My state (Missouri) is now taking applications to be on the primary ballot for everything but US President.
[QUOTE=sos.mo.gov]
The 2016 primary will be held on Tuesday, August 2, 2016 (the 1st Tuesday after the 1st Monday in August for even numbered years). The filing period for candidates for the August 2016 primary election is from February 23, 2016 and ends at 5:00 p.m. on March 29, 2016
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I don’t know how they do it where you are, but it’s about that time.
I think it’s past time we talked about the really important sets of races this year, the legislative races. This is the Congress thread. I figure [del]535[/del] ~470 seats is enough for one thread.
Any new challengers? Anything interesting? Anyone you want to knock out, anyone you wish would run?
The top two Senate contenders in California are state Attorney General Kamala Harris and Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez. Sanchez is insane, so my vote is for Harris. There are also Republicans running, but I won’t be surprised if none of them makes it to second place in the top two open primary.
My Democratic Congressman, Ami Bera, has barely squeaked out wins in his last two elections, running in a district that’s pretty evenly split. His pro-Republican stances in the last Congress have really angered labor and some of the liberal voters in the district (myself included. I refused to vote for anybody in the last Congressional election, and since he’s the only Democratic candidate in the upcoming election, I won’t vote for anybody then, either). His opponent is Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, who’s a gun nut and an all-around nut. But he might win. Bera was able to get an endorsement from the Democratic Party at the recent state party convention, but labor activists have said they will not work for him. I’m hoping he loses, insane Scott Jones shows his true colors when he serves, and in two years, we can find a real Democrat instead of a Democrat In Name Only to run for the job.
Given the nature of California’s jungle primary, I think Sanchez will clean Harris’ clock once it’s down to those two. The tradeoff of the jungle primary is that it makes Democratic wins more likely, but it also makes liberal Democratic wins less likely, since Republicans can just switch their votes to the less objectionable Democrat in the runoff.
Aside from her one remark on a radio show, is there really any other case against Sanchez? Isn’t California’s politics racially polarized? Won’t the Latino beat the African-American easily statewide?
She doesn’t know the difference between peole from India and Native Americans. She makes “woo woo woo” sounds when talking about Native Americans.
She endorses the private trade schools that are sponging off their students to get tuitions without providing them with real job opportunities. She has also accepted campaign contributions from them. Harris sued them to shut them down for fraud.
Harris won the endorsement of the state party convention with 78% of the vote.
I think Tammy Duckworth is very likely to win in Illinois, defeating Mark Kirk. Kirk squeaked in during the massive Republican 2010 wave election. Illinois is reliably blue during presidential elections. Also, as of now, Republican governor Bruce Rauner isn’t too popular among the moderate Chicago suburban voters who helped elect him in 2014
Kirk is trying hard to make the election all about Syrian refugees and Gitmo detainees. I don’t think that’ll work for him and I think trying to cast a combat veteran who lost her legs in Iraq as soft on terrorism is probably a loser. On the other hand, it’s not as though he has many other options.
His Twitter feed the last few weeks has been 60% Syria/Gitmo and 30% about some bipartisan legislation aimed at websites like Backpage that supposedly* facilitate human trafficking. And the last 10% mainly being photo-ops. So I’m guessing that’s his focus right now.
Harris is only half African-American. Her mother is Indian.
In any case, everything I’ve seen indicates that Harris is far more popular than Sanchez. She’s much better known statewide, among other things, and in California that is huge.
I few cycles ago, my neighborhood was re-districted out of the Nashville/Davidson County congressional district into a neighboring one. So I went from a moderately democratic district to a rabidly republican one. Often there is not even a democrat on the ballot for some local elections. sigh. The only good thing I can say about my U.S. Representative (Diane Black) is that she’s not in the same league of right-wing craziness as my state representative. I’m bitter about my district.
