With the San Francisco and Los Angeles Quarterlies ready to kick off tomorrow (watch out LA, I’m coming), let’s take a pictoral tour through last week’s San Diego event. Consider this an open thread, but focus on how great Calitics is :).
Some of the last revelers of the night (L to R: cmanaster, Ron Shepston, orangeclouds115, Major Danby, a very demonic looking Lucas O’Connor)
Future Congressman Nick Leibham (center, CA-50) and Ron Shepston (right, CA-42) talk shop with Greg Diamond/Major Danby. Consider Rove nullified.
Mike Lumpkin (CA-52) talks strategy with Ira Lechner. Dunc Jr. is not ready for this campaign.
Steve Filson chats with Leon Thompson, bringing some Bay-Area perspective to the locals.
Todd Gloria blogs and talks at the same time (with tface1000 lurking in the shadows). Half of San Diego’s city council is turning over next year due to term limits, and he’s after one of the seats.
I get caught a bit rosy cheeked talking with Miriam Raftery and Leon Thompson. I’m not drunk, I’m just drinking.
Got a tip that sometime in the very near future, Francine Busby will be announcing her endorsement of Nick Leibham for the Democratic nomination in the 50th district. The field has been slowly clearing for a while now, with Michael Wray opting against a run and John Lee Evans running for School Board. Steve Schechter has also filed FEC paperwork to run in the district, but this endorsement would line up the one major recognizable Democratic face in the district behind Leibham. Putting to rest any remaining speculation that she might run again, much of the drama is likely over in the primary, leaving now more than a year of Bilbray-hunting. The district has a Partisan Voter Index of R+5, but Charlie Cook considers the district competitive more than 13 months out, rating it yesterday as Likely Republican in his new Competitive House Race Chart.
We have 15 months to go before Election Day, and it’s time for another roundup of Congressional races. I am going to continue to focus on the top 10 challenges to Republican incumbents. There is certainly a concern in CA-11 with the Jerry McNerney/Dean Andal race, particularly after McNerney’s “I’m a moderate” comment seemed to depress supporters. On the bright side, he did vote against the ridiculous FISA bill. And as we go into September, I would hope he would continue his efforts to end the occupation of Iraq. I will certainly cover the McNerney race in future roundups.
But for now, let’s take a look at the top 10 challenges. I’m going to rank them in order of most possible pickup, including their number from the last roundup. I’m also adding the “Boxer number.” Basically, seeing how Boxer fared in her 2004 re-election against Bill Jones in a particular district is a decent indicator of how partisan it is. If I put “57,” that means Boxer received 57% of the vote. Anything over 50, obviously, is good. (over)
1) CA-04 (Doolittle). Last month: 1. Boxer number: 40. Charlie Brown got some amazing news this week. Mike Holmes, an Auburn city councilman and a Republican, announced he was running in the primary to unseat ethically challenged Rep. John Doolittle. Holmes ran a primary race last year and got around 30% of the vote. This gives Doolittle two challengers next June (Eric Egland has already announced), which is a lot better for Doolittle than one challenger to which anti-Doolittle forces can focus their energies. This makes it more likely that a wounded Doolittle will survive the primaries (if he’s not indicted by then) and face Brown, who’s flush with cash and unopposed in his primary. Brown also made a great impression at the Yearly Kos Convention, so there will be plenty of online support for him.
2) CA-26 (Dreier). Last month: 2. Boxer number: 48. Another candidate who made a big impression at Yearly Kos was Russ Warner. At the California caucus he gave a version of this speech:
Warner’s fundraising stats were already impressive for the district, and now we’re starting to see some grassroots support. If he can tap into what Hilda Solis has been doing online (Solis has endorsed him), there could be a groundswell. Meanwhile, Dreier is whining that local Democrats blocked funding for expanding the Gold Line light-rail service to “focus on projects in their districts rather than regional priorities.” Right, because the Gold Line doesn’t mainly go through Pasadena, in Adam Schiff’s district. Dreier is such a tool.
