CA Campaign Update: CA-04, CA-45, CA-46, AD-78

A few odds and ends:

• CA-04: Tom McClintock is bringing out the big guns to help his cash-strapped campaign - Ron Paul is all in!

Paul, the libertarian-Republican congressman from Texas who raised more than $34 million for his presidential race, sent out an e-mail last week urging his massive donor base to contribute to McClintock.

"Tom McClintock is one of the most promising warriors in the fight against big government we have seen in a long time, and the special interests and big bankers know it. ... You have stood with me as....

...I campaigned for the Presidency to return our federal government to its proper role. Will you help me bring a reliable ally to Congress?"

This brings up some interesting questions. Does Tom McClintock think we should withdraw from Iraq and dozens of other military bases around the world? Does he believe in abolishing the Federal Reserve? The coinage of free silver?

They do have one thing in common, however - white supremacist supporters.

• CA-45: New voter registration statistics have not been released by the Secretary of State's office, but I think they will show good news for Democrats across the state. One statistic that is measurable is the early voting number, and in CA-45, it's good news for Julie Bornstein.

Democrats have significantly narrowed the early voting gap in the 45th Congressional District, an encouraging sign for challenger Julie Bornstein in her battle to unseat Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack (R-Palm Springs), according to Bornstein campaign manager Walter Ludwig.

In both 2004 and 2006, registered Republicans accounted for about 54 percent of early voters, compared with just 34 percent for Democrats. Mack, now a four-term incumbent, cruised to re-election both years by more than 20 points.

This year, early voting is much more evenly split. The latest numbers from the Riverside County Registrar of Voters show that registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by just five percent among early voters.

It's like the entire Republican machine all collapsed at once. They used to be MASTERS at getting absentee votes out. This year, there's either no such effort, or it's being matched by Democrats. CA-45 is under the radar, but these numbers suggest that it shouldn't be.

• CA-46: At the Great Orange Satan, Devilstower has a great piece that could start a new meme about Debbie Cook - the anti-Palin.

Suppose there was a candidate who was as bright and as capable as Sarah Palin is confused and incompetent.

Someone who had a record of working with environmental groups, and who had a real understanding of the threat posed by our dependence on fossil fuels. Someone with a degree in earth science and the long experience to make the claim of being a genuine energy expert.

Someone who not only knew science, but also had a law degree, and was a graduate of the leadership program at the Kennedy School of Government. Someone who has held positions of honor in state and national commissions. Someone who was well respected for both her intellect and her passion.

Suppose there was a candidate who had been mayor of, not a tiny town, but a medium-sized city. And suppose she took that position as a Democrat in the midst of a heavily Republican district.

Suppose there was someone who was everything that Sarah Palin is not.

Fortunately for us, there's Debbie Cook.

Read the whole thing. And help Debbie if you can.

• AD-78: Bill Cavala, who worked the last close race in this district, took a peek at some new registration numbers which show a real advantage for Marty Block:

This year the new registration ‘close’ figures show the Democrats with 101, 131 registrants, an increase of about 4100 from the last Presidential year. DTS registrations are 49,855, an increase of about 5800 from 2004. Most remarkably, however, Republican registration has fallen by almost 8000 – from 82,615 four years ago to 74,700 today.

This means the net change is Dems up 4100 and Reps down 8000 or 12,100 in favor of the Democrat over 2004.

Forget the increase in DTS registrations – which vote more Democratic than Republican in San Diego. Starting out down 12,000 in a seat where they won by 2000 with an incumbent – it’s open this year – puts the Republican candidate squarely behind the 8 ball.

Just one of the many Assembly races where this is so.

CA Campaign Update: Q3 Money Race Tells The Story

The FEC reports are starting to come in for our candidates. I'll update them here, but the preliminary numbers are very strong.

• CA-50: Wow. Nick Leibham raised $413,000 in the third quarter, his best quarter of the cycle by a factor of four. With $334,000 cash on hand, he's going to be able to get his message out in the final weeks. As much as anything, this is why Leibham is Red To Blue. No word on Brian Bilbray's take yet. Leibham's latest ad uses a local war hero to hammer Bilbray for his vote against the new GI Bill, and it's very powerful, a great improvement over the attention-getting stunts from earlier in the year. I'm starting to feel good about this race.



