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And before we take the jump, I just wanted to remind you again that you can contribute to candidates on this project by hitting this
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And, because I get grief about not pimping my other series, here are the stories in The Basics Series...
New Republican Sales Pitch
DLC Democrats Sales Pitch
City on a Hill
The Napoleonic Strategies of the GOP
The Danger Called Howard Dean
JUMP!
There are four Congressional Districts in Arkansas, three of which are held by Democrats and one by a Republican. I never knew that Arkansas was drawn so blue. I suppose it makes up for Florida, which is obscenely red. Wait. No it doesn't. Anyway....
AR-1 - The Northeast portion of the state including Jonesboro and West Memphis. Our incumbent, Marion Berry, won this with 67% of the vote, but Bush got by Kerry 52/47. The reddies are running Stubby Stumbaugh, who gets points for going by Stubby in the first place. Stubby is the mayor of Cabot, and formerly a cop with the Little Rock Police Department. Berry just kicked Stubby's ass in fundraising (1.1m vs 76k) and Berry has been spending a lot on the campaign, such that Berry still has $330k COH to 13.5 for Stubby. I can't see any recent news on the race itself, but I can see that with Bush's 36% approval rating, and the gubernatorial race favoring the Democrat, Stubby chose a bad time to run on very few dollars. I think Stubby will be back and I suspect that, if he goes for a different office, he might be a force to be reckoned with. But not this race, and not this year.
AR-1: Safe Blue.
AR-2 - The Central portion of the state including Little Rock. Our incumbent, Vic Snyder carried this district with 58%, but Bush edged out Kerry 51/48. The reddie is Andy Mayberry, a guy with nothing really to bespeak him in his biography, and he toes the classic Republican lines on just about everything you can think of. But he does have a sense of humor, which I think is serving him well. Here's an example from his website (and there are many), "Among Andy's little-known talents are abilities to juggle and to walk on his hands, though not at the same time for obvious reasons." He raised about 90k to Snyder's 500k, and the COH favors Snyder 217k to 3k. I don't really know why they're doing polling in this race or why it's on his website, but a few months ago, the difference between the two candidates was about 20% and it recently tightened up to 56/42 with a 4.6 MoE. To me, it looks like Snyder is just keeping the folks who voted for him, minus a couple who just get a chuckle out of voting for Andy Mayberry (and yes, his parents did that to him on purpose), or think the guy is someone you could have drinks with, which clearly is true, if he drinks, which could really go either way.
AR-2: Safe Blue.
AR-3 - The Northwest portion of the state including Ft Smith and Fayetteville. The red incumbent, John Boozman, won this ditrict with 59% of the vote, three less than W. Our guy is Woodrow Anderson, an Infantry Captain with 15 years in the military, and CFO of Fossil, Inc., a multinational maker of hip and swinging watches. He now owns his own hotel. Oh, and the kid is 33. Now, here's a question. If Boozman was 3% less popular than W, and W's taken a 17 point dip in the Arkansas polls, is this race competitive on its face? Woody sure thinks so. And, you know the reddies are saying not to worry about this race a little to often for me to think they really aren't worried. This is the closest race in terms of dollars in the state, with Boozman raising $460k and Anderson raising $326k, to put it in perspective, he has more than raised twice the sum of all the other challengers in the state. I'm calling this one a tossup leaning red and putting Woody on my ActBlue page. Give the guy some lovin... he might just make you glad you did.
AR-3: Tossup leaning Red.
AR-4 - The Southern portion of the state, including Pine Bluff and Hot Springs. Our incumbent Mike Ross ran unopposed last time, but Bush beat Kerry 51/48. The reddies are running a guy by the name of Joe Ross, maybe they mean to confuse voters, maybe it's a coincidence, but, either way, it's the Battle of the Rosses in AR-4, with our Mike raising somewhere over a million bucks and their guy, Joe, with zero dollars and not even a link to the website from the NRCC site. My Google searches turn up nothing of interest on Joe. Maybe the reddies will gain a couple of percentage points with the "You got soup on your tie!" move if Joe is first on the ballot. But, geez.
AR-4: Safe Blue.