So you're Rep. Melissa Hart, an incumbent House representative who has molded herself in the image of Sen. Rick Santorum and who has even been his regular campaign compadre over the past decade and a half. You have easily won the past few races in an overwhelmingly Democratic district, albeit one that is more culturally conservative. You had weak opponents who raised no money.
But it's a little bit different here in 2006. The climate for Republicans is, shall we say, troubling. It's edging closer to the November elections. The last independent poll showed that your Democratic opponent, [Jason Altmirewww.jasonaltmire.com], was actually in striking distance, at 55 to 39 percent. And he achieved that with literally no media presence and limited name recognition.
Even so, you're an incumbent who has managed to stay under the "culture of corruption" radar. CW would say, "Results should be highly in my favor. Double digits most likely." Conventional wisdom just might be wrong.
As Altmire explained recently on the
Young Turks, Rep. Hart took that poll more than 3 weeks ago. And, low and behold, she has yet to release the results. That leads me to believe her camp did not like what it saw.
Much to my chagrin, this race hasn't gotten a lot of attention from the prognosticators. To date, Altmire has been conducting a strong ground war, getting out into neighborhoods and knocking on doors, getting into the local press, with the help of Howard Dean, when he can.
The campaign hasn't made a strong effort to reach out to the progressive blogosphere (hence my semi-regular posts on this race). But all - or at least a lot - of indications suggest that this could be another Democratic pickup in November, and an important one at that.
Rep. Hart is a rubber stamping, family values hypocrite. She votes with Republicans 96 percent of the time, Bush 93 percent of the time. She voted against expanding federal funding of stem cell research, wants desperately to control how women in this country use contraception (or, to be more accurate, BAN its use outright), voted in favor of changing the rules so that the Bugman Delay would have been allowed to remain in his leadership position even if he was indicted, and is in the pocket of Big Oil.
Altmire had a decent last quarter for fundraising. But he needs to improve his name recognition with media buys, something that reportedly is in the works. But those buys will likely have to be limited because they are expensive. Rep. Hart reportedly has only agreed to one debate and it will be highly structured with all of the questions given ahead of time and little chance for exchanges between the candidates.
The key fact isthis. There are 55,000 more registered Democrats in the 4th District than registered Republicans. Rep. Melissa Hart may be "culturally conservative," but if Jason Altmire--who is pro-life and pro-gun rights, but squarely progressive on the other major issues (including health care, his area of expertise, energy policy, etc.)--can get his name and face out there, he can win this election.
So if you're on ActBlue and you have an extra $10 or $20 (or more!), throw it his way. It may send one more rubber stamper packing.