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Wednesday, July 27, 2005

FLASHBACK: Friday, March 18th, 2005

Posted by Bob Brigham

In honor of Swing State Project hitting one million page views, I thought I'd remind everyone of DavidNYC's: OH-02: Let's Take This Open Seat on a Trial Run on DailyKos - Friday, March 18, 2005:

But I don't think this is only bad news, and I don't think we should write this seat off. Rather, I think an off-year special election (which will likely take place either in August or November) for a seat we have little chance of capturing is the perfect time to get creative and try out new ideas.

As Atrios is fond of observing, being in the opposition can be fun. Similarly, it can also be freeing. I'd love to see local, grassroots/netroots-type Dems get behind a candidate willing to be bold - to do things like Jeff Seemann's highly successful "Campaign Manager for a Day" and whatever daring ideas lie beyond. We can use this race to experiment - to see what works and what doesn't - in plenty of time for the midterm elections next year.


I know there is at least one relatively local DFA group based in Cincinnati, and another not too far away in Dayton. Since this race will probably not attact too many eager "big name" Dems, DFA-types (or folks belonging to any other similarly reform-minded group) might well be able to recruit and nominate one of their own. So how about it, guys?

Update [2005-3-19 0:38:3 by DavidNYC]: Again in the comments, several people have argued that our eventual candidate here should push the ethics issue hard. I agree - this is the perfect venue in which to try out the "DeLay/corruption/ethics" line of attack (which I first saw elucidated by Chris Bowers) and see if it resonates. We should also hammer on Social Security while the iron is still hot.

In the comments, Zoweee said:

But my personal reservations notwithstanding: you people have HUGE nutsack. Just enormous. The thought of trying to lone-wolf an off-season congressional seat that God knows the national party will ignore because it is so Republican... man, I am impressed. This is the kind of grass-roots awesome the democrats need. I'm not an Ohioan myself, but my checkbook is open when the time comes. Go put some piss in the race, boys.

And here is the first SSP post:

In 2004, the Democrats surrendered Portman's second congressional district (even though it was in OHIO). Charles Sanders spent $15K and -- act surprised -- Portman coasted to re-election. This left Portman free to raise money for his cohorts, which he did.

I'm sure Tim will have more.

And he did.

Posted at 08:02 PM in Ohio | Technorati