Following the break is a complete roundup and ranking of Ohio races for the U.S. House of Representatives. I have separated them into Republican-held and Democratic-held seats and divided each into tiers. Within each tier they are ranked in order of likelihood of changing parties.
Democrats were very successful in 2006 in winning a U.S. Senate seat, four out of five statewide offices, and a net gain of seven seats in the Ohio House of Representatives, but the U.S. House races were a relative disappointment. The party gained only one seat and watched two promising races end in narrow losses after recounts. In this cycle Ohio has three open GOP seats and perhaps four or five races altogether that already look very promising, with another two or three that could be added to that list. The DCCC has already added three races to their "Red to Blue" program and is likely to take an interest in at least two more. In other words, Ohio is once again a critical congressional battleground.
I am relieved to report that Kucinich appears safe for re-election in OH-10, according to a new survey from Public Policy Polling:
Kucinich does though appear safe to ward off the challenge he is facing from four challengers in the Democratic primary. Kucinich is currently at 55%, followed by Cleveland City Councilman Joe Cimperman at 29%. The other three candidates register at 5% or lower.(...)
While self identified Democrats intend to reelect Kucinich by a wide margin (59-26), Republicans and independents who are planning to vote in the Democratic primary are not as enamored with him. He trails Cimperman 45-34 with independent voters and has just a 45-35 advantage with Republican voters.
PPP surveyed 470 likely Democratic primary voters on February 25th. The survey's margin of errors is +/-4.7%. Other factors, such as refusal to be interviewed and weighting, may introduce additional error that is more difficult to quantify.
Defeating an incumbent in a primary is just about the most difficult electoral challenge someone can undertake. Kucinich put himself in a potentially vulnerable position by spending so much time running for President, and by using his national small donor base to focus almost entirely on his Presidential campaign. If he was defeated, it would have damaged much of the momentum progressives earned from the Donna Edwards victory, but that does not appear to be a big worry now.
While this wasn't the campaign to become involved with, given the corporate and Republican money Cimperman was raising against Kucinich, at some point it is probably a good idea for the blogosphere to become involved in a primary challenge against a member of the progressive caucus. So far, from what I can tell, the Edwards victory is having much more of an impact on the Congressional Black Caucus than it is on the wider House caucus. It might be necessary to defeat a member from every caucus, such as Ed Fallon defeating Blue Dog Leonard Boswell, in order for these primary challenges to create the desired behavioral change among congressional Democrats. And every caucus means Blue Dogs, New Dems, Progressives, the CBC, and the Hispanic caucus.
Cleveland Councilman Joe Cimperman raised nearly five times as much money last year as incumbent Dennis Kucinich in their 10th Congressional District race, according to financial disclosure reports filed Thursday.
Kucinich, who has spent the past year running for president, raised $47,000 - a third of which was raised in the last three months of 2007. The filing period runs through Dec. 31.
Most of Cimperman's $228,000 in contributions came from lawyers, developers, bankers and business associates. Forest City Enterprises' Ratner family contributed $11,000, and $13,800 came from the Goldberg family, who are affiliated with AmTrust Bank, the former Ohio Savings Bank. About 40 people gave Cimperman the maximum amount of $2,300, including Scott Wolstein, head of Developers Diversified Realty Corp. and lead developer of the Flats East Bank neighborhood; Legacy Village developer Mitch Schneider; event promoter Mike Belkin; and Republican investor Jeff Jacobs.
At the same time, it needs to be said that the main criteria for a successful primary challenge is for the incumbent to not take care of his or her district. If the member of Congress being challenged is home a lot, stays connected to activists on the ground, listens to voters, and conducts good constituent services, that member of Congress will be virtually impossible to defeat in a primary no matter the ideological differences s/he has with the voters of the district. Given that he decided to engage in a second quixotic run for President instead of taking care of his district, Kucinich might be in some real trouble. Kucinich brought the opening for a primary challenge upon himself by running for President again.
Second, it should also be noted that over the past year Kucinich has actually raised way, way more money than all of his primary challengers combined. According to his most recent FEC report, Kucinich's presidential campaign raised $4,319,601 through January 31st. This far surpasses the cumulative totals raised by his seven primary challengers, who collectively did not surpass $600,000. Kucinich clearly has the ability to raise money, and if he had not ended his presidential campaign with a net financial deficit of $400,000, he would be able to swat all of these challengers like so many flies. Instead, he has only $13,383 cash on hand.
