The Underfunded 20: Quick cash could make the diff for 20 GOP House challengers.

National Review ^ | July 26, 2010 4:00 A.M. | Jim Geraghty

[Behind Liberal Lines]

My discussions with Republican strategists and conservative House-watchers yielded a list of 20 races in which this quarter’s donations are most likely to prove decisive:

Martha Roby, Alabama’s 2nd district...Rick Crawford, Arkansas’s 1st district...David Harmer, California’s 11th district...Cory Gardner, Colorado’s 4th district...Adam Kinzinger, Illinois’s 11th district...Randy Hultgren, Illinois’s 14th district...Bobby Schilling, Illinois’s 17th district...Jackie Walorski, Indiana’s 2nd district....Larry Bucshon, Indiana’s 8th district....Todd Young, Indiana’s 9th district....Andy Barr, Kentucky’s 6th district...Alan Nunnelee, Mississippi’s 1st district...Joe Heck, Nevada’s 3rd district...Chris Gibson, New York’s 20th district....Renee Ellmers, North Carolina’s 2nd district....Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania’s 11th district....Mick Mulvaney, South Carolina’s 5th district....Kristi Noem, South Dakota’s at-large district....Rob Hurt, Virginia’s 5th district....Morgan Griffith, Virginia’s 9th district...

[DontTreadOnMe2009]

Links?

Formatting?

Repub National Committee can’t give $200,000 each (Like they did with Dem Lez Dee Sch ???) ???

[Gondring]

Sad to see Lou Barletta on that list.

[HDCochran]

I cannot contribute to all 20 of these candidates, but I would contribute to a trustworthy “bundler” who will aggregate many small donations and disperse the funding equally to only these candidates. I do not trust the GOP congressional campaign committee to do so. Can FR act as the “bundler”?

[mollynme]

Thanks for the reminder. I had been meaning to contribute to the Gardner campaign.

[Behind Liberal Lines]

The link was working when I posted it. Here it is again.

The formatting is gone because I excerpted just the names from a five-page article.

[Truth is a Weapon]

Check with clubforgrowth.org. They do a pretty good job of identifying candidates and helping to fund them.

[InterceptPoint]

Ping.

[Seattle Conservative]

InterceptPoint had the below for the week of July 24.
About 1/2 of the R candidates on the list you provided were upgraded in favor of R. While they still have a way to go, IMHO it’s a move in the right direction.

Here’s the summary of the changes to our Experts’ ratings:

There were a total of 44 updates this week to the 91 Congressional races that we believe are truly in play this year.
37 were favorable to the Republicans
7 were favorable to the Democrats

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2558301/posts

[Matchett-PI]

bttt

[Mamzelle]

Just pick a couple in the state closest to you.

[DIRTYSECRET]

It’s unfortunate that candidates capable of winning could be hurting for money. We are more generous than the Dems when it comes to parting with our cash. Can’t help all 20 but my $10 is going to South Dakota. Hearseh-Sandlin is an air head who got by on her looks in the past. $25 will go to Angle in the Senate. A conservative candidate in SD is just as good as one in Calif. The kicker is the advertising $$ goes farther in places like SD. I’d say look for the red states first where McLame won in 08.’

[randita]

The kicker is the advertising $$ goes farther in places like SD. I’d say look for the red states first where McLame won in 08.’

Also look for open seats in McCain voting districts .

We've identified such districts here:

http://www.keyhouseraces.com/content/key-races-three-year-presidential-voting-history-chart

It's just a crime that there are so many Democrats representing districts that have a strong conservative lean in presidential elections.

[phillyfanatic]

This is an excellent suggestion. Please allow me to be included. I do not trust the RNC or other groups just Pub. I am a Pub but they do not seem to see just what districts can actually be won. I like Jim warning us.

[firebrand]

While it is a noble effort to help those with less funding, I think the only criterion should be whether the race is close or not. Of course there will be some overlap between the two lists—they are somewhat the same in concept but not exactly the same.

InterceptPoint’s work on this is very helpful. If he keeps bringing it up to date, and we keep following the changes, we have the best chance of winning as many seats as possible.

[InterceptPoint]

You can count on us to keep the data up to date. And we've just finished an overhaul of the KeyHouseRaces website to add in the total funds raised by the candidates and some other useful information in what we call "The Races at a Glance" format. The list of races is limited to those where the primaries are complete or we are very certain who the candidates will be. As more primaries are completed the list will grow.

The funding story is interesting. The Dems are ahead for sure but some of the Republicans are catching up and a few are very well funded. The data we're using is from OpenSecrets.org and is the total amount of money raised rather that what is in the bank. We may add a simple link to the complete total/spent/on-hand data compiled by OpenSecrets for each race in the future. In any case, the format makes it easy to compare funds on a Dem vs. Republican basis for each district.