3) CA-24 (Gallegly). Last month: 3. Boxer number: 47. The August recess is retirement season for GOP Congresscritters. We’ve already seen three of them go this week alone. So naturally thoughts turn to who’s next, and Gallegly, who tried to get out in 2006, is a prime candidate. There certainly must be some talk about it in the district: he’s got four declared candidates already: Jill Martinez, Brett Wagner, James “Chip” Fraser, and Mary Pallant.
4) CA-50 (Bilbray). Last month: 4. Boxer number: 48. Michael Wray has dropped out of the primary in CA-50, leaving John Lee Evans and Nick Leibham to contest for the right to battle Brian Bilbray next November. The best way to attack Bilbray, who doesn’t get off that illegal immigration message for a second, is to highlight his pro-Bush, anti-progress voting record, including denying health care to 6 million American children with his vote against SCHIP last month. Leibham apparently raised $89,000 last quarter, and Bilbray has a paltry $213,000 CoH, which is interesting.
5) CA-42 (Miller). Last month: 7. Boxer number: 41. The big news here is that we have a candidate, and it’s blogger Ron Shepston. You’ve undoubtedly read a little about him on Calitics. LA City Beat has a nice article about Ron and the netroots movement behind him in this race. It’s not going to be easy. But Ron has raised about $7,200 on ActBlue alone, and his offline fundraising is progressing. And Miller is still taking heat from the DCCC, who sent out a notice to reporters attacking his vote against SCHIP.
6) CA-41 (Lewis). Last month: 5. Boxer number: 43. Like with Gallegly, we’re waiting to see if the rumors about Lewis’ impending retirement are true. We do know that Lewis has continued to bring home the bacon (a little questionable earmarking isn’t going to stop him) to his district, and then there’s this:
A lobby firm connected to a federal investigation has seen business boom this year for its clients, many of whose projects are in a powerful House appropriator’s district.
The House Appropriations Committee’s ranking member, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), has sponsored or co-sponsored $55 million worth of earmarks in this year’s defense spending bill – close to half of the funds won by the California Republican in the legislation – for clients represented by one firm.
A former appropriations aide to Lewis, Letitia White, and former Rep. Bill Lowery (R-Calif.), who is friendly with Lewis, work at the company, Innovative Federal Strategies (IFS).
Tim Prince is all but in this race. I met him a few weeks back and he seems like a nice guy.
7) CA-44 (Calvert). Last month: 6. Boxer number: 45. Last month’s ruling that a city government agency illegally sold Ken Calvert a bunch of land hasn’t gotten a ton of traction yet. He has been targeted by MoveOn in a Riverside-area protest where protestors presented him with a report on how much money district taxpayers have spent on the war in Iraq. Calvert is dug in on Iraq, which is of course going to be a major issue in 2008. Bill Hedrick will be Calvert’s opponent, and, um, check out the blog!
8) CA-45 (Bono). Last month: 8. Boxer number: 49. Still no opponent named, and I’m flirting with the idea of dropping any race out of the top 10 unless there’s a named candidate. This is really a missed opportunity right now.
9) CA-46 (Rohrabacher). Last month: unranked. Boxer number: 45. I’m adding nutcase Dana Rohrabacher to the list for a couple reasons. One, he has an announced opponent (Jim Brandt, who ran against him last year) UPDATE: sorry, I read something wrong, he has no announced opponent yet. Two, it gives me an opportunity to print this quote.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach/ Long Beach, was baffled when asked recently about his use of the popular online gathering site Facebook.
“Faith book?” the befuddled congressman replied.
Hilarious.
10) CA-52 (open seat). Last month: 10. Boxer number: 44. Duncan Hunter was unable to beat people who weren’t running in the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa. He’s gone from this seat, but his son is running and it’s a safe bet that the Republicans will retain it.
(I pressed Jesse into service last night to pinch-hit for me at the event. Can you believe there’s a three-way primary in the 50th? – promoted by Lucas O’Connor)
Last night the Black Mountain Democratic Club hosted a meet and greet for Michael Wray, Nick Leibham, and John Lee Evans, the three candidates running for congress in California’s 50th district.