• CA-45: Julie Bornstein raised around $102,000 in Q3, while Mary Bono Mack raised $245,000. The cash on hand situation shows Bono Mack with $462,548 in the bank compared to Bornstein's $179,308. That's not terrible, especially if the DCCC steps in with some outside help - they just added Bornstein to their emerging races list (along with Bill Durston in CA-03). Her latest ad, showing Bono Mack as a rubber-stamping bobblehead, is spot-on ("Do you think George Bush is right 92% of the time?")



• CA-52: In our toughest winnable race, Mike Lumpkin raised $107,000 and has $125,000 CoH, and Duncan D. Hunter raised $290,000 with $321,000 CoH. It'll take a monumental effort to win this one, but I don't consider it impossible. Lumpkin just got put on the D-Trip's Races To Watch page, along with Russ Warner (CA-26).

• CA-46: A nice writeup about canvassing for Debbie Cook from friend of the blog Andrew Davey (atdleft).

more money updates when they roll in...

UPDATE: Debbie Cook raised $114,000 and has $181,000 in the bank. Nothing yet from Dana Rohrabacher. Will she outraise him three quarters in a row?

Campaign Update: CA-03, CA-04, CA-11, CA-45, CA-46

A lot to cover today.

General: I suspended the monthly ratings because it was ridiculously time-consuming and better to get the information out more timely, but in case you're wondering, here is my impression of the top targets in California for the Congressional races as we stand with 22 days out.

1) CA-04: Lean Dem. Charlie Brown has been ahead in multiple polls and actually has a ground game, unlike Tom McClintock.
2) CA-03: Tilt Repub. Bill Durston's poll showing the race as a dead heat raised a lot of eyebrows. Unfortunately people discovered this race too late, but by Election Day I'll bet that the registration numbers are virtually tied and there will not be an immediate call. The smart money for progressives wanting to impact a race should go to Dr. Durston against Dan Lungren.
3) CA-46: Tilt Repub. Debbie Cook is replicating the Loretta Sanchez strategy of ground mobilization that she used to defeat B-1 Bob Dornan. We'll see if she can pull it off against Crazy Dana Rohrabacher.
4) CA-26: Tilt Repub. Russ Warner has been doing a decent enough job and there's a bit of outside support, but David Dreier has a wall of money.
5) CA-45: Lean Repub. This race has also been under the radar, but the district is either #1 or #2 in the COUNTRY for foreclosures, and affordable housing expert Julie Bornstein can stand to benefit from movement toward Democratic solutions on the economy in her race against Mary Bono Mack.
6) CA-50: Lean Repub. This is the permanent tease district in California, and despite Nick Leibham's efforts to shake up the race, I'm not seeing Brian Bilbray taken down right now, especially because he's likely to whip up populist support in his base with his vote against the bailout.
7) CA-52: Likely Repub. It was always going to be an uphill battle for Mike Lumpkin in his race against Duncan Hunter's son running for Duncan Hunter's old seat. I'd like to see better signs here, but I'm coming up empty.

I rate everything else as Safe Republican at the moment. I'll do a legislative targeting in the next campaign update. Now, to the news:

• CA-03: Faced with a tie race, Dan Lungren's campaign has decided that the smart thing to do is name calling.

A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren's (R-Gold River) congressional campaign said Bill Durston was mischaracterizing Lungren's absence from a candidate forum last weekend.

On top of that, he referred to Durston, a Democrat from Gold River, as a "knucklehead."

They actually don't believe Durston's viable. Hilariously, Lungren gave out a bunch of tickets to a Bonnie Raitt concert in the district, and during the show Raitt endorsed Durston and urged people to vote.

This would be such a delicious upset, and the contours of it remind me exactly of Carol Shea-Porter's improbable victory in New Hampshire in 2006.

• CA-04: The competitors actually showed up at a 4th District debate last week, and Charlie Brown got off a great line:

In the heavily Republican district, where he narrowly lost to Doolittle two years ago, Brown faced an audience question over whether he would "stand up to Nancy Pelosi" and her "liberal positions." [...]

