This area is kinda the I-4 corridor. I would say out of the 3 districts I drew which are about 780k people give or take. This is a fast growing area of Florida and this is merely a map that will focus on the communities of interest idea of this area.
• CO-Sen: Mark Udall endorsed his fellow Senator Michael Bennet yesterday. Superficially, that's completely unsurprising, but it's an indicator that we've gotten to the point where it seems unlikely anyone else from the Democratic political establishment (former state House speaker Andrew Romanoff, for instance) might challenge the appointed Bennet in the primary.
• FL-Sen: I predicted yesterday that billionaire Tom Golisano's interest in the Florida senate race wouldn't last long, and now it doesn't even seem to have ever existed. He let the Buffalo News know today that he'd never publicly expressed any interest, and that nobody (starting with Politics1, where the rumor started) ever called to ask him about it before launching the story.
• ME-Gov: After months of nothing happening in the Maine governor's race, now we have two candidates. Democratic State Rep. Dawn Hill, who represents part of York County and owns a dog day care in her spare time, announced she's in the race. She may be a long shot in the primary against former AG and former state House speaker Steve Rowe, who quietly filed his candidacy papers last week.
• FL-09: Our condolences to the family and friends of Phyllis Busansky, who died unexpectedly last night. She ran a solid race in FL-09 in 2006, and was elected Hillsborough County's Supervisor of Elections in 2008.
• NC-08: With the NC GOP trying to recover the fumble on their attempts to recruit Carolina Panthers star Mike Minter to go up against freshman Rep. Larry Kissell, a new possibility has emerged: former state Rep. Mia White (who was Mia Morris while in the legislature). She's been pretty far out of the loop lately, though... she has been living in Singapore, where she's been American politics commentator for what she called their equivalent of CNN.
• NY-23: One more Republican has declared his interest in the open seat in the 23rd, who wasn't on anybody's watch list: veterinarian Gary Cooke. In a dairy-heavy district, Cooke seems primarily focused on farm issues.
• OR-04: Springfield mayor Diamond Joe Quimby Sid Leiken has already run into some trouble in his nascent campaign against Rep. Peter DeFazio: he's the subject of a campaign finance complaint from Democrats. Leiken paid $2,000 to a company called P&G Marketing and Research for "surveys and polls," but no such firm exists and the address is the same as his mother's real estate business. While Leiken didn't return calls on the matter, Leiken's campaign manager said that he has receipts for all of the campaign's expenditures... except for this one.
• PA-03: You know your campaign wasn't meant to be, when the first mention your campaign gets in the press is your Facebook announcement that you're dropping out of the campaign. The GOP's lone challenger against freshman Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper, social studies teacher Brian Lasher, dropped out, leaving the GOP without a candidate, although businessman Steve Fisher is still thinking about it. Hard to fathom the GOP giving up without a fight in such a traditionally swingy district.
• Cal-St. Ass.: Fresno-area Assemblyman Juan Arambula left the Democratic caucus yesterday to become an independent, supposedly over budget issues (although water issues may be a major subtext). This tips the balance to a still comfortable 49-29-1 for the Democrats, but with Arambula gone they're now five votes short of the 2/3s necessary to do anything useful with the budget. Arambula is term-limited out in 2010, so the fallout is contained.
• Demographics: Nate Silver has, as always, a fascinating graph as part of a piece on changing migration rates in the last few years. Migration from blue states to red states has slowed significantly in recent years, probably because of the economic slowdown. The plus side is that this may salvage a few Democratic House seats in 2010.
Back in August, we crunched the voter registration numbers in nine key Florida congressional districts, and found Democrats making big gains in all of them.
The Florida Division of Elections has just posted new numbers for each congressional district, and a quick glance confirms that the trend is continuing big time. Statewide, Democrats have added an additional 200,000 registered voters to their advantage over the GOP since July. But let's take a look at the same nine districts that we looked at in August.
In the 2006 column, we have the GOP's voter registration advantage in each district as of October 10th, 2006. In the next column, we have the numbers as of July 28 of this year, followed by the most recent numbers (October 8). Take a peek:
District
Oct-06
Jul-08
Oct-08
FL-08
14,388
2,113
9,243
FL-18
23,202
8,456
1,730
FL-25
21,818
7,857
3,364
FL-21
28,146
14,999
10,543
FL-24
32,310
23,263
14,333
FL-16
31,228
21,201
16,286
FL-15
31,509
22,153
16,569
FL-09
33,956
28,614
24,952
FL-13
62,230
55,542
51,933
Wow -- for the first time, Democrats now have a partisan advantage in the 8th District, where Democrat Alan Grayson is taking on GOP crumb-bum Ric Keller. Keller is locked in the fight of his political life, and these numbers prove it.
