Well,
the votes are in and the D primary for the open seat in WI-08 goes to
Steve Kagen, who's currently sitting on top of a pile of self-generated cash, pre-bought airtime, and boosted name recognition. Things look good for this seat...
Kagen's up against
John Gard, whose poll numbers
aren't exactly rosey, and who reminds everyone who meets him of the smarmy Young Republican type you wanted to beat the crap out of in high school. I've heard that even from Young Republicans...
Support for Kagen runs reasonably far through the district -- anecdotally, during the middle of the summer I was driving through a few sections of the Wisconsin north woods that would normally be thought of as spooky gun-toting militia-belonging territory, and the Kagen signs on the roadside outnumbered the Gard signs by a fair bit...
Personally, I was pulling for Jamie Wall. But with a pretty clean primary campaign and Russ Feingold's Unity Rally scheduled for Saturday in Green Bay, as well as what I've heard from folks on the ground, it's safe to say that Dems in the 8th are all focused on working their butts off and taking this seat back.
As I've been saying for a long time now, this is a winnable seat. Now that the dust is clearing, it looks more winnable than ever.