Hey all. Roving Citizen here again in northern San Diego county. The special election is only a week away and things are heating up! Here's a summary of the latest news:
- Francine Busby, the democratic candidate, still appears to be the front-runner. And the GOP may be a bit scared. They are now running a perfectly ridiculous attack ad down here. Josh Marshall breaks it down perfectly. Republicans really should not be bringing up the Keating Five ... though it's probably too late for any backlash to happen.
- One of the leading GOP candidates to replace Duke Cunningham is Howard Kaloogian, who was in the news recently for a photo on his website that he claimed was of Baghdad. Along with the photo he wrote
"We took this photo of dowtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it - in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism."
...gotta love that last line in particular. The best part? Turns out the photo is not of Baghdad at all, as beautifully proved here. So this guy has been getting a lot of press ... not all of it good. - Millionaire Eric Roach is also running for the seat, and he is in some legal hot water from one of his mailings. We learn that from this article. In the same article, we learn that Brian Bilbray, another GOPer angling for this seat, is under attack ... from fellow Republicans. Huh?
As far as I can tell, Busby is going to win the special election. The only question is whether she breaks 50% or if there will be a runoff. Stay tuned!
3 comments:
Of course, that's a _big_ question. Having a plurality over the array of (apparently buffoonish) Republican contenders without winning outright effectively reduces the election to a Republican primary, with the very real possibility that the same GOP voters rally behind their least worst candidate, and win despite all reason.
I vacillate between cynicism and hopefulness for the upcoming election. I can't decide whether the GOP's woes are really going to make GOP voters say "I can't actually go out and vote for an outright fraud" (to take Kaloogian for an example), or whether sheer irrational cussedness will compel them to vote for obviously wrong candidates.
There was a history professor at my high school who was fond of saying, "I'd vote for Donald Duck if he were Republican." I don't know if he'd say that now, since the whole small government tenet of conservatism has been thrown out of Republicanism. But the pessimistic part of me wonders if the prevailing view is that a GOP criminal is still better than one of those (insert expletive here) Democrats .
If only the Libertarian Party would rise up and splinter the GOP votes... :)
// posted by Bob
I've heard from contacts in Iowa's 2nd district that local poll numbers show that only 3/4 of Republicans intend to vote for the incumbent Republican House rep there. That could be VERY good news for the Democratic challenger. The IA-02 is a mainly Democratic district so Leach (the Republican) survives only because of solid support from the Republican minority along with splitting off a substantial number of Democrats. Polls suggest that may not happen this time around.
The situation in the CA-50 is different because that is a mainly Republican district but the overall picture is one of demoralized Republicans.
// posted by Roving Citizen
Looks like (www.sdvote.com) Busby got 44% of the vote. The next nearest Republican got 15%, then 14.6%. The two republicans are so close that to determine which goes in the runoff will require counting the 8% of the vote (10000 absentee ballots) that remain. Interesting.
// posted by LTG
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