In other words, while it would be terrible for Kucinich to lose to a corporate challenger like Joe Cimperman, or to Iraq Bush Dog in waiting Rosemary Palmer, he has brought both the opening for a serious primary challenge, and the financial deficit he faces in that campaign, on himself. As such, while I have tremendous sympathy for the plight of a progressive Democrat targeted by corporate interests and Bush Dogs, I do not have a huge amount of sympathy for Kucinich himself. Presenting a series of good policy papers and having a decent voting record in Congress are extremely important, but they are not the only necessary factors for being an effective progressive. It is also necessary to be smart politically, and to have an actual strategy to achieve your legislative and electoral goals. Politics is not just about sending a message, or making a statement. There will never be a progressive governing majority in this country unless we pursue effective political strategies and execute them with the proper level of organizing work. Frankly, I don't think that Kucinich is doing this, and it is really annoying that he has made himself so vulnerable to right-wing challenges because he wanted to grandstand at a few debates.
Kucinich would have been far more effective for the progressive cause if he had taken care of his home district, and used his national fundraising profile to help other progressives, like Donna Edwards or Mark Pera, get elected in primary challenges against conservative Democratic incumbents, open blue district seats where we can make meaningful progressive gains in Congress, and in Republican-held districts where progressives have a real shot in the general election. That would have actually been an effective way of spending nearly $5,000,000. Instead, he throwing even more progressive money into his own personal sinkhole, and creating a potential to erode all of the hard work actual progressive movement types put into the Donna Edwards campaign. As A few months ago, Matt wrote that Kucinich is a distraction for the progressive movement, and the predicament Kucinich has put himself in demonstrates Matt's point. I hope Kucinich wins, but more than that I hope he starts making smart political decisions and working to build up a movement rather than just himself.
Cleveland Congressman Dennis Kucinich is dropping out of the Democratic race for president.
Kucinich will make the announcement Friday at a news conference in Cleveland. In an exclusive interview with Plain Dealer editors and reporters, Kucinich said he will explain his "transitioning" tomorrow.
"I want to continue to serve in Congress," he said.
Kucinich said he will not endorse another Democrat in the primary.
While I don't think Dennis Kucinich is a very good spokesperson for the left, I do hope that he is able to fend off his primary challenge from Rosemary Palmer, who is coming from his right on Iraq.
In his solid blue district, Democratic Partisan Voting Index of +8.3, Dennis Kucinich is facing a primary challenge from Rosemary Palmer. Palmer's run appears to be focused on two points. First, she argues that by running for President again, Kucinich is not doing enough to represent the OH-10 in Congress. Second, she seems to oppose the specific ways in which Kucinich is trying to bring an end to the war in Iraq. Concerning the latter, here are some points of disagreement:
Through that tenure, he has accomplished very little, and has been ineffective in working with his colleagues to negotiate a common sense Iraq withdrawal plan. The war has now spanned almost five of those 12 years.
The Congressman was elected to fulfill his role in the Congress, cast votes and work with both Democrats and Republicans to reach an agreement on responsible conditions of withdrawal from the war.
OK. So Kucinich is supposed to find a "common sense Iraq withdrawal plan" through "work with both Democrats and Republicans." Even though I have taken a different strategic approach to trying to end the war than Congressman Kucinich, I have to say that this passage sets off some red flags for me. What withdrawal plan, exactly, would both Democrats and Republicans support? Perhaps, just like the Washington Post, Palmer has some sort of never before seen withdrawal plan that would be supported by more than two House Republicans and three Senate Republicans. Looking for more information on this plan, I turned to the "Iraq and Iran" section of her website. Here was the first sentence:
After six years of fighting the War on Terror, terrorism remains the single largest threat to America's national security.
Now she is validating the "war on terror" frame. Yeah, that is exactly what we need Democrats in blue seats to do doing. I did eventually find Palmer's plan:
I call for a concurrent two-tiered program that involves negotiations with all parties to the Iraq conflict (except Al Qaeda) leading to a floating timetable for withdrawal as well as an overall regional security conference involving all nations of the Middle East. Both discussions should be sponsored by the United Nations.
A floating timetable for withdrawal? I admit that I am not really sure what that means, but my best guess is that it means a withdrawal timetable without fixed dates, aka, not actually a timetable. So, I guess we are in Washington Post territory now, where a "common sense" withdrawal plan that would receive Republican support actually means a meaningless, vague notion that we might withdraw someday, but we aren't promising anything. And then there are the multiple mentions of the need for a "strong military" on her site, which strike me as code for saying that we need to increase military spending. Whatever problems I have with Congressman Kucinich, I applaud him for his stance on reducing military spending, as the national security state is a serious obstacle to progressive governance. Overall, it strikes me that Palmer's challenge to Kucinich on Iraq is coming not only from Kucinich's right, but from the right of the Democratic Party mainstream.
More in the extended entry, including Paul Hackett's entry into the campaign.
STATE BLOGS