While Brown said he disagreed with the Democratic house speaker from San Francisco on rights of gun owners, McClintock went after him.

"This issue of marching in lockstep with her on every major issue in the campaign speaks to the fact that she has targeted your congressional district as one of those seats they want to cement a permanent Democratic majority," McClintock said. "And I think they're counting on your vote, Charlie."

Brown, a district resident in Roseville, answered back with a poke at McClintock for running in a district 400 miles north of his Senate seat in Thousand Oaks.

"Tom, if you want to run against Nancy Pelosi (in San Francisco)," Brown said, "that district is actually closer than this one to your home."

• CA-45: Julie Bornstein, on the other hand, debated an empty chair recently in Rancho Mirage. Mary Bono Mack has refused any effort to get her to debate Bornstein. Perhaps she's busy with her husband in Florida.

Bornstein came prepared. When she was given the opportunity to address the absentee incumbent in her closing remarks, Bornstein came out firing.

"This is a job interview," she said, asking Bono Mack, "How is it that you feel that you do not need to meet with your constituents?"

"There is no sense of entitlement here," Bornstein told voters, "that somehow your vote is already predetermined, that you owe it to a party or a person. One of the first lessons I learned when I became a working person is that you have to show up. You have to be here. And my question to my opponent is, where are you?"

They tracked Bono Mack down at a party during the forum. Bornstein, who this weekend welcomed Barbara Boxer in for a fundraiser, parried a Republican attempt to protest that event in much the same way, by saying that she "welcomed debate." Often these debate-baiting tactics aren't that successful, but I don't think this is a good year to be an absentee incumbent.

• CA-11: Another duo got together for a little chat this weekend, Dean Andal and Jerry McNerney. There's some interesting stuff in there - Andal apparently thinks it's "immoral" to support a safe and responsible withdrawal of troops from Iraq. But what's more interesting is that Andal finally, two weeks after the bailout, came up with an opinion on it. He was opposed, in case you were wondering. Talk about political cowardice, waiting that long to express an opinion.

• CA-46: Debbie Cook has a new ad.



I have to say that I kind of like it. The "asteroids" thing is kind of tacked on, but the rest of it is sufficiently hard-hitting and affixes Dana Rohrabacher to the problems created by 8 long years of Republican failure. The Cook campaign has Jim Dean from DFA coming into the district for a fundraising breakfast and precinct walk this Sunday. More information here.

CA Campaign Update: CA-03, CA-04, CA-11, CA-41, CA-45, SD-19,

And away we, er, go.

• CA-03: Bill Durston, who is showing lots of strength in his race against Dan Lungren, has earned the support of the Alliance of Retired Americans, a 3.5 million-member group of retirees. Clearly this came on the heels of Durston's strong support for a not-for-profit health care system:

Dr. Durston has also been a strong proponent of universal health care. “It’s always been my philosophy that access to necessary medical care is a basic human right, not a privilege based on one’s ability to pay. We’re the only western industrialized country in the world that doesn’t have some form of universal health care, yet we pay twice as much per capita as the other countries for medical care.”

Durston is starting to get some major attention after that last poll. Expect him to attack Lungren on his vote for the bailout over the next 27 days.

• CA-04: Lots going on here. After vowing to shut down his account for 2010 statewide races, professional politician Tom McClintock just couldn't close the door.

But four weeks before the Nov. 4 election, McClintock's account remains open and active, as the Thousand Oaks lawmaker has doled out thousands of dollars to fellow Republicans in the last week.

McClintock made $3,600 donations, the maximum allowed under state law, to a trio of Republican candidates for the Legislature: Senate candidates Tony Strickland and Greg Aghazarian and Assembly hopeful Jack Sieglock.

His Democratic opponent, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Charlie Brown, made hay of McClintock's multiple accounts over the summer, calling him a career politician in search of a job.

"What office are you running for?" Brown said in a July statement.

I just find it interesting that Republicans are that worried about Jack Sieglock. Go Alyson Huber! Of course, the other half of this is that McClintock is a huge hypocrite, but you knew that.

