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Weekly Open Thread: What Races Are You Interested In?

by: DavidNYC

Fri Sep 04, 2009 at 10:06 PM EDT


No! I like it in here!

DavidNYC :: Weekly Open Thread: What Races Are You Interested In?
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Weekly Open Thread: What Races Are You Interested In? | 57 comments
Here's my trivia question for this week
Last week I asked about Harold Stassen-like multiple-election candidates who eventually won the seat they were seeking.  Today I'm interested in Stassens who failed -- people who ran multiple times for a seat but never won it.  I'm not looking for your stereotypical perennial candidate or third party candidates, though -- I'm interested in folks who make the ballot time after time, win major-party nominations, may even come close to winning general elections, but can't seem to close the deal.

Here's an example: in southern Arizona, there is a virulent racist by the name of Joseph Sweeney.  Sweeney has run for Congress somewhere between twelve and fourteen times beginning in 1974, most recently losing to Raul Grijalva in AZ-07.  He's run as a Democrat, a Republican, and a member of the New Alliance Party.  However, for many of these races he has actually won the nomination of a major party.  In 1988 and 1990, for instance, he was the Republican nominee against Mo Udall.  He has been their nominee three times against Grijalva, including a particularly embarrassing campaign in 2006, when the Republicans actually recruited a top-tier candidate against Grijalva (Avondale mayor Ron Drake), only to have Sweeney crush him in the primary.  Sweeney used to win because he would run in seats where no respectable Republican would be caught dead.  Now he wins because he's run so many times and reached so many general elections that people recognize his name.

Can you think of any other candidates like this?

The Crolian Progressive: as great an adventure as ever I heard of...

i suppose that is one way to do it
Continue running as an unknown and just keep building name recognition.

I'll have to think about that one.

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus

[ Parent ]
Here's another one
Gene Kelly, the Texas Democrat who's run for office 14 times and at least reached a runoff five times (he was the nominee in three of those campaigns).  He doesn't campaign, doesn't care, and still racks up millions of votes because, well, he's Gene Kelly.

His most famous race was in 2004, when he forced well-heeled Democratic Senate candidate Barbara Ann Radnofsky into a runoff, just by putting his name on the ballot.  Her campaign never recovered.  Rick Noriega at least managed to avoid a runoff (barely) in 2008, but Kelly still got over 26% and placed second in the four-candidate field.

The Crolian Progressive: as great an adventure as ever I heard of...

[ Parent ]
you mean 2006
I actually seem to remember Kelly actually did quite public then. And to fair Radnofsky really never had any chance against Hutchinson, only amazed she made as close as she did.

Heck Bill White couldn't have gotten more than 55% of the against Hutchinson even in 2006.

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus

[ Parent ]
That's right
In 2008, when he got 26%, Kelly wouldn't even do interviews.  There's a great quote in that article from Ray McMurrey, a teacher who'd never run for public office before but who thought he could beat Kelley if he worked really hard:

"I've given everything I have," he said. "If [Mr. Kelly] beats me, I'm going to be disillusioned with the democratic process."

Kelly beat him by 14.5 points.

The Crolian Progressive: as great an adventure as ever I heard of...

[ Parent ]
Very good observation
A shame, and ironic. lol.

But in 2006 Kelly did seem to run somewhat for the office.

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus

[ Parent ]
According to that same article
Back in 1990 when he was running against John Cornyn for State Supreme Court Justice, he actually did TV ads.  Apparently his interest in being a serious candidate just waned over time.

The Crolian Progressive: as great an adventure as ever I heard of...
[ Parent ]
14 times could do that to you
Ironic, he ran against Cornyn

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
Great tap-dancer!
And if some of you callow youths don't know whereof I speak, get thee to YouTube. :-)

"Singin' in the Rain," specifically the scene featuring the title song, was his best work.

