What Happened in California? Billbray v Busby

Was the district to Red to ever really hope to take?

Were Busby’s comments re immigrants not needing papers to vote a killer?

It appears that what happened was the Republicans spent $11 million dollars in a successful effort to limit the swing from the last election to 18% away from the Republican candidate. And they have to do it again in November.

Sure, it’s a bit of a disappointment to Democrats that they lost in one of the most conservative districts in the country. Hopefully they’ll figure out how to nail down that last 4% over the next 180 days.

I have a hard time believing the trumped up issue of “papers” had anything to do with the outcome.

But “Culture of Corruption” was made to order in that district… will it play better elsewhere?

Or did William Jefferson and the Dem congressman from WV who was ranking member of the House Ethics Committe hurt that play?

All politics is local, to coin a phrase. Look at each district individually, and each candidate, then add them up.

If a publicly-corrupt pol can be replaced by his party with someone respectable, then traditional party alignments seem to predominate, as they just did in SD. I wouldn’t doubt that Cunningham would have lost this fall, or that Ney or the rest of the Abramoff gang will if they don’t get leaned on by their parties first - being a mostly-centrist country, we still place integrity over party affiliation most of the time.

The fact that Busby turned a Republican slam-dunk election into a hair-splitting contest – while running a lackluster campaign – is keeping the Republican Party brain trust nervous, I’d wager.

You better get working… 4% went to the Minuteman candidate so I think you’ve got 8% to make up.

Really? Busby got four percent less than she did last time, and it went to the Minutemen? That’s news to me!

Four percent going to the minutemen probably came from the Republican candidate, don’t you think?

Margin of victory was 4 plus the other candidate’s 4 = 8

Just heard Chris Mathews on Hardball prominently mention the “don’t need papers” comment. Bet he didn’t do that before the election?

More likely it was Cunningham who turned the slam dunk into a nail biter. I wouldn’t draw too much from this one district-- it’s got unique problems that don’t translate to other distrcts easily.

The win would’ve been a huge psychological boost for the Dems. But there’s still a lot of time between now and November aand, despite their prodiceous coffers, the Pubs haven’t been quite able to buy a clue yet.

The Kos Kiss of Death.

Couple of things. Keep in mind, as someone already said, that the “Minuteman Party” candidate got 4% of the vote, which was probably Republican last time. Also Busby had a huge foot-in-mouth moment recently where she said something to the effect that you don’t need [citizenship] papers in order to vote. People took that mean that she endorsed voter fraud by illegal aliens-- a touchy subject in this district that borders on Mexico. Chalk that up to bad luck, or to her being an inexperienced candidate/campaigner? If the latter, then do the Dems have a whole slew of expereinced candidates to challenge incumbent Pubs in Nov who won’t make similar slips?

Of course the Pubs ran Bilbray, a former lobbyist, in a countey whose previous Congressman is now sitting in jail for accepting bribes. Now, is not fair to say lobbyist = bribery, but more than a few people are going to make that connection anyway.

So, what does this tell us about November? Not much other than it’s going to be one helluva ride, folks!

Why on earth would voters in Southern California base their votes on what happened to a Congressman from Louisiana? :confused:

You tell me what the Culture of Corruption claim is based on… I thought it was Pubs Bad; Dems Good. BTW I forgot to mention Harry “The Boxer” Reid minor indiscretion.

Another thing to consider… while the RNC put about $5 million into this race vs. only $1 million for the DNC; the Dem race for a Governor candidate ($60 million spent) should have brought out more more than the typical number of Dems.

You could mention it, but you should also mention that, while indiscretion usually means that someone did something wrong, that isn’t the case with Reid.

Is this thread really about CA 50?

Maybe this will help the left side of the blog world swing gently back to reality a little. I never had any real inclination that Busby would take such a solidly red district. What really did shock me is the amount of money the Republicans were forced to spend to keep it red. I don’t think any congress critters with an ® after their names have to worry about losing their seats if they are in a solidly red district. But I am certain the ones in purple districts are rightfully nervous. Are there more than 15 of that species?

Analysing this in terms of red and blue or purple districts is a gross oversimplification. I think you now that, N-Carmen. And we don’t know that the Pubs had to spend that much money, we only know that they did. If you look at the unique details of this race, it’s very hard to draw any generalities.

To the contrary red and blue districts are key to getting elected. I would say the same about “purple” ones, but they’ve been hunted nearly to extinction. How the district was drawn (and by whom) is the salient fact of every congressional race. The districts are mostly gerrymandered to all but guarantee an outcome.

If Elbridge Gerry had had the computer software we have today, it would have been forbeidden in the constitution.

Let me explain further… Red and Blue are terms used in presidential races. I absolutely hate that terminology, but it’s here to stay. The gerrymandering of Congressional districts along party lines is geared towards local politics, not national politics. There is going to be some overlap, of course, but it’s still an oversimplification to take measurement that was set up to determin how likely a presidential candidate ill win and project it on how likely a Congressional candidate will win. Particularly in the West and Southwest where a large Hispanic vote is going to be important, you can see a significant voting block that will go Republican in a presidential race, but Democrat in local races. You can also see this clearly at the state level, too. The very “blue” states of and MA and CA have Republican governors. The very “red” state of MT has a Democratic governor.

He said he shouldn’t have taken the free tickets and wouldn’t in the future so maybe it was just the appearance of an indiscretion. I guess it was wrong enough for him to change his ways.

CA 50 … House races in general… Dem strategery… Pub trunout…

That incident will play such an insignificant role in the elections that we might as well ignore it. The Louisiana guy will probably do some damage to the Dems, but not Reid’s actions. Nobody is going to care about a few boxing tickets.