In other news, Charlie Brown has a new ad out comparing professional politician McClintock to his record of service. Truth Fights Back, John Kerry's group, is getting Charlie's back over that ridiculous anti-military smear of McClintock's. Brown also signed the Children’s Defense Council’s Pledge to ensure affordable health care for every child and every pregnant woman. I very much liked this strong take in the press release:

“Tom McClintock gets free healthcare, a free car, free gas, and tax free per diems he’s not entitled to, yet has voted to restrict the ability of Californians to see a doctor of their choice and fought against helping our most vulnerable citizens access meaningful healthcare coverage,” said Retired USAF Lt. Col. Charlie Brown “His record of inaction has not only helped drive up the cost of healthcare for every Californian, it’s illustrative of a career politician hypocrite who would rather serve himself, than solve problems.”

Earlier this year, McClintock authored SB 1669, which would have made it easier for health insurance companies to deny the health claims of Californians on the basis of pre-existing condition. In fact, SB 1669 would have extended the period that insurers could look back in your medical history from 12 months to 10 years.

“Tom McClintock’s idea of healthcare reform is writing a law that says if you have a medical problem, you can’t get healthcare coverage,” Brown said. “This misguided bill could have literally cost millions of Californians who have battled and overcome ailments ranging from diabetes, to mild cardiac conditions or cancer their lives. It was so misguided, it never came up for a floor vote and not a single healthcare organization or institution signed on to support it.

Also, Mcjoan at the Great Orange Satan had a good piece based on some of her time in the district recently. This is big:

The campaign has seven offices across the nine counties in the huge district, one of the most beautiful in the country, spanning the Sierras. With four regional field directors, seven organizers and 25 paid canvassers, the campaign has knocked on more than 120,000 doors and made over 300,000 phone calls. Hundreds of new Democrats have been registered. This is the kind of retail politics that allows Democrats to win in Republican districts, in fact it's about the only way to run successfully in a tough district. McClintock, by contrast, has basically no field operation.

That ground game is going to win it for Charlie.

• CA-11: Continuing his quest to be the most overhyped Republican challenger this cycle, Dean Andal continues to dodge the question of whether or not he supported the Paulson bailout plan. He literally has no idea how to handle it, preferring to hide behind the idea that it would be inappropriate to comment because he's not in office. Yeah, uh, that's kind of the point. You say how you would be different from the current office-holder as a means to get the job. What a loser.

• CA-41, CA-45: Haven't written much about Tim Prince's race in San Bernardino County against Jerry "Lobbyists Are Funding My Congressional Portrait" Lewis, but somehow his campaign got the local paper to call it a tough race.

Prince criticized Lewis' use of earmarks, the pet projects that lawmakers attach to spending bills, in some cases without a vote.

"Jerry Lewis is totally void of morality when it comes to earmarks," he said, pointing to Lewis' ties to Bill Lowery, a longtime friend and lobbyist. "When I'm congressman, the mayor of Beaumont and the mayor of Apple Valley can pick up the phone and call me for help. They don't have to call a lobbyist who happens to be my best friend."

One thing that Prince would be better advised to focus on is that his district has one of the highest rates of foreclosures in the entire country. The highest? CA-45, where Mary Bono-Mack is facing affordable housing expert Julie Bornstein. If there was ever a reason to create a single-issue candidacy, this is it, and for Bornstein, who has an easier time of it with a less partisan electorate, that could be a real opening in the final month.

• SD-19: Calitics Match candidate Hannah-Beth Jackson is attacking Tony Strickland for greenwashing his environmental credentials in a very, shall we say, familiar way:



Of course, I'm happy to have provided the template for calling out Strickland on this nonsense. There are in addition lots of IE attacks in this race as it nears the home stretch.

California Campaign Update

A mini-report:

• CA-04: I love this video from the Charlie Brown campaign. They traveled 412 miles down to Thousand Oaks to talk to constituents of California's Alan Keyes, State Senator and professional office-chaser Tom McClintock. It's really funny and drives the point home that McClintock is a do-nothing at best and a dangerous radical at worst:



And get this, McClintock is now running on the state budget, the Republican version of which has a 19% approval rating. That's like putting Nixon, Bush and Cheney in your campaign ad.