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
--  Will Rogers  

[ Parent ]
And another
Bob Kelleher, who has run for office 16 times and been on a general election ballot three times: as a Democratic U.S. House candidate in 1964, a Green Party Senate candidate against Max Baucus in 2002, and, amazingly, as the Republican nominee against Baucus in 2008.  Kelleher was elected to the 1972 Montana Constitutional Convention, but that doesn't really disqualify him, does it?

The Crolian Progressive: as great an adventure as ever I heard of...
[ Parent ]
1968, not 1964 n/t
[ Parent ]
Wikipedia has a good list
here.  Among interesting names are Chris Bell of Texas, Jim Oberweis of Illinois, Alan Keyes of a whole bunch of different states, and three names I wasn't familiar with: John W. Griffin and Charles W. Sanders of Ohio and Jeffrey Thomas of Wisconsin.

The Crolian Progressive: as great an adventure as ever I heard of...
[ Parent ]
John C. Turmel
"John C. Turmel is a perennial candidate for election in Canada, and according to the Guinness Book of Records holds the records for the most elections contested and for the most elections lost (68)."

Won a reasonable of votes a few times.

[ Parent ]
Turmel is running....again!
There's a special election in a constituency in downtown Toronto, called St. Paul's, and I checked the candidates list and, yes, Turmel is on it. And no, he does not live in the constituency.
[ Parent ]
Say no to Stephen Lynch
I have been miserable having him as a congressman. He is conservative and many people in the district dislike him. The only reason he is a congressman is because he is from Southie and was good at getting people out to vote in the special election primary in 2001. He does not represent any of the views of anyone on this site, or the views of people who blog on dailykos, or the views of residents of Massachusetts. I dont care whether its Martha Coakley, a Kennedy, or any other representative, just anyone but Stephen Lynch. He is a DINO (democrat in name only) and has no business being a senator from Mass.
and he succeeded the great Markey
(i might be a little off on the name, sorry rusty on MA politics).

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
That would be
[ Parent ]
Moakley, right
I was on the right track, I knew it started with M, and ended in an EY.

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
My point is that everyone complains about
senators like Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, etc. If you dont want another one of those then do not support Stephen Lynch and allow him to use his base in Southie to bully everyone into voting for him like he did in order to win his congressional seat in 2001.
[ Parent ]
His bullying won't work
If everyone in South Boston votes for the Republican, the Democrat would still win statewide.  That may not be true in the 9th district, however.
[ Parent ]
I don't think
someone as conservative as Lynch would be able to bully the rest of the Boston machine into supporting him, much less the rest of the state. He controls a fairly narrow bailiwick in MA-09, and I highly doubt that most outside of the South End would support him, especially with bigger fish like Coakley in the race already vacuuming up the machine support from the rest of the state. He's a neighborhood bully, not statewide material.

Also, once it came out how conservative he was, he'd be done, especially with the overwhelming desire to do right by Kennedy by electing a similarly leftist candidate to the seat.

I really don't think Lynch has the oxygen to compete in this environment.  

[ Parent ]
Anyone on this site?
A range of opinions are represented on this site, although most are generally pro-Democratic Party. I wouldn't assume too much. I take your points about his political positions, though. (For the record, I would consider myself a social democrat voting Democratic primarily by default.)

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
--  Will Rogers  
[ Parent ]
so you're more concerned with social issues
than progressive movement on the economy?

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
You're joking, right?
n/t

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
--  Will Rogers  
[ Parent ]
To clarify
Democratic socialist, if you prefer. :-)

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
--  Will Rogers  
[ Parent ]
Do not presume to to speak....
... for everyone on this site. I consider myself a center/left independent (emphises on center). I do not know enough about Rep Lynch to have an opinion on him but IMO not being on the left wing of the Democratic Party is not neccisarily a bad thing.

"Where free Unions and collective bargaining is forbidden, freedom is lost." - Ronald Reagan
[ Parent ]
I'm not going to go
for an anti-choice Democrat from Massachusetts. He sure wouldn't get my money.
[ Parent ]
Maybe from another state
not as a replacement for Ted Kennedy in the most Democratic state in the country.

