BREAKING: Special Election in VA on Dec. 11!
Mon Dec 03, 2007 at 07:56:54 PM PDT
I'm very excited at the prospect of turning Ohio's 5th District blue on Dec. 11. We have a great candidate and a decidedly unfavorable enviornment for the GOP down in the Buckeye State. But, as a resident of Virginia's 1st Congressional District, I'm starting to feel a little bummed at the prospect of a wasted opportunity.
Phil Forgit is not only from a more populous area of the district than his opponent, Rob Wittman, but he's a decorated Iraq War veteran in an area of the state where the military is of huge importance to it's voters.
Even before Phil shipped off to Iraq with the Naval Special Warfare Unit, he was an up-and-coming political star here in Virginia. In 2003 he lost to Del. Melanie Rapp while receiveing 46% of the vote. To give you an idea of how tough that district is...in 2007, despite the rosy atmosphere for Dems in VA, Rapp ran unopposed.
Before his military service, it was Phil's role as an educator that made him well-known in the Williamsburg area. In fact, after he did arrive in Iraq, he learned he had won the prestigious Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence from the NEA. With the prize money he earned, he started ForgitFilms LLC. His plan? To return to Iraq, even as a member of Congress, and show a side of the country that most Americans are completely unfamiliar with. Iraq isn't just a blob on a map. It's not just a subject to sit around and argue over. It's a country of mothers & fathers, of sons & daughters, of real human beings with real problems too complex to be summed up in a 2 min. nightly news segment.
Phil Forgit knows how to make the situation in Iraq better because, unlike the chickenhawks running this country, he's actually spent more than a weekend in Iraq. He knows the people. He knows what we're doing wrong, and what we could be doing right. In 2006, the term "Fighting Dems" was all the rage. It was a symbol that the Democratic Party was starting to find its voice again. But there's still work to be done. And there's one more Fighting Dem still out there that's had enough.
From Raising Kaine:
I'm hearing that a poll taken at the start of the race indicated that, after biographies were compared, voters in the 1st CD supported Forgit over Wittman by a 45%-44% margin.
From MyDD:
The Ohio 5th isn't the only red district special election taking place next Tuesday. We're also fighting for VA-01, which, with a PVI of R+8.9, is slightly less red than OH-05 (Bush won the district with 60% in 2004.) Yet, unlike in OH-05, it doesn't look as though there's much investment from the DCCC here...yet.
From CQ Politics:
The vacant U.S. House seats in Ohio’s 5th District and Virginia’s 1st District — which had been represented by Republican incumbents until their deaths in recent months — will be filled in special elections on Dec. 11. Both of these districts typically have strong Republican leanings, so the most likely outcomes are GOP holds.
But there is at least a sliver of uncertainty that, in CQ Politics’ analysis, mitigates against applying Safe Republican ratings to each of these short-term contests. The national political environment — which turned sharply against President Bush and his Republican Party in the 2006 midterm elections — remains unsettled. Additionally, the special elections held in mid-December, as most residents of the two districts are focused heavily on their holiday preparations, make the relative success of the parties’ voter turnout efforts difficult to predict.
Fred2Blue
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