While two of these districts are pretty much off the map in terms of realistic Democratic pick-up opportunities (the 9th CD and the open seat dud in the 15th), the other huge shift can be seen in South Florida, where Democrats are waging tough fights against the Diaz-Balart brothers (the 21st and 25th CDs) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in the 18th District. For years, these districts were seen as Republican strongholds, but now, Democrats have chipped away significantly at the GOP's edge.
Democrats have even made up a lot of ground in the 16th District; it's just too bad that disgraced Rep. Tim Mahoney has squandered it all.
Full raw numbers for all of these districts are available below the fold.
A quick round-up of the results from last night's congressional primaries:
AK-Sen (D): Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich won the Democratic Senate nomination with an impressive 91% of the vote, with 98% of precincts reporting.
AK-Sen (R): Ted Stevens survived his primary against banker Dave Cuddy and Floridian beardo Vic Vickers (and several other also-rans), but only with 63.5% of the vote.
AK-AL (D): Ethan Berkowitz won the Democratic nomination for the state's at-large House seat by a 59-41 margin over '06 candidate Diane Benson. Alaskan Independence Party candidate Don Wright received 5600 votes and will appear on the November ballot.
AK-AL (R): With 98% of precincts reporting and many absentee ballots still outstanding, Don Young has taken a 145-vote lead over Sean Parnell. This race is heading into "contentious recount territory" real fast.
FL-08 (D & R): Democrat Alan Grayson upset '06 nominee Charlie Stuart by a 48-28 margin for the right to take on Ric Keller in November. Keller, meanwhile, barely survived his primary challenge from right-wing radio personality Todd Long, with only 53% of the vote to Long's 47%.
FL-09 (D): In a bit of an upset for the DCCC, attorney Bill Mitchell beat out wealthy former Plant City Mayor John Dicks by a 38-33 margin for the nomination against frosh GOP Rep. Gus Bilirakis.
FL-10 (D): Dunedin Mayor Bob Hackworth dispatched '06 nominee and Ron Paul acolyte Samm Simpson by a 47-29 margin for the chance to take on longtime GOP Rep. Bill Young. Max Linn, a self-funding candidate who ran for Governor in 2006 on the Reform ticket, only earned 24% of the vote.
FL-15 (D & R): Physician Stephen Blythe crushed pilot Paul Rancatore by a 65-35 margin for the Democratic nomination for this open seat. Republicans nominated state Sen. Bill Posey with 77% of the vote, and he seems poised to run away with this race come November.
FL-16 (R): Pittsburgh Steelers heir Ed Tom Rooney won a tight three-way race by a 37-35-28 margin for the GOP nod to face off with Democratic Rep. Tim Mahoney.
FL-24 (D): Former state Rep. Suzanne Kosmas crushed '06 nominee Clint Curtis by a 72-28 margin. Kosmas will face ethically-challenged GOP Rep. Tom Feeney in November.
Polls are now closed in the great state of Florida, where we'll be tracking the results for the Democratic primary in Florida's 8th District, and the GOP primary in Florida's 16th. There are also a number of other primaries in FL-09 (D), FL-10 (D), and FL-15 (D), but we won't be focusing too heavily on those rinky-dink races.
11:23PM (David): In FL-16, Rooney now has an 800-vote lead with just 3% of precincts remaining.
11:14PM (David): Don't touch that dial - we'll be up and running with an Alaska thread any moment now. Polls close there at midnight eastern time.
11:06PM: 77% in, and Harrell is back up by 80. In the words of the immortal Samuel L. Jackson, hang on to your butts.
10:45PM: 75% in, and Rooney is up by 300. Over in FL-09, with 93% reporting, Bill Mitchell has a 950 vote lead over former Plant City Mayor John Dicks. That's something of an upset for the DCCC, who had hoped that Dicks could make this an interesting race. Guess not.
10:29PM: 72% in, and Rooney is hodling onto a 210 vote lead.
10:08PM: With 66% in right now, Rooney is up by 200 votes.
9:58PM: Over in FL-24, Suzanne Kosmas has beaten Clint Curtis by 72-28. No doubt that Curtis will soon gather "sworn affidavits" from voters showing that he actually won.
9:51PM: The see-saw continues in FL-16, where Rooney is back up by 140 votes with 54% in.