There is no reason for why a anti-choice anti-gay person should represent a state where only 44% consider themselves religious as compared to 65% nationally.

[ Parent ]
More Than One Reason
Lynch is also hemming-and-hawing about the public option in the health care reform battle. Joe Moakley wasn't pro-choice either (MA-09 has a lot of culturally conservative voters, probably moreso than any other district in the state) so that's hardly the only issue.

No way should Massachusetts elect a DINO to fill Ted Kennedy's seat. In some states a guy like that is the best you can do, but not for this seat.  

36, M, Democrat, MD-03

[ Parent ]
time for your weekly 1980s flash back

I really do love this video and this song, lol.

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus

we shall soon learn who hear
appreciates the 80s.

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
Me! Me! Me! *raises hand*


My blog
Twitter
Scribd
28, New Democrat, Female, TX-03 (hometown CA-26)
[ Parent ]
yes. Hi five.
Gotta love Alphaville, lol. The best West German Pop Band of the 1980s.

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
The Comedian
I remember when that trailer dropped. Funniest film trailer of all time. Heard the movie was terrible though.

26, Male, Democrat, TX-26
This is why we posted the trailer
And not the movie. :)
[ Parent ]
hi


Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
Yeah
it's been a while since I saw it, but as I recall, the not-Seinfeld guy in the movie came off as a grade-A tool.
[ Parent ]
NY state GOP chair
Ed Cox, Nixon's son-in-law, is running against Henry Wojtaszek who is backed by Giuliani.

Loser has inside track to dating Jeanine Pirro. May be.

New York City races
The races that are most interesting me right now are New York City Comptroller, in which I'm still undecided, and Manhattan DA, which I'd love to see polling on.

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
--  Will Rogers  
MN-SEN: I love Al Franken

Just saying. He's doing a great job. I'm increasingly confident that he can win re-election if he tries.

I've been extremely impressed with Franken
But not to be a Debbie Downer, if Pawlenty runs for President, loses, he's clearly going to be looking for something to run for.  He's had his eye on the Senate before back in 2002 and I think that portends a good chance he's eyeing Franken.  Pawlenty vs Franken would be a tough tough race for us to win.  And then add in mid-term through hopefully second Obama term.  Pawlenty is saavy and to be frank, a very good common sense Republican who can rile up the anti-intellectual crowd while rocking it out in the suburbs.

But, this is MN, Pawlenty has never won a majority, we're a true blue state, and Franken is doing a fantastic job.  

(I know everyone get's sick of me trash talking Franken and his electoral chances, the man won by 312 votes in a huge wave year against an accidental Senator who has never been popular.  Im totally justified.)

[ Parent ]
Pawlenty
If Pawlenty decides to run for president first he is doomed. While running for President he will sprint to the right as fast as he can (similar to what Romney did), and while doing so will become more and more unpopular among Minnesota moderates and liberals. If he losing the nomination or wins it and goes on to lose in the general, if he decides to run against Franken he would either have to stay on the Right (and lose because it is Minnesota or go back to the center and look like and asshole. Franken is safe against Pawlenty. Congressman Paulson is who we have to worry about.    

17, Gay Male, Democrat, NJ-8  
[ Parent ]
Not necessarily.
Massachusetts doesn't have the Independence Party screwing everything up for Democrats, and Pawlenty seems smart enough to at least not go out of his way to bash his state to curry favor with the right wing the way Romney did.

I agree that there are probably better statewide candidates that aren't as unpopular as T-Paw is already (if I were Jim Ramstad, I'd be considering it, if not for the little detail that he'd probably get primaried from the right if he ran.), but I wouldn't so blithely assume that Franken is safe, especially after the mess that Minnesota had to go through just to get him seated in the first place. The Bachmannites will be fighting him every step of the way because he actually speaks for real people.