In addition to the normal club business and the special guests, John Lee Evans announced Bilbray Watch, a watch dog group monitoring all things Bilbray and gave the club an overview on how to write a letter to the local papers and have it published.
Close to 30 people turned out to hear from the three candidates. While most of the attendees were Black Mountain Club members there were quite a few non club members present just to see and hear the special guests. People seemed very excited to get their first glimpse and hear what hot button issues the potential new congressman from the 50th would be discussing.
Keep scrolling for more info specific to what each candidate said during their 10 minutes in the spotlight.
Before the meeting, I was standing alone and Nick Leibham came over to introduce himself to me and immediately asked me if I was a democrat and wanted to know if I was with Bilbray’s team. I am not too sure what gave him that impression but I was not happy with the assumption…
Nick Leibham spoke right after the meeting was called to order and left immediately after the conclusion of his allotted time due to personal reasons. He started off with a brief bio and his personal history where he outlined his roots and DC political pedigree and finished up with where he stands on his main issues; Iraq and publicly financed elections. He worked for a number of years for a congressman in Washington but didn’t mention the congressman by name. Leibham also worked for the DNC as a coordinator of the 13 most western states but didn’t go into detail about the specific job functions he was responsible for.
Leibham stated clearly Iraq is the biggest issue needing to be addressed. He gave us a 50,000 foot overview of his three pronged approach:
1) Provide safe passage for people wishing to connect with family and friends who live in different parts of the country.
2) Redeploy troops around the middle east
3) Create a “diplomatic surge” by engaging Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and even Iran. The diplomatic surge would be used to help stabilize and monitor issues in Iraq.
The second issue Leibham addressed was the need for campaign finance reform. He prefaced the topic by saying he was going to talk about an issue that won’t get talked about much and isn’t on anybody’s top 10 list. He explained how this is a house of cards issue with money being the one critical component that would topple the problems associated within our political system. He committed to sign on to and support any bill that would move the system towards reforming the financial process within the political world.
While he didn’t take many questions he was asked was how he planned on financing his own campaign. He said that he will be asking for money from family and friends.
Of the three, I think Leibham is the only one to have officially filed the paper work with the FEC.
After some meeting business and discussion topics, John Lee Evans spoke about his watch dog group “Bilbray Watch”. He spoke in-depth about on how to write effective letters to the local newspapers and online publications. Evans did a good job of outlining what the publications look for and what won’t be published and encouraged all of us to write and submit responses to articles covering issues and people in the 50th. Outside of signing up for an email updates on Bilbray votes and writing letters, I didn’t hear too much more on what Bilbray Watch would be doing.
Immediately following his discussions on “Bilbray Watch” we had a chance to hear more about Mr. Evans as a candidate. He clearly stated his main objective was to remove Bilbray from office but didn’t offer any specifics on why he needed to go or how it was going to happen. Evans briefly highlighted his time with the Peace Corps, the volunteer work he did with Dean, being a part of the Busby campaign and his professional career as a psychologist. After going through his personal story and some background on his politics, he outlined his major issues:
The 4 I’s
Iraq- Acknowledge we should have never gone to war in Iraq.
Immigration- Even though Bilbray is the immigration guy, no real ideas have been presented since he took office
Insurance- All Americans should have a similar healthcare plan equivalent to what members of congress currently have
Inappropriate intrusion into privacy- Need to restore the right to privacy
Michael Wray did the best of the three candidates to verbalize why he is running. He went through his history of being an activist and searching for that perfect candidate to support and finally came to the conclusion that maybe he is the candidate he is looking for. It was time to step up and be the candidate he has been looking to work for and endorse.
In a very clear concise message he said he was a progressive Democrat who is against the war, is for publicly financed elections and believes all Americans are entitled to healthcare but would be happy to start off addressing the children who do not have insurance.
He wrapped up by saying he was not interested in stating what he is opposed to but would rather lead by coming up with new ideas and putting those ideas into action.
While the format wasn’t ideal because of candidates’ special circumstances, I think the club did a great job of providing the candidates with an audience and a forum to be heard. I am looking forward to having another chance to hear the candidates speak more in-depth on not only their ideas but also how they will accomplish their goals should they make it to Washington.