• CA-26, CA-45: Not one but two! Both Russ Warner AND Julie Bornstein have been added to the DCCC "Races To Watch" list. This is a prelude to being listed as Red To Blue candidates. If the D-Trip comes through with some money, maybe threatened incumbents like Dreier will have to stop mouthing off about other GOP races and start paying attention to their own.

• CA-46: When John Fund tries to target a Dem challenger, you know something's going wrong. Fund is sounding the alarm on Debbie Cook, as Dana Rohrabacher tries to greenwash himself with a scheme to build solar-power plants on federal land without environmental impact studies. Fund says that Cook called this "an extreme position," but he chopped the quote:

Democratic challenger and Mayor of Huntington Beach Debbie Cook agrees that the process of approving solar power plants is sluggish and needs to be sped up, but not at the expense of the environment.

"This is just another extreme position by Dana Rohrabacher. What we need to do is come up with a balanced approach that streamlines these projects, because they're critically important to our energy future, but at the same time recognizes the impacts to the environment," Cook said.

Rohrabacher's doing the equivalent of saying he'll grow jobs by hiring 10,000 federally funded serial killers, and then wondering why everyone's worried about the mass death ("You wanted jobs, didn't you?"). There's a sensible way to free up the bottlenecks and a rash one. Rohrabacher chose door #2.

• CA-42: The internal poll results released by Ed Chau are intriguing (showing him up 44-38 after a mix of positive and negative information released on the candidates), but I don't think candidates who have minimal bank accounts should do polls stating the numbers after a mix of information if they don't have the money to get that information out. But if Gary Miller truly has a 28% re-elect number as the poll states, he could be in trouble.

Two Radio Notes

Real quick - I just interviewed Julie Bornstein, candidate for CA-45 in the Palm Springs area. The interview is archived at Calitics. This is more and more becoming a race to watch. Bornstein is the first elected official (she served in the State Assembly) to face Mary Bono Mack, and she has a keen insight into the mortgage mess as a leader with the Campaign for Affordable Housing. It's a very good discussion that touches on green building, smart growth, and sustainable development, as well as the Iraq war and the housing crisis.

Also, last Friday I was on the Peter B. Collins show (guest-hosted by Brad Friedman of BradBlog fame) as part of an LA Blogger Roundtable. The conversation habitually turned to bashing Democrats to an uncomfortable degree, but if you're interested you can find the podcast archive here.

CA House Races Roundup - Post-Primary Edition 6/6/08

Well, the votes are in, the matchups are set, and so I thought it was time for a baseline roundup of where I think the California House races stand as of now. The main pieces of information that are causing me to reset my expectations are the primary results, the April 1-May 15 fundraising numbers and the new registration numbers from the Secretary of State's office. You can track all three yourself:

Primaries
FEC disclosures (you can search by candidate name)
Voter registration by Congressional district.

That said, let's take a look, starting with the one threatened Democratic seat.

(A note: I'm going to start a state legislative roundup as well)

DEMOCRATIC SEATS

1. CA-11. Incumbent: Jerry McNerney. Challenger: Dean Andal. Cook number: R+3. % Dem turnout in the Presidential primary: 53.7%. DCCC defended. Good news and bad news out of this race. The good news is that Dean Andal can't seem to raise any money - just $11,000 in the pre-primary filing period. The bad news is that Andal got about 900 more votes in his uncontested primary than McNerney did in his. McNerney seemed to have a lot of trouble attracting votes in San Joaquin County, which brought back more votes than any county in the district. While the NRCC and RNC will clearly be gunning for McNerney, the Barack Obama factor is certainly going to help him, as well has his incumbency status. So it's not time to pull the alarm just yet. But McNerney does have some work to do.


REPUBLICAN SEATS

I'm going to do three tiers in setting apart the top seats where we have challenges to Republican incumbents.