Anyway, six years is a long time. At this point, I'm more concerned with potential losses in 2012 at this point, when the GOP has basically no seats (other than Ensign and maybe Kyl) to defend, and there are a lot of 2006 gains and 2006 passes hovering on the edge. I grant that most D losses in 2010 and 2012 will be Blue Dogs and DLC refuse, but there's still a chance that a good guy like Sherrod Brown loses his evenly split state in a bad year.

[ Parent ]
Pawlenty wont have to move right
As there is only one issue where he isnt a big time righty already as is and that's when it comes to environmental issues, and even then it really only comes down to common sense basic stuff, like switching from oil to renewable energy sources to create jobs and because it's efficient and cuts down on pollution.

Pawlenty will hopefully run as the Republican as he is, a common sense suburban Republican who can appeal to moderates as that is a niche that will need to be filled in the Republican primary.  He is a Romney already when it comes to ideology so he wont have to shift to the right like you are predicting, he's already there.  And MN is no MA, we've already elected right-winger Pawlenty while Romney had to be a big time moderate to win MA and then had to move so far ideological to fit the national brand.  You can definitely win in MN as a right-winger, you just need to do it like Pawlenty did and be able to win the suburbs.

I looked back over his county vote totals for his 2006 re-election, that man absolutely KILLED in the suburbs, comparatively speaking.  Hennepin County (which is Minneapolis plus a shit ton of suburbs, 400k pop for Minneapolis, another 700k for suburbs), Pawlenty lost 51-41%.  He just barely won the whole state by a little under a percentage point.  I compare this to the 2000 Presidential election as Gore only won the state by 2% so it's comparable to statewide vote total.  Gore won Hennepin County 54-39%.  A 10% spread vs a 15% spread shows Pawlenty's huge draw as a candidate.  And when you compare this to 2004 when Kerry only won by 3%, Kerry won Hennepin County 59-39%!  So while Pawlenty won by a 2% smaller margin than Kerry, he beat Bush's margin in that county by 10%!  The period between 2000 and 2008 was an absolutely HUGE increase in the Democrats ability to gain votes in the Minneapolis/St Paul suburbs with us winning nearly every single suburban state house and senate seat in that period, most of them being pick-ups.

Now, you mention Paulsen.  Paulsen is in the exact same mold as Pawlenty, albeit probably a bit further to the right but not since he's been in Congress as he now occupies an Obama district that will eventually slip from underneath him (he represents all those suburbs in Hennepin County mentioned above, ironically).   I dont think we could categorize Paulsen as being a tougher opponent than Pawlenty, they are both pretty similar in political ideology and posturing.  But," Erik Paulsen", you dont get more Lutheran Norwegian than that (highest ratio of Lutherans in the country and most of us descend from Scandinavia.)  He'd probably have less baggage than Pawlenty come 2014.

[ Parent ]
Oooooo, turns out we may both be right!
From an article on CNN.com

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a possible contender for the GOP's 2012 presidential nomination, said Sunday that Obama's speech could disrupt an already-hectic first day of school for many students.

"I think there's concerns about the disruption," he said on CNN's "State of the Union," calling the scheduling of the speech a "little ham-fisted" by the White House. "

Totally pandering but making sure to stay on the other side of the conservative fence, ie, the intelligent one.  I think this indicates he's clearly trying to get on the "correct" side of the debate, correct in the meaning of being on the correct side to win the nomination, but he isnt going to jump on the idiot band-wagon of birthers, deathers, and tea baggers.  If he thought he could win by doing that, he'd probably be all over it though.

[ Parent ]
Congressional Districts
I'm coming up with a research project on environmental justice that will compare congressional districts and political competitiveness. Does anyone have a spreadsheet containing the results of the presidential election, the congressional representative, the state, and the number of the district?  
Uh
I do... somewhere around here... ah, here it is:

http://www.swingstateproject.c...

