My 2012 U.S. House Voting Guide

It’s been a few days since I finished compiling the list of the 31 U.S. House Republicans opposed to health care reform, and I wondered what the next step should be. I mean, pointing out that these people fundamentally are frauds and charlatans is a nice, therapeutic exercise I know, even if it ended up being waaay more time consuming than I thought it would.

But how do we actually get rid of them, I wondered?

With that in mind, I did a bit of research and came up with a list of Democratic challengers for not quite all of the 31 that, as far as I know, is as firm as can be expected at the moment (I think there’s a question about William Smith, and the Dem primary won by Harold Whitfield was being recounted the last I checked). Also, I say “not quite all” because Boehner, Broun and Gohmert don’t have Democratic challengers (I couldn’t find any – if there are brave souls out there taking them on that I don’t know about, please leave a comment to that effect). I also hacked around with some HTML a bit and came up with the table format; the incumbent names are linked to the prior posts the same way they were during the countdown, and the challengers are linked mainly to their web sites, but also a Twitter page and a blogspot home page also.

I wish to emphasize that I know nothing about almost all of the challengers, but maybe (if you’re “represented” by any of the 31) it might be a good idea to learn more about these folks (and, if you’re so inclined, to chip in with some coin to help them out). And I’m not going to pretend that trying to knock off the incumbents isn’t going to be a mammoth exercise in some (maybe even most) cases. But that journey of a mile begins with a single step, as they say (or something).

Anyway, here’s the incumbent/Dem challenger list…

No.	Repug Incumbent	Dem Challenger
1	Steve King	Christie Vilsack
2	Mike Fitzpatrick	Kathy Boockvar
3	John Boehner	Unopposed
4	Eric Cantor	Wayne Powell
5	Michele Bachmann	Jim Graves
6	Paul Ryan	Rob Zerban
7	Louie Gohmert	Unopposed
8	Allen West	Patrick Murphy
9	Joe Pitts	Aryanna Strader
10	Jack Kingston	Lesli Messinger
11	Patrick McHenry	Patsy Keever
12	Spencer Bachus	Penny Bailey
13	Jim Gerlach	Manan Trivedi
14	Cliff Stearns	Heather Beaven
15	Jean Schmidt	William Smith
16	Phil Gingrey	Patrick Thompson
17	David Schweikert	Matt Jette
18	Virginia Foxx	Elisabeth Motsinger
19	Pete Sessions	Katherine S. McGovern
20	Charlie Dent	Rick Daugherty
21	Cathy McMorris Rodgers	Rich Cowan
22	Chris Smith	Brian Froelich
23	Todd Akin	Harold Whitfield
24	Buck McKeon	Lee Rogers
25	Kristi Noem	Matt Varilek
26	Hal Rogers	Kenneth Stepp
27	Lou Barletta	Gene Stilp
28	Paul Broun	Unopposed
29	Mary Bono Mack	Sukhee Kang
30	David Dreier	Julia Brownley
31	Marsha Blackburn	Credo Amouzouvik