First Tier

1. CA-04. Last month: 1. Open seat. Dem. challenger: Charlie Brown. Repub. challenger: Tom McClintock. PVI #: R+11. % Dem turnout in Feb. primary: 44.7. DCCC targeted. Well, the battle is set. Tom McClintock, the Alan Keyes of California, came out of his divisive primary triumphant, and now Charlie Brown has an opponent. The Brown campaign released polls showing him leading McClintock in a head-to-head matchup. Steve Weigand isn't yet willing to bet the farm on a Brown pickup, but he recognizes the Roseville Democrat's strength against the carpetbagging Republican from Thousand Oaks. That Brown was able to get 42,000-plus votes against token competition on Tuesday shows that he has an energized activist base. Peter Hecht has a good primer on the state of the race. Expect Brown to hammer the message of Patriotism Above Partisanship against his knee-jerk wingnut conservative opponent. Also, McClintock is broke after a costly primary and has a lot of catching up to do financially.

2. CA-26. Last month: 2. Incumbent: David Dreier. Challenger: Russ Warner. PVI #: R+4. % Dem. turnout: 50.2. DCCC targeted. Russ Warner avenged his earlier loss to Cynthia Matthews in 2006 by winning handily on Tuesday, 67%-33%. His turnout was not great, however (just 14,000 votes). David Dreier got 74% of the vote, not great for an incumbent, and turnout was low district-wide. Warner has been stepping up his game with a Web ad about Dreier's frequent trips abroad and a companion site, Frequent Flyer Dreier. My gut feel is that this is not an effective line of attack, especially when the easiest one is tying Dreier, a member of the House Republican Leadership, to George Bush and a failed conservative agenda. I think there's enough interest in this seat that such a message will get out there, however. But Warner needs to improve on his June performance. The new registration numbers are moving in Warner's favor, however.

Second Tier

3. CA-45. Last month: 4. Incumbent: Mary Bono Mack. Challenger: Julie Bornstein. PVI #: R+3. % Dem. turnout: 51.3. Bornstein easily bested two challengers and won her race on Tuesday with just over 60% of the vote. Adding up the Dem v. GOP vote you get about 22,000 Dems and 33,000 Republicans, which isn't great. But I feel Bornstein has some advantages. Being an affordable housing advocate at a time when foreclosures are at an all-time high gives her authority on an important issue. This article explaining her support for the Foreclosure Prevention Act is an example. Manuel Perez' win in AD-80, which partially overlaps the district, will be helpful too, especially if they engage in a campaign to register voters in the underperforming eastern regions of Riverside County like the Coachella Valley. There's a lot of room to run here, and it's wide open for Democrats to exploit. The registration numbers show just a 19,000-vote difference between Democrats and Republicans, and a dearth of registered voters relative to other districts. This is an opportunity. Bornstein also had pretty solid fundraising in the pre-primary filing (around $40K in 6 weeks).

4. CA-46. Last month: 6. Incumbent: Dana Rohrabacher. Challenger: Debbie Cook (Responsible Plan endorser). PVI #: R+6. % Dem. turnout: 47.2. There's a great profile of this race in today's Los Angeles Times.

Huntington Beach Mayor Debbie Cook has survived a few long-shot political battles. But the Debbie-versus-Goliath matchup she's facing this fall is her biggest gamble yet.

The popular Surf City official is the Democratic hope to unseat GOP incumbent Rep. Dana Rohrabacher -- seeking his 11th term -- in an underdog campaign some observers believe may succeed.

Read the whole thing. I need to see Cook's fundraising numbers go up before I become a true believer, and her primary performance on Tuesday didn't set the world on fire. Cook got around 20,000 votes to Rohrabacher's 35,000. But Rohrabacher isn't doing any meaningful fundraising at all, and he continues to stick his foot in his mouth with asinine comments like yesterday's about torture being just a bunch of "frat boy pranks." Cook's communications team is fabulous and understands the netroots, and they'll be sure to get attention in this cycle (Blue America has already hosted her). Rohrabacher acknowledges in the LAT article that he'll have to pay attention to this race. He's right.

