Crystal Ball issued changed House ratings today, and they had good news and bad news. It’s all against a background that the Democrats as a whole are in excellent shape, with no real likelihood of losing the House.
Changes in the Dem direction included Alaska-AL (Alyse Galvin) to Lean R, Ammar Campa-Najjar, in CA-50 against Issa from Safe to Likely R, likewise Brynne Kennedy against Tom McClintock in CA-04, and also Safe to Likely R in NC-11. That’s where Col. (ret.) Moe Davis is running for an open bright-red seat against Madison Cawthorn, the callow and not-too-bright youth who spoke at the Trump National Convention.
Just as interesting were shifts in the bad direction. These include CA-25, the seat where R Mike Garcia won the special election after Katie Hill’s creep husband forced her to resign with revenge porn. November is a rematch of March with Christy Smith. Crystal Ball now lists this as Lean R. Another candidate who was asking me for money told me that it is an open secret Smith is running her second weak campaign this year. FL-26, where Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is almost the only threatened D incumbent, was downgraded to Toss-Up. (Crystal Ball has big upset 2018 winners TJ Cox CA-21, Joe Cunningham SC-01, and Kendra Horn OK-05 all Lean D.) It isn’t money for either Smith or Mucarsel-Powell. I wish I knew what it is. This will be an interesting test of Rachel Bitecofer’s theory that the hatred of Trump in these districts will overcome the mediocrity of the candidate. She has CA-25 as Likely D, and FL-26 as Solid D.
I am going to suggest some changes to our fundraising targets based on the maps below, which show plausible minimal combinations of states to win the Electoral College. The first map shows that if we retake Michigan and Pennsylvania but drop Minnesota (thought to be the Clinton state most likely to flip), we win with Arizona and Nebraska CD-02 (remember that Nebraska and Maine split electoral votes by House district).
In the second map, we win Florida. We don’t have to win any other hotly contested state, unless you count Pennsylvania.
In the third map, we win North Carolina but not Florida. (I don’t think this is particularly likely.) The table underneath shows what we need to add on. Arizona appears in three of the combinations, and NE-02 in one. I’ll discuss the implications below the maps.
Minimal win with poor showing in MN+WIMinimal win with FLMap with solid states + NC
States
FL
286
OH
275
GA
273
MI
273
AZ+MN
278
AZ+WI
278
MN+WI
277
AZ+ME-02+NE-02
270
These are the minimal winning combinations with NC
I think at this point we can drop TJ Cox. He is keeping pace with David Valadao on fundraising and the weaknesses of his campaign are unlikely to be fixed with cash. I also suggest dropping Rita Hart (for whom we have collected several thousand dollars) because Iowa is a bonus on these maps, not a key state.
The only competitive House race in Arizona is Hiral Tiperneni in AZ-06, which is rated Tossup/Lean R. She has far outraised the scandal-plagued incumbent Schweikert. She has $1.2M cash on hand and he has $0.2M and his fundraising seems to have slowed now that he has to do it legally. She needs Democratic voters, not money.
However, we do have Coral Evans running for the Arizona House, so we are already making a contribution.
For North Carolina, we should add Patricia Timmons-Goodson in NC-08 (lean R). Besides helping with money, we need Tar Heels to vote Blue up and down the ballot—we have two state legislators on the list and I believe the districts overlap with NC-08. Timmons-Goodson has not done well with fundraising. Cash on hand $0.6M, incumbent has $1.8M.
In Florida, there are not that many contested races, of which the most important is Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL-26), an endangered D incumbent. The seat is rated Lean D, and she has much more money than her opponent. I suggest instead we try Alan Cohn in FL-15 (Lean R). The Republican incumbent had some legal trouble and was defeated in an expensive primary, while Cohn also had a tough primary. For money, both of them are basically starting from zero (a little over $100K each). Cohn has called me a few times, and I can ask whether he has a Get Out the Vote plan to get his and Biden’s supporters to the polls, or at least to the mailbox. He lost a race for this seat in 2014, so it isn’t his first rodeo.
And finally, NE-02. Last cycle the DCCC was so miffed that their preferred candidate lost to Bernie supporter Kara Eastman in the primary they didn’t go hard on the seat. She lost by less than 4 anyway. This time the DCCC came to new wisdom, didn’t take sides for the more moderate candidates in the primary, and after she won the primary again put her on the Red to Blue List (ratings are Tossup/Lean R). She also has a J Street endorsement. This district includes Omaha suburbs, just the sort of demographic to sour on Trump. Given that even one electoral vote can matter (see above), I think we should add her, too.
The story of why Obama didn’t get to fill vacancies on the board. By the way, Balloon Juice is a great blog run by a West Virginia vet who went from moderate Republican to Never W to left-wing Democrat, picking up a great many progressive co-authors (and a shout-out from Paul Krugman!) on the way.
I haven’t written to the Governors, but I did use Resistbot to send letters to Harris, Feinstein, and Lee. Text USPS to 50409.
Flip the West
Send texts with Flip the West on Wednesday, Sep 16, 2020. Are you free to join me? Use this link to sign up.
Political Roundup
My presentation is here. My discussion is that the legitimate election will be won by Biden and the Democrats, and how we can prepare ourselves for the Republicans’ attempt to create Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt in order to steal an illegitimate election, or hold onto power in some other way.
As Judy reminds us, we have a chance to flip the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to a progressive majority, if Vinnie Bacon wins the South Country district.
This is the most important, consequential race for all of Alameda County on the November ballot. A victory for Vinnie will completely shift the balance on the five-member BOS which has resisted grass roots efforts to audit and restrict the Sheriff’s budget, combat his cooperation with ICE, his militarized form of policing and abusive conditions at Santa Rita Jail. Vinnie Bacon is the clean money candidate, pro-labor, environmental candidate, and he needs our full-out support.
We are co-sponsoring a Meet-&-Greet for Vinnie. And a small contribution should go a long way in this race. Pre-registration is required.
I am re-pasting this with updates (the updates in ranking are shaded yellow). Nothing significant has changed, except that the Republicans declined to nominate nutcase Kris Kobach in Kansas. I am pleasantly surprised to see that the first post-primary polls show it is still a one or two point race, against us at the moment.
EDIT 2020-09-22: I have taken this chart down, because there is a revised version here.
For the time being, as people report progress I will update this table by hand. If I become either more clever, or pay WordPress their ransom for further upgrades, we can automate it.
Monmouth has a new poll of all the Iowa House races released today. We were correct to concentrate on Rita Hart. She is 3 behind, based, I surmise, on inferior name recognition compared to her opponent, who has lost the last three elections for this seat (but to Dave Loebsack, who is retiring).
Notwithstanding their frequent requests for money, Democratic incumbents Abby Finkenauer and Cindy Axne are comfortably ahead.
With vicious bigot Steve King denied renomination in the Republican primary, the fourth Iowa CD is no longer competitive. Garden-variety Republican Randy Feenstra is almost 20 ahead.
I started off with a review of what we need to worry about, and what we don’t.
What to worry about
Bruce talked about phone calls and texting, encouraging us to find a local or regional campaign that suits us. For example, just calling for Biden may not work for you.
Naomi: everyone should make a 100–day plan. Here are some resources.
Indivisible Elmwood 