A recent article by Dawn Teo of the Huffington Post highlighted the Democrats’ 2008 Western Campaign and gave a quick state-by-state breakdown of the races to watch west of the Mississipp’. This year, in the wake of the Bush years and with swirling corruption charges dogging several of the Republican incumbents, there are a bumper crop of competitive races, some of them in districts that haven’t seen a serious Democratic challenger in decades. And nowhere is this truer than in Arizona, home state of the GOP’s own 2008 presumptive Presidential Nominee.
Teo’s take on this bastion state of Republicans doesn’t bode well for the Grand Ol’ Party this fall:
ARIZONA
CD-1. With incumbent Rick Renzi battling charges of corruption, this was one of the earliest watched seats. Expect this to be a pickup by Ann Kirkpatrick (D), who will be running against Sydney Hay (R).
CD-3. Rep. John Shadegg’s (R) chances at re-election were looking so grim that he had planned to retire until the RNC begged him to run just one more time. In fact, he told the Wall Street Journal, “Since the 2006 elections, Republicans have done absolutely nothing to redefine themselves. We can’t even get behind an earmark moratorium bill.” Expect this to be a competitive race with Bob Lord (D) as a tough challenger. According to Swing State Project, Lord has already raised more money than the incumbent.
CD-5. Rep. Harry Mitchell (D) won in the upset of the last election. The Republicans are expected to mount a serious challenge to regain this seat, but Mitchell is expected to prevail. Three state and local Republican politicians are competing in the GOP primary on September 2.
The numbers for Arizona’s CD-3, both in terms of fundraising and polling, have not favored the incumbent, Shadegg. In fact, Republicans are so alarmed at the prospect of losing this formerly solid-red seat that they’ve sent both Presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain and Sen. Jon Kyl (both AZ) to try and shore up Shadegg’s fundraising efforts. However, according to a recent poll commissioned by the Bob Lord campaign, Shadegg is highly vulnerable:
According to the poll, conducted by the Washington, D.C. firm Bennett, Petts & Normington, Shadegg enjoys 75 percent name recognition, but only 31 percent of respondents said they will vote for Shadegg in the upcoming election. This is a drop of eight points from a poll conducted earlier in the year …
Lord has repeatedly criticized Shadegg for the latter’s stance on veteran’s benefits (Shadegg has voted against them) and the economy (Shadegg voted against a recent economic stimulus bill). In fact, Lord is running such a competitive race that the DCCC has decided to highlight his campaign and the Daily Kos recently gave him an extensive writeup in their “Orange to Blue” article series.
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Democratic candidate Charlie Brown spent his Independence Day with the voters of California’s 4th Congressional District, and has posted a nice photo gallery of festivities on Daily Kos. In his race against Republican Tom McClintock, Charlie Brown can genuinely claim to be the “local candidate” (McClintock recently moved to the district to run for office after the retirement of John Doolittle). Zig-zagging across northeastern California yesterday, Charlie sure looks to have gotten a warm reception from his fellow 4th District voters!
USA-PAC is proud to announce that another Democratic Congressman is headed to Washington. Tuesday night, Travis Childers beat out Republican Greg Davis in the Mississippi-01 Special Election. That is three red to blue seats in as many months! The RNCC spent almost $1.3 million running ads trying to link Childers to the words of Pastor Jeremiah Wright and again the voters saw through it.
On Sunday, May 4th, Don Cazayoux 
