One of the big success stories of the last cycles for the Democrats was, the Second tier congressional candidates that actually won or came really close and they put those seats in play for this cycle and as we see that we have a really big playing field. Ram Emanuel was a master in picking second tier candidates and giving them some financial support and combing with the netroots raising money for these candidates some of them were a success story on Election Day.
One of my biggest surprises in 2006 was the defeat of Congresswoman Sue Kelly in NY 19. She was caught in the Mark Folly Scandal being in 2000 when some of Folly’s stuff happened the chairwoman of the page board and some were saying that wasn’t good in constituent service and the district has an orthodox Jewish block vote of around 3000 votes and she angered them off by not giving them the “ALL” the earmarks they wanted and the future speaker promised to “HELP” them more the Congresswoman Kelly did so they endorsed John Hall in the last minute and Hall won by about that much votes.
One of the upsides of second tier candidate is, that they are running really hard, they knock on doors, they attend every local event in the district and they do connect with the voters but they don’t have the money to reach out to enough voters to get to the top.
I wasn’t a big fan of Mike Huckabee in the presidential race but when he announced that he is forming a PAC and his main focus would be second tier candidates like he was in the presidential race (maybe that’s why he endorsed Don Young…) I thought it was a great idea because it would help keep those seats above the radar and as the democrats did in 06 some of them would be won and some of them would stay in the game for a better year for the GOP.
I will try to point out some of the races that are really long shots but I strongly believe that they are shots. One of the races I am following closely is NY 19 where the incumbent John Hall was going to face a strong challenge and most likely be defeated to Andrew Saul a millionaire that was ready to spend 10 million dollars on the race and with the court striking down the millionaires amendment Hall would have been crushed. But do to unknown reasons he dropped pout really early in the race and the GOP has not been able to recruit a well-known formidable candidate but they are stuck with Kieran Lalor, an Iraq war veteran who is the fonder of Iraq war veterans for congress a coalition of around 15 Iraq veterans who are running as Republicans for congress.
One of the issues he is focusing on is Drill here, Drill now and pay less. John Hall is a real lefty environmentalist he was one of the few NY congressman who voted against FISA and so on. So this Lalor started to put up billboards one his office how much the price of a gallon gas was when Hall was elected and promised lower gas prices as every Democrat promised it was around $2.50 or less, and what the price today after the democrats control congress for almost 2 years around $4.25 a gallon regular. The next day after putting up this big billboard on his campaign office he got in one of the big local newspapers a full page coverage that led to the billboard being vandalized and some more coverage in the local media.
Today he announced that he raised this quarter $140,000 he filed petitions with 6,200 signatures, a 1,000 more then the incumbent turned in. I do believe that there is an opportunity here and I would strongly urge you all out there looking to make a difference that this is a race worth investing if not for this cycle then for the 2010 cycle.
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