Enough about the Presidency. Who’s running for legislative office in your local districts?
Are you talking at the state level or still national?
Congressman Emanuel Cleaver is running in the MO-5 where I live. There are I think four Republicans vying to run against him. Jacob Turk will probably get the nomination and lose to Cleaver by around 20 points like he has the last two times he tried.
State level there’s a ton of activity. I could probably bore you with the details of about a dozen districts around the Kansas City area if you’re so interested, but I don’t think you are.
See, I know nothing about Mr Turk, but I admire his doggedness. In my congressional district, it seems like we get a new unknown candidate as challenger every election, and then he disappears.
I posted the following over in this threadabout a month and a half ago. At this point, I haven’t changed my thinking.
One of the seats in Colorado will positively not switch back. Redistricting has made it safer for Gardner. (And frankly, I never expected a Democrat to hold CO-04 even if they hadn’t changed it. Betsy Markey’s two years should mostly be applauded for the highly desirable effect of disposing of Marilyn Musgrave.)
And, in fairness, the changes that made CO-04 safer for a Republican–the move of Fort Collins from the 4th to the 2nd) also made CO-02 safer for the Democrat incumbent Polis.
CO-03, the seat that Salazar lost to a Republican in '10, could change back. It didn’t change much, still covering a vast swathe of the southern and western part of the state, including about 20% Hispanic. But it might not change back; it’s still closely aligned among the parties. Tipton does seem to be well liked. We’ll see.
CO-05, and CO-07 are more competitive now, but I doubt the incumbents Lamborn(R) and Perlmutter(D) will lose.
And, of course, DeGette(D) and Coffman(R) are locks in CO-01 and CO-06, respectively.
In short, those of us hoping for a new Democratic majority in the House shouldn’t expect more than one seat gained in Colorado, if that.
I’ll most probably be throwing a vote to Angus King (I) come November for him to fill Olympia Snowe’s seat.
This is the first Senate election in more than a decade where I don’t automatically know my guy is going to lose.
Oh yeah, Missouri as a whole it’s fairly likely we’ll lose a D seat. Not that the Republicans will pick one up. Redistricting meant that we lost a seat going from 9 down to 8. Currently there are 6 R’s and 3 D’s (1 in KCMO and 2 in St. Louis).
There was some heated debates down in the legislature as they hashed this out. Eventually a deal was struck which would essentially pit the two St. Louis incumbants against each other. On a numbers scale, this seems unfair as Missouri is fairly evenly split in terms of R and D and 5/3 would be much more representative of the populace than 6/2. But there was enough backdoor dealing by the Democrats of all people to arrive at the new map we have today.
Oh and there were redistricting lawsuits at the Congressional level, the state Senate and state Legislature. Congress went nowhere. Senate map got overturned by the Supreme Court and some last minute dealings put a new one together before the filing deadline. The Legislature’s lawsuit is still awaiting a decision from the Supreme Court.
Illinois redistricting means my current Congressman won’t be my next Congressman no matter what. Which is fine with me because, aside from a rubber stamp on the GOP agenda, Rep. Kinzinger has been worthless for my district. God help the people wherever he winds up.
Post redistricting, we have Bill Foster as the likely Democrat with a couple primary challengers vs. Judy Biggert ® who has no opposition due to her challenger being thrown off the ballot, I believe. Foster won Dennis Hastert’s old district after Hastert’s 2007 resignation but lost it in 2010. Biggert’s been serving the old 13th district since 1998. I don’t think anyone’s attempted to take a reading of how the race may shake out.
Florida’s 11th District is represented by Democrat Kathy Castor, who is solidly popular AFAIK. According to Ballotpedia, the only Pub in the field so far is Richard B. Nugent, who already represents the 5th District – it’s a redistricting thing. Anyway, filing deadline is May 7, primary is August 14. If nobody else pops up, then the election presumably will be a mighty Clash of the Incumbents, well-funded and well-connected on both sides, not easy to call.
As far as I know, Jim Sensenbrenner ® will be running again for the House, and has the seat virtually as long as he wants. I don’t think he’s gone under 60% in his life as a career politician.
