the top of the range that I'm comfortable with (the GOP "Lean" seats I have ahead of it are Drake, Sweeney, Hayworth, Sherwood, Chabot, and Musgrave) so I don't see that it moves up any, even with Hudson's foot-in-mouth or with the recent tempest over Buchanan's financial dealings.
PS. I should add that I am no expert in MN election law, so I may very well have missed some key clause, or whatever. But in my amateur reading of the relevant statutes, I think the challenge to Gutknecht's nominating petitions may very well succeed.
I don't read statutes past cocktail time.
I've heard that this is true of many, many Republicans, not just Blackwell. Somehow Republicans just melt around liberal Democrats, as Newt Gingrich said he did in the presence of "his friend" "Bill" Clinton.
I don't know if you've ever had the misfortune of going through Youngstown, truly one of the most depressing formerly major cities in Ohio (which once held a steady 170,000 people from 1930-60, but in a 40-year span, lost 60% of its population, dropping nearly 100,000 people). I spent the night there en route to Pennsylvania in 1988, let's just say I didn't get a wink of sleep. Another monument to urban liberal Democrat mismanagement.
Well, they ARE picking a State Senator. The entire Ohio State GOP is scandle ridden.
It's a pretty Republican district, she probably will win, but I wish they had gone with a County Councilman or somebody like that. I'm nervos when Ohio State Pols are running for national office this year.
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