In any wave election, a few long-shot candidates take seats who according to conventional wisdom really 'shouldn't.' In 2006, it was Nancy Boyda and Carol Shea Porter who snuck in; neither woman was endorsed by EMILY's List and both shocked the DC establishment by running effective grassroots campaigns and unseating popular incumbents in a wave year. This cycle, there are a number of other possibilities for this kind of candidate.
Becky Greenwald in Iowa is one, Steve O'Donnell in
PA-18 is another, Debbie Cook in California is another and Josh Zeitz in New Jersey is a fourth. Most longshots have a name ID problem, and one way to raise your name ID is by baiting your better known opponent to attack you and 'punch down'. There are other possibilities, such as running a great volunteer operation or a creative set of ads, but getting attacked is a sign that a low budget campaign is working.
Right now, Josh Zeitz is getting attacked by Chris Smith on radio and over the mail, and Smith hasn't acknowledged an opponent by name in 20 years. Steve O'Donnell got a semi-endorsement of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the paper owned by neo-confederate icon Richard Mellon Scaife, and his opponent, Tim Murphy is going hard negative with character attacks. Debbie Cook continues to close in the polls, and former Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey endorsed her.
On the flip side, some of the disappointments slipping out of range are Kay Barnes in Missouri, a conservative Democrat who is now 15-20 points behind Sam Graves. Alice Kryzan is also down by 14 in the latest SUSA poll, though there are a lot of undecided voters and she can pull it out. And Jack Murtha is in a very tight and unexpected race, and he hasn't run a race in decades.
At this moment, there are a lot of campaigns on the bubble who can come into Congress in a wave, and some others that are in trouble. The political world likes to pretend that everything's always under control, and so candidates like Zeitz, Cook, etc, don't get attention, while people like Barnes are considered top tier based on certain profiles and rake in cash. In some ways, it'd be useful if we just acknowledged a certain lack of control over the process.
In the meantime, some of these candidates can really make it happen.
Update: I hear George Fearing in Washington state is down five.
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