Saturday, September 08, 2012

An Addendum To My 2012 U.S. House Voting Guide

I have to admit that I was feeling a bit pleased with myself for this recent post in response to the 31 (at a minimum) votes to repeal the Affordable Care Law, in which, in response, I highlighted 31 U.S. House Republicans (and two Democrats) who I thought were most at fault for this utter waste of time and taxpayer money. And putting all the posts together, while a time-consuming and sometimes exhausting exercise, was something that I thought was beneficial.

However, it recently occurred to me that that’s not really going to do much in pursuit of what I believe is a bigger goal, and that is to return the U.S. House to the Democrats (or short of that, to cut into the Republican majority…besides, is Hal Rogers actually going to lose?).

So I did a bit of looking around and came up with this list of races in which control of the House could be decided, and I did the same thing I did with the 31, only with a bigger and broader group. I tried to put the Republican candidates in what I believed was an appropriate light on one hand, while including web site or other contact information for their Democratic challengers on the other.

Now I can imagine the response of “there you go again, Doomsy, trying to smear Republicans any way possible.” Well, it may shock you to know that I included complimentary information on three of them; Robert Dold for standing up for Planned Parenthood, Scott Tipton for standing up for wind power, and Richard Hanna for standing up to the Teahadists. But don’t worry – there’s plenty of other stuff to use against the rest of the list (including Hanna and Tipton, though I must say that Tipton’s challenger Sal Pace doesn’t exactly “light it up” in his interview with Ed Schultz…it should also be noted that I really couldn’t find anything on David Rosa in Texas or David Hernandez in California – I’ll admit that this list may be a bit inexact). Also, it’s likely that there are races on this list where the Repug incumbent is actually better qualified that the Democratic challenger.

The issue that matters, though, is control of the House, and if sending some less deserving Dems to Washington helps return us to the majority, so be it, as a certain Speaker said in another context (besides, who’s to say that some of these folks won’t grow into the job, in the name of the “greater good”?).

So, with that somewhat windy pretext out of the way, here is my list of the DCCC-targeted Repug U.S. House candidates and their challengers (Note: Some Republicans are challengers also in races where an incumbent isn't running or redistricting has taken place):

District Repug Incumbent Dem Challenger
AR-01 Rick Crawford Scott Ellington
AZ-01 Paul Gosar Ann Kirkpatrick
AZ-09 Vernon Parker Krysten Sinema
CA-02 Wally Herger Jared Huffman
CA-07 Dan Lungren Ami Bera
CA-10 Jeff Denham Jose Hernandez
CA-29 *David Hernandez Tony Cardenas
CA-36 Mattie Fein Raul Ruiz
CA-41 John Tavaglione Mark Takano
CA-47 Gary DeLong Alan Lowenthal
CA-51 Michael Crimmins Juan Vargas
CA-52 Brian Bilbray Scott Peters
CO-03 Scott Tipton (and here) Sal Pace
CO-06 Mike Coffman Joe Miklosi
CT-05 Andrew Roraback Elizabeth Esty
FL-02 Steve Southerland Al Lawson
FL-09 Todd Long Alan Grayson
FL-10 Daniel Webster Val Demings
FL-13 Bill Young Jessica Ehrlich
FL-16 Vern Buchanan Keith Fitzgerald
FL-22 Adam Hasner Lois Frankel
FL-26 David Rivera Joe Garcia
IL-08 Joe Walsh Tammy Duckworth
IL-10 Robert Dold Brad Schneider
IL-11 Judy Biggert Bill Foster
IL-12 Jason Plummer Bill Enyart
IL-13 Rodney Davis David Gill
IL-17 Bobby Schilling Cheri Bustos
IN-02 Jackie Walorski Brendan Mullen
IN-08 Larry Buchson David Crooks
MD-06 Roscoe Bartlett (and here) John Delaney
MI-01 Dan Benishek Gary McDowell
MI-03 Justin Amash Steve Pestka
MI-05 Jim Slezak Dan Kildee
MI-11 Kerry Bentivolio Syed Taj
MN-02 John Kline Mike Obermueller
MN-08 Chip Cravaack Rick Nolan
MO-04 Vicky Hartzler Teresa Hensley
MT-AL Steve Daines Kim Gillan
NC-11 Mark Meadows Hayden Rogers
ND-AL Kevin Cramer Pam Gulleson
NH-01 Frank Guinta (and here) Carol Shea-Porter
NH-02 Charlie Bass Annie Kuster
NJ-03 Jon Runyan Shelley Adler
NJ-07 Leonard Lance Upendra Chivukula
NM-01 Janice Arnold-Jones Michelle Lujan Grisham
NV-01 Chris Edwards Dina Titus
NV-03 Joe Heck John Oceguera
NV-04 Danny Tarkanian Steven Horsford
NY-08 Allan Bellone Hakeem Jeffries
NY-11 Michael Grimm Mark Murphy
NY-18 Nan Hayworth Sean Patrick Maloney
NY-19 Chris Gibson Julian Schreibman
NY-22 Richard Hanna (and here) Dan Lamb
NY-23 Tom Reed Nate Shinagawa
NY-24 Ann Marie Buerkle Dan Maffei
OH-03 Chris Long Joyce Beatty
OH-06 Bill Johnson Charlie Wilson
OH-07 Bob Gibbs Joyce Healy-Abrams
OH-10 Mike Turner Sharen Neuhardt
OK-02 Markwayne Mullin Rob Wallace
PA-07 Patrick Meehan (and here) George Badey
PA-17 Laureen Cummings Matt Cartwright
PA-18 Tim Murphy Larry Maggi
TN-04 Scott Desjarlais Eric Stewart
TX-14 Randy Weber Nick Lampson
TX-20 David Rosa Joaquin Castro
TX-23 Francisco Canseco Pete Gallego
VA-02 Scott Rigell Paul Hirschbiel
VA-05 Robert Hurt John Douglass
WA-01 John Koster Suzan DelBene
WA-10 Richard Muri Denny Heck
WI-02 Chad Lee Mark Pocan
WI-06 Tom Petri Joe Kallas
WI-07 Sean Duffy (and here) Pat Kreitlow
WI-08 Reid Ribble Jamie Wall

* - No party preference

Update 9/19/12: God, is Todd Long a mess (here)...though the Hopefully Next Congresssman With Guts may have gone a bit too far, as noted here.

Update 9/25/12: And Mike Grimm definitely earns a Dishonorable Mention for this, especially the part about Gabby Giffords.

Update 10/10/12: Some "do as I say, not as I do" stuff from Scott DesJarlais here...

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