The candidate filing period opened today - and Dan was there to make it official, saying he hoped to signal his understanding of how eager Central Texas voters are to get started on changing Washington.
It’s World Series week, and Congressman Mike McCaul is about to get another chance to improve his batting average when a measure providing uninsured Texas kids the kind of health insurance program he enjoys comes up again for debate.
So far, he’s batting 0-2.
First, he voted against the bi-partisan SCHIP bill that would have extended coverage to nearly 1.4 million Texas children whose parents work hard and earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to afford private insurance. Then, he remained in lockstep with the Bush-Cheney administration and voted against overriding the President’s veto.
Forty-four Republicans joined the Democratic majority in voting to override last week and guarantee access to affordable health care for the children of parents who are working hard and playing by the rules. They ignored the misinformation spread by the White House and did the right thing.
The U.S. House Thursday is scheduled to vote on whether to override the President's controversial veto of the bi-partisan State Children's Health Insurance Program. Rep. Mike McCaul should vote to provide more than 1.4 million uninsured Texas children the health care they need.
Unfortunately, McCaul voted against uninsured kids and for insurance industry special interests the first round. Will he find the moral courage to do the right thing today? Will he finally make Texas priorities his priorities?
With retirement fever becoming an epidemic on Capitol Hill this week, I thought it would be useful to take a look back at how the open seat picture unfolded in the 2006 election cycle and compare it to where we stand today.
At this point in 2005, Republicans were dealing with nine open seats of an eventual total of twenty. Interestingly, only two of these nine were straight-up retirements, whereas the bulk of these early announcements were made by House members seeking a promotion to a statewide office. While the rumors and speculation are rampant, only five Republicans have announced retirements this year:
However, of these five, four are "straight-up" retirements, while the fifth (Duncan Hunter) may as well be, too. Additionally, retirements by Rick Renzi (AZ-01) and Ralph Regula (OH-16) seem all but official, and many are convinced that Dave Hobson (OH-07) will throw in the towel, as well. I don't expect that we'll see too many Republican House members (if any) bothering to try their hand at statewide races next year, but I do expect, with the shocking retirement announcements of Pryce and Pickering, that many more Republican members will test the winds during the August recess and make similar decisions (if not announcements) around Labor Day. I believe that this rings especially true when one considers that most the "true" retirements of 2006 (i.e. the desire to end one's political career) came in the fall/winter of '05 and '06. And in a Presidential cycle, perhaps many potential retirees will feel obligated to give their would-be successors more of an opportunity to build their campaigns before the media cycle is utterly dominated by the top of the ticket.
By: Jordan Wells and Kevin Hrit – (Disclosure: Jordan worked as Nancy Skinner’s Online Outreach Organizer in 2006. Kevin worked as Nancy Skinner’s Field Director in 2006, and crunched numbers for Practical Political Consulting in Lansing.)
Michigan’s 9th Congressional District will be one of the top targeted races for 2008. The DCCC has already aired ads exposing Knollenberg’s awful record on veterans. Knollenberg is under fire from citizen action groups, and has been constantly bashed in letters to the editor throughout the district. Knollenberg is beatable. He narrowly won the ’06 election with 51% of the vote, and has 15% less money now than he did this time that cycle.
It appears the 9th District has undergone a sudden blue trend. However the Democratic base in the district has been growing steadily for the last eight years. Despite the growing Democratic base, Joe Knollenberg continues to cruise to electoral success versus weak challengers.
Jump below the fold for an extremely detailed analysis of the numbers from the 9th District.
The commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence wasn't really a surprise. We already knew the President believed in amnesty.
But the silence from our Congressman is troubling. Mike McCaul fancies himself an authority on national security and is a member of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.
When I was a 17-year-old high school student in Austin, I volunteered for Congressman Jake Pickle, the legendary Texas Congressman who held the CD-10 seat for 31 years, from 1963 until he retired in 1994. Back then CD-10 was known as "LBJ's District" because a young Lyndon Johnson had held it. LBJ used the seat to lead implementation of FDR's New Deal, and his efforts brought electricity to central Texas.
Congressman Pickle was a worthy heir to the LBJ legacy. His work to reorganize Social Security has kept the program solvent and functioning into the present. He also brought a great deal of research and technology investment to the area, and was a strong and effective advocate for higher education and the University of Texas.
Now I'm running for that seat myself. And though the district has changed dramatically (thanks to Tom DeLay and his partisan allies), the promise of public service I learned in Congressman Pickle's office still holds true today: honor the past and imagine the future.
I'm running for U.S. Congress in the Texas 10th. Why?
Because my district was gerrymandered by Tom DeLay and Karl Rove, and our current representative does not reflect the mainstream values of Houston, Austin, and all the places in between.
Iraq. Katrina. Abu Ghraib. Walter Reed and Guantánamo, Osama Bin Laden at large. Big Pharma writing Medicare plans while Texas seniors lose prescription drug coverage. Big Insurance writing campaign checks while Texans pay twice the national average to insure their homes. Soaring deficits, a demoralized foreign policy - and a capital city so tied up in partisan knots that they have no idea how to get us back on the right track.
Hot on the heels of the DSCC's newest poll showing Texas Sen. John Cornyn in a weak position for his re-election bid, here's a blast from Texas' recent past:
I wanna meet the marketing genius who came up with these. Truly powerful stuff.
Campaigns, as we all know, start earlier and earlier every cycle. But I thought it might be helpful to take a look back at when some of last year's Senate challengers formally filed statements of candidacy with the FEC, as something of a benchmark for what we might expect this year:
So this table tells me two things. First, that running for Senate is an incredibly hard two-year slog for most people. Alright, we already knew that, but seeing all these dates puts this fact into stark relief. This business ain't for the weak of heart - or body.
Second, this also tells me that if this cycle is anything like the last one, we may have to wait almost a year to see the field get hammered down. However, given general trends, plus the presidential race (with its super-early primaries) sucking up so much oxygen, I'd expect to see most serious candidates filings take place well before February 2007. I don't think we'll have too many - if any - Lamonts or Webbs this time. I wouldn't be surprised if just about every contender files by Labor Day of this year.
Bottom line: We've still got plenty of waiting left to do on the Senate recruitment front, but probably not as much as last time. And you can be sure Chuck Schumer isn't wasting even a moment. Neither, of course, are we.
(One small caveat about this list: As I say, it reflects candidate filing dates with the FEC. Actual announcements - ie, the kind with all the hoopla and press coverage - might have taken place at different times than listed in this chart. But in most cases, they should probably be pretty close.)