5. CA-50. Last month: 3. Incumbent: Brian Bilbray. Challenger: Nick Leibham. PVI #: R+5. % Dem. turnout: 50.8. DCCC targeted. Nick Leibham had a good fundraising cycle (about $70K raised in 6 weeks) but a disastrous primary. Cheryl Ede, who was not well-funded, got 43 percent of the vote, and Leibham was only able to manage 19,000 votes to Brian Bilbray's 46,000. The implication here is that Leibham has a problem with the activist support he's going to need going into November. That spells trouble - especially in a seat that's winnable enough that Bilbray's going to try and blur party lines in anticipation of a Democratic wave. In such an environment, we need someone willing to offer a real politics of contrast. This biographical ad is a decent start but Leibham has to get the message out there.

6. CA-03. Last month: 5. Incumbent: Dan Lungren. Challenger: Bill Durston. PVI #: R+7. % Dem turnout: 51.8. The news is all pretty good for Bill Durston. He had a fantastic fundraising cycle (77,000 in 6 weeks) and a strong showing in the primary, getting 26,000 votes to Dan Lungren's 34,000. Lungren, last seen in a Speedo on a lobbyist-paid trip to Hawaii, is absolutely going to have to work this time around. Durston's strategy in his second attempt to win this seat is slightly reminiscent of the effort against Richard Pombo in 2006. He'll need the same kind of support from outside groups to pull it off but it's not impossible; like in CA-11, the registration numbers are all pointing in the Democratic direction, with less than 4 percentage points and only 15,000 votes separating Democrats and Republicans, the closest of any GOP-held seat.

Third Tier

7. CA-52. Last month: 8. Open seat. Dem. challenger: Mike Lumpkin. Repub. challenger: Duncan D. Hunter. PVI #: R+9. % Dem. turnout: 47.2. The election night numbers show this seat to still be firmly Republican, with Duncan D. Hunter getting over twice as many votes in his race as Mike Lumpkin got in his. Lumpkin managed only 58% of the vote, too, so he needs to lock down base support. Lumpkin's fundraising remains OK but Hunter's got a big advantage there. I personally liked Lumpkin's rejection of those who would treat marriage equality as a divisive wedge issue.

8. CA-44. Last month: 11. Incumbent: Ken Calvert. Challenger: Bill Hedrick (Responsible Plan endorser). PVI #: R+6. % Dem. turnout: 49.3. Bill Hedrick got only 15,000 votes in his uncontested effort on Tuesday, but Ken Calvert got only 25,000 votes in his. This seems like one of those seats where nobody actually knows who the incumbent is. In a Democratic wave election, this is on the outside edge of being competitive.

9. CA-24. Last month: 9. Incumbent: Elton Gallegly. Challenger: Marta Jorgensen. PVI #: R+5. % Dem. turnout: 50.6. This was the shocker primary of the night. Marta Jorgensen, who had dropped out of the race up until a couple weeks before the primary, ended up besting her two challengers, leaving party leaders in the district baffled. There were hopes that this could be a battleground in November, but obviously Jorgensen - who had no expectation of winning and was told about her victory by the media - has a lot of work to do. She introduced herself to the Calitics community today, and her record as someone who worked on the Draft Gore movement is admirable. We'll see how she approaches the next few months.

10. CA-41. Last month: 10. Incumbent: Jerry Lewis. Challenger: Tim Prince. PVI #: R+9. % Dem. turnout: 46.3. Tim Prince received just 32% of the vote in winning his primary over 3 challengers on Tuesday. With Jerry Lewis apparently in the clear from a legal standpoint, even his role as one of America's most corrupt politicians may not be enough to take him down.

11. CA-42. Last month: 7. Incumbent: Gary Miller. Challengers: Ed Chau. PVI #: R+10. % Dem. turnout: 44.0. Ed Chau got around 7,000 votes in disposing of two challengers on primary night, while Gary Miller, running unopposed, got 32,000. Chau needs to raise his profile throughout the district, as he lives outside it. There is a small Asian community in the district and that would be a good place to start.

12. CA-48. Last month: 13. Incumbent: John Campbell. Challenger: Steve Young. PVI #: R+8. % Dem. turnout: 45.1. In a district including Irvine, the housing issue is going to be enormous, so if Steve Young wants to have a shot he's going to have to make that the big issue. He got 18,000 votes in his uncontested primary; John Campbell got 40,000 in his. It's an uphill climb.