[ Parent ]
Excel
Thanks, this will help-- I just wondered if anyone had them in Excel format-- but that's just me being extremely lazy.. thanks! :)  
[ Parent ]
Congressional Quarterly has all of that info.
It's just not in a spreadsheet all in once place, meaning you'd have to click on every district.  SSP has presidential results, but I'm not sure that would be considered a reputable source in academic settings.

Follow the elections in Georgia at the 2010 Georgia Race Tracker.
[ Parent ]
Which is a god damn shame
Ive got a pretty good relationship with a former Prof at the univ. I went for undergrad and she is definitely impressed with my knowledge of electoral politics but I can tell she is always a little sketched out that I acquired all of it from a bunch of strangers on a blog.  

I think since SSP is pretty much part of the netroots movement, it's easy to tie this blog into all the other Dem ones where it's more pushing progressive politics and a place to vent/discuss current events.  This blog, while it does have that element sometimes, is totally more a place for objective political analysis.  This blog has a completely different purpose than Dkos and MYDD, etc. but shares the same base of people, for the most part.  This isnt to discredit Dkos or anything, Dkos is my go-to place for issue-oriented advocacy and information while this blog really just feels like a place for us all to be political scientists without having gotten a Ph.D.  That's kind of the beauty of electoral politics, there's studying it in a ton of books and reading tons of theory, but often, to understand it, all you have to do is follow it and see the patterns.  I totally feel equipped to teach a class at a univ. if I wanted to based off what I've learned by being part of this blog.  I sometimes fantasize about it; Id do voting behavior of certain demographics (AA, Hispanics, elderly, rural vs urban vs suburban vs exurban, GLBT, young vs old), political strategy, redistricting, PVI, etc.  Oh, it'd be such a wet dream since my friends can only handle me for so long when I talk politics.  It'd be bomb to have people pay me to talk about this all day!

[ Parent ]
I love entering political data
especially on California demographics and elections so much, I have been thinking about opening my own California election encyclopedia business, especially after seeing that I have to go through many sources to find data on California elections. I want fellow California election wonks to be able to get all the information they need in just one series of encyclopedias.

My blog
Twitter
Scribd
28, New Democrat, Female, TX-03 (hometown CA-26)
[ Parent ]
hey IowaCityDem
Drop by Bleeding Heartland sometime!
[ Parent ]
IL-Sen
Alexi Giannoulias came out for gay marriage.  

http://www.suntimes.com/news/b...

I cant help but feel like we are at a point where if you want to be the Democratic nominee in a blue state, you have to come out in favor of gay marriage, that is if you have a primary to look forward to and you need to draw in the base.

My letter to the editor
A while back, I read a really offensive letter to the editor in my hometown paper, The Youngstown Vindicator. With a clear head, I wrote a response that knocked down each of the guy's ranting points. At the time, I was rather dispirited, not only because of what was happening nationally but also because I had not yet been accepted into grad school in the University of Akron. Heck, I was actively comtemplating going into sewlf-imposed exile (I had had a REALLY 2 weeks leading up to then).

Then, lo and behold, I get accepted in time AND my letter gets published. For the first time since last November, I felt truly empowered and am now ready to fight back for as long as it takes. After all, my namesake never backed down against the Empire, the Yuuzhan Vong, or the Sith, so why should I? As they say: Never give up, never surrender!

For those interested, here's my actual letter:

http://www.vindy.com/news/2009...

What do you think?

OT: A Website you might like
It's called GalacticBasic: http://www.galacticbasic.net/f...

Follow the elections in Georgia at the 2010 Georgia Race Tracker.
[ Parent ]
Holiday?
Since today is a holiday, do we get a daily digest?  
GA-10: Crazy Paul Broun (R) has a primary challenge
A 26 year-old in the (sit down; this is surprising) solar energy business is challenging Broun.  The guys name is Cason Sisk:

casonsisk.com

Follow the elections in Georgia at the 2010 Georgia Race Tracker.

Weekly Open Thread: What Races Are You Interested In? | 57 comments

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