9:43PM: Harrell is now up by 310 votes with 49% reporting. Keller is holding on to his 2600 vote lead with 97% in.
9:17PM: Looks like we can now officially close the book on FL-08. With 93% of precincts reporting, Grayson has won by a 48-28-17 margin.
9:07PM: It's even tighter in FL-16 now, with Harrell leading by only 70 votes.
8:46PM: Harrell's lead is now down to about 180 votes. Looks like Mike Gravel fan Stephen Blythe has easily won the Dem privilege to get beaten by Bill Posey over in FL-15.
8:26PM: Keller has pushed ahead to a 2500 vote lead now, while Harrell is clinging to a 400 vote lead over Rooney with 18% in.
8:21PM: Grayson has really run away with FL-08. The results so far are almost a complete reversal of the 2006 primary. Grayson turned a 2500 vote deficit in Orange County into a 5000 vote lead, and close losses in Marion and Lake counties into blowouts. Looks like shaving off the scary beard helped!
8:15PM: SSP is calling FL-10 for Bob Hackworth, who has wrecked shop against Sammwise Simpson and Max Linn.
8:00PM: Grayson has pushed ahead to a 5800 vote lead, while Keller is still holding on by 1600 votes.
7:51PM: The DoS now shows Harrell up with a 1000-vote lead in FL-16.
7:46PM: According to the DoS, Grayson now has a 20% lead over Stuart, with a cushion of 5600 votes. Ric Keller has now padded his margin over Todd Long to 1,500 votes and 4%. Still, this race is way closer than it should have been.
7:40PM: Keller continues to lead by 1,200 votes, and Rooney is now edging ahead to a 200 vote lead with 10% reporting.
7:35PM ET: Rooney is leading Harrell by one vote with 6% reporting in FL-16, according to the AP.
7:26PM ET: Alan Grayson has a big early lead in FL-08 according to the DoS -- 10,922 to Charlie Stuart's 6,065, with Mike Smith lagging in third. More shockingly, Ric Keller is barely beating his right-wing challenger, Todd Long, by 14,850 to 13,743 among the early votes. Wow.
With congressional primaries in Alaska and Florida on August 26th, tonight was the deadline for candidates to file their pre-primary fundraising reports with the FEC. I've rounded up the numbers of interest, covering the period of July 1st through August 6th, in the chart below. All figures are in thousands.
Christine Jennings has yet to file her report, but once she does, it will be available here.
The Florida Division of Elections has released their latest tallies of voter registration by congressional district (as of 7/28), and Democrats are posting some big gains since 2006 in targeted races this fall.
Let's take a look at the numbers in the chart below. In the 2006 column, we have the GOP's voter registration advantage in each district as of October 10th, 2006. In the next column, we have the most recent spread, followed by the net change. In the last column, we've ranked the districts according to the percentage change in the GOP-Dem spread. Take a peek:
District
2006
2008
Change
%age
FL-08
14,388
2,113
12,275
85%
FL-25
21,818
7,857
13,961
64%
FL-18
23,202
8,456
14,746
64%
FL-21
28,146
14,999
13,147
47%
FL-16
31,228
21,201
10,027
32%
FL-15
31,509
22,153
9,356
30%
FL-24
32,310
23,263
9,047
28%
FL-09
33,956
28,614
5,342
16%
FL-13
62,230
55,542
6,688
11%
The ground is shifting quickly in the Orlando-based 8th District, where GOP Rep. Ric Keller could be facing a real battle to hang onto his seat. The next biggest shift is in South Florida, where Democrats have posted huge registration gains in recent months, and where Democrats Annette Taddeo, Raul Martinez, and Joe Garcia are giving Republican Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balart brothers the fight of their lives.
The biggest black eye for Florida Democrats continues to be the open seat of FL-15, where despite having cut into the GOP's voter registration advantage by over 9000 votes, Democrats were not able to find a top-tier candidate for the race. Democrats held retiring Rep. Dave Weldon to a 56-44 margin with an unknown candidate in 2006, but it appears that our candidate this year won't be much stronger: both Democrats in the race have raised under $40K each.
Still, there's a lot of good news here, and we should see some exciting races in Florida this fall.
Congresswoman Karen Thurman, Chair of the Florida Democratic Party (FDP), titled a recent email "The Road to the Presidency Runs Through Central Florida". Like most missives from a political party it was soliciting funds (which is to be expected). This one was for the Democratic challenger in the special election for a central Florida State House seat.
But, the email's title spoke to me, because I've been thinking along the same lines recently. Let me explain.
