Sunday, October 23, 2005
let the circus begin!
AZ Congress Watch has it that District 8 nutcase and Kolbe primary challenger Randy Graf will be holding a town hall meeting in Douglas.
Graf has no chance of winning the entire district in a general election, but he needs to further cultivate the xenophobic Cochise County vote that he won last year if he wants any chance of winning the nomination next year.
I doubt Kolbe was expecting an aggressive primary campaign starting before the new year. At this rate, Graf could conceivably beat up on Kolbe enough that the more conservative voters in the district stay home on general election day.
Kolbe will run to the left to win the primary in northeastern Pima County, where the majority of the district's votes are and where the voters are typically more center-left than in the rest of the district. With a choice between two left-center candidates, general election voters usually choose the incumbent. This means the Dems need to field a candidate who will cover enough of the left and center to give Kolbe little room to maneuver.
The playing field is already turning out to be largely in favor of the Democrats. Combine that with the right Democratic candidate who can win over some moderate Republican voters, and the Democrats have a fighting chance for a seat they haven't held for 20 years.
All the Democratic candidate has to do is mostly sit back during the primary but take every opportunity to hammer home two points: Kolbe is complicit in the corruption of his party's majority leadership and he is out of touch with the needs and concerns of his constituents.
But if he's rightfully presented to voters as someone who has outlasted his effectiveness in Congress and is irrevocably a part of the DeLay culture of corruption before he has a chance to remind voters of the fact that he represents them (it's easy to forget when he's more concerned about aid to other countries than aid to people in his district who need it), the Democratic challenger will have successfully shaped the debate and created an uphill struggle for Kolbe.
I was planning to wait a little longer to see if any other Dems take an interest in this campaign, but so far it's not looking like any viable (hate that word) challengers are stepping up. Last I checked (if memory serves), there were four Democratic campaigns for the 8th District registered with the FCC: Eva Bacal, Tim Sultan, Mary Judge Ryan and Dwight Leister. A fifth potential candidate, Oro Valley resident Jeff Latas, is considering a run.
Bacal and Sultan ran in the last cycle (Bacal won the primary) and Ryan was Kolbe's major challenger in 2002.
Leister seems like a nice enough man, but his campaign website betrays an utter lack of political savvy.
Sultan, as I've written in an earlier post, would make a great candidate and better Congressman with some extra polishing, but I think he's moved on to bigger and better things at this point. After a brief stint working for the Governor's Division for Women, he recently started working for a firm of some kind in D.C.
Bacal and Ryan had lackluster performances in their respective challenges, though I do like Mary Judge Ryan and think she could be more competitive if her campaign was run more aggressively. That said, I don't think she's the one.
That leaves Latas, who has yet to file the necessary paperwork. He needs some work on his platform and help finding his voice, but the timing is right for someone with his background and profile to win this seat. He's trained as an engineer and spent his career in the Air Force as a pilot. He retired to a commercial airline and then fully retired recently. His son successfully fought leukemia and is now serving in Iraq. So right there he has instant credibility on emergency management, foreign policy, health care and the Iraq debacle.
Regardless of who it ends up being, the prospective serious candidate will need to start fundraising before year-end to run the kind of effective campaign that these times call for. I may be endorsing or otherwise supporting a Democratic candidate sooner than I thought...
Graf has no chance of winning the entire district in a general election, but he needs to further cultivate the xenophobic Cochise County vote that he won last year if he wants any chance of winning the nomination next year.
I doubt Kolbe was expecting an aggressive primary campaign starting before the new year. At this rate, Graf could conceivably beat up on Kolbe enough that the more conservative voters in the district stay home on general election day.
Kolbe will run to the left to win the primary in northeastern Pima County, where the majority of the district's votes are and where the voters are typically more center-left than in the rest of the district. With a choice between two left-center candidates, general election voters usually choose the incumbent. This means the Dems need to field a candidate who will cover enough of the left and center to give Kolbe little room to maneuver.
The playing field is already turning out to be largely in favor of the Democrats. Combine that with the right Democratic candidate who can win over some moderate Republican voters, and the Democrats have a fighting chance for a seat they haven't held for 20 years.
All the Democratic candidate has to do is mostly sit back during the primary but take every opportunity to hammer home two points: Kolbe is complicit in the corruption of his party's majority leadership and he is out of touch with the needs and concerns of his constituents.
But if he's rightfully presented to voters as someone who has outlasted his effectiveness in Congress and is irrevocably a part of the DeLay culture of corruption before he has a chance to remind voters of the fact that he represents them (it's easy to forget when he's more concerned about aid to other countries than aid to people in his district who need it), the Democratic challenger will have successfully shaped the debate and created an uphill struggle for Kolbe.
I was planning to wait a little longer to see if any other Dems take an interest in this campaign, but so far it's not looking like any viable (hate that word) challengers are stepping up. Last I checked (if memory serves), there were four Democratic campaigns for the 8th District registered with the FCC: Eva Bacal, Tim Sultan, Mary Judge Ryan and Dwight Leister. A fifth potential candidate, Oro Valley resident Jeff Latas, is considering a run.
Bacal and Sultan ran in the last cycle (Bacal won the primary) and Ryan was Kolbe's major challenger in 2002.
Leister seems like a nice enough man, but his campaign website betrays an utter lack of political savvy.
Sultan, as I've written in an earlier post, would make a great candidate and better Congressman with some extra polishing, but I think he's moved on to bigger and better things at this point. After a brief stint working for the Governor's Division for Women, he recently started working for a firm of some kind in D.C.
Bacal and Ryan had lackluster performances in their respective challenges, though I do like Mary Judge Ryan and think she could be more competitive if her campaign was run more aggressively. That said, I don't think she's the one.
That leaves Latas, who has yet to file the necessary paperwork. He needs some work on his platform and help finding his voice, but the timing is right for someone with his background and profile to win this seat. He's trained as an engineer and spent his career in the Air Force as a pilot. He retired to a commercial airline and then fully retired recently. His son successfully fought leukemia and is now serving in Iraq. So right there he has instant credibility on emergency management, foreign policy, health care and the Iraq debacle.
Regardless of who it ends up being, the prospective serious candidate will need to start fundraising before year-end to run the kind of effective campaign that these times call for. I may be endorsing or otherwise supporting a Democratic candidate sooner than I thought...