The US Senate seat is being vacated by Herb Kohl (D), and the main Democratic candidate is Tammy Baldwin, former US Rep from the Madison area, I believe. The Republicans are Tommy Thompson; one of the Fitzgerald boys (2 brothers are majority leaders in the WI legislature, one for the Senate, the other for the Assembly); Mark Neumann, who seems to lose a Republican primary every few years; and a new candidate who announced yesterday, who happens to be a hedge fund manager and has lived in DC for the last 24 years. He’s running as the “citizen” candidate. Sure, buddy.
Interesting news for Wisconsin, mkecane. I predict it’ll be Thompson and Baldwin to make it through the primaries and I’d be rooting for Baldwin.
Democrat Pete Stark will run again in our district. I think he’s 80 years old now. He will win in a landslide, as usual. But I think this may be his last term. The rumor is that he’s thinking of retiring. There’s been a lot of background noise among local Democratic party officials about who might succeed him in this absolute guaranteed Democratic seat.
I just noticed that Tammy Duckworth is giving it another shot against Peter Roskam after having lost by a mere 2% a few cycles ago. I don’t know who else is in the primary, but a sensible Dem would be out the moment she announced because -2% by a Dem around here is a virtual win.
ETA: They redrew the district and she won’t represent me? Well, as long as she beats that idiot Joe Walsh I’m happy, but now somebody’s going to get creamed by Roskam, who hasn’t fucked up too badly.
My new district is heavily Republican, and the Republican incumbent in the equivalent district (which expanded to include me after its Columbus Democrats were packed instead of cracked) is expected to win. The Democratic primary was contested, and as far as I could tell, one candidate’s platform was based on grammar and the other candidate’s was not. Thankfully, grammar won, so at least it won’t be painful to watch. (The anti-grammar candidate had experience, though. He lost to another Republican incumbent in a landslide in 2010.)
I live in California’s 8th district (12th, after redistricting), represented by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. California is represented by two Democratic senators and 53 representatives, 34 Democrats and 18 Republicans. Senator Dianne Feinstein should walk away with re-election this year. With the redistricting, it’s hard to tell which way some districts will swing; most of the incumbents running this year look pretty safe, though the Democrats may pick up a couple of seats.
The First District in New Hampshire has seen some announcements recently by Democrats seeking to challenge the Republican incumbent, Frank Guinta, including Matthew Hancock, a software developer for Liberty Mutual in Dover, as well as:
I was not a a big Shea-Porter fan when she was in office, so I will be looking closely at the the new faces.
I live in Michigan’s 11th District, currently represented by Thaddeus McCotter ®. He’s being opposed by a physician, Dr. Syed Taj (D).
I’m not even sure where I ended up. I was in the old MO-3 (Russ Carnahan’s seat) which got drawn out. Russ is now running aginst William Lacy Clay in the first, leading to some pretty bad blood.
Looking at the new maps it’s actually really hard to tell if I’m now in the 1st or the 2nd (which means either solid Dem or solid GOP). Does anybody have a more detailed website than this one: St. Louis Area Map of the Legislature's Congressional Redistricting Plan
On Edit: Actually looks like a look-up on the SOS website puts me in the first. So I guess I get to vote for Russ again at least once.
I’m in Ohio’s 8th Congressional district, which is owned by John Boehner. I believe he had some token opposition in the Republican primary, but there was no one on the Democratic ballot for that seat. The Senate race is a different story. The incumbent is Sherrod Brown, a progressive Democrat. He’s facing a challenge from the Republican state treasurer, Josh Mandel, and things will probably get quite nasty.
I’m and SE Michigan, and I’m not sure if I’m going to end up in Dingell’s or Conyers’ district. I was in Dingell’s for most of my life, but for the last 10 years I’ve been in Conyers’. I’m hoping to be back in Dingell’s. That’s if he officially decides to run again.
I live in Mn-5, a fqirly solid Democratic district (basically Minneapolis + some suburbs).
The interesting part is that our incumbent Keith Ellison is being challenged in the Democratic battle, by a guy who’s quite right-wing and seems to belong much more in the Republican party.
Apparently, even he doesn’t think he has much chance against Ellison. He’s just in the race to get some commercials on the air. Seems a radical anti-abortion group has some very explicit commercials that they would like to air, but the TV stations are refusing (on the basis of taste; they think these ads would offend their viewers) to show them. But TV stations are required to show ads for political candidates. So this guy is running for Congress, just so his pro-life group can get their ads shown on TV. Should be an interesting campaign.