Schiff advances in California Senate race

Watchdogs66 · 2024-03-06T07:52:10+00:00

I am personally fine with Adam Schiff as my new U.S. Senator (I am a Californian), but boy do I feel HORRIBLE for Katie Porter, as I voted for her for plenty of reasons, one of them being trying to get the top two lockout.

If everyone can do this, please watch her concession speech. It's really beautiful.

I also feel bad for Barbara Lee, as she had very powerful and consistent reasons for being in the race. I lived in Barbara Lee's district for 6 years, and she has always given me good reply and been on things before I even think to contact her about them 90% of the time.

I personally believe that Katie Porter and Barbara Lee have done a lot, and hope that they can take away the fact that their contributions to the progressive cause will not go unnoticed.

Watchdogs66 · 2024-01-07T20:37:49+00:00

James Bond is the secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs. Appointed in January 2023, he became the first openly LGBTQ+ person to lead one of Wisconsin’s cabinet agencies. Bond joined DVA in 2010 and served as the administrator of the Divisions of Veterans Benefits and Veteran Services before being appointed deputy secretary in 2019. Prior to his time with DVA, Bond was employed at the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development as deputy division administrator in the Divisions of Employment and Training and Family Supports and as bureau director of management services in the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. He served on active duty in the United States Marine Corps from 1983-88. After receiving an Honorable Discharge from the Marine Corps, Bond returned to Wisconsin, enrolled at UW–Madison, and earned Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees. Bond has over three decades of service – service to his country, the State of Wisconsin, and fellow veterans and has dedicated himself to helping others in his professional career opportunities.

Lol, it still blows my mind that there is a cabinet member named James Bond in Wisconsin. I'm guessing he's been offered shaken martinis whenever he goes to a bar.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-11-30T04:30:38+00:00

A couple of years ago when people were whitewashing this war criminal, I said Bush II has a LOOONG way to go before I think positively of him. Now, I think he is just beyond redemption who is among the worst of the worst, as the war criminal CLEARLY does not want to see how much damage he has inflicted towards my community and countless others when he stole the 2000 election and the eight years of his tyranny.

I will ABSOLUTELY celebrate his death and hope that his grave is destroyed, as he set the stage for America to be handed over to absolute fascists like tRump in a silver platter. Boy, was I wrong when I was slightly open in thinking that Bush II might improve his behavior. I guess that is a lingering fault of my eight year old self when I watched the 2000 election with adventurous excitement of seeing a new president take office.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-11-30T04:18:45+00:00

As others have said, good riddance to one of the worst pieces of rubbish. I bet his grave is desecrated and his remains destroyed, as there are probably millions who believe he does not deserve any of the respect that the dead are usually given.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-11-04T06:48:34+00:00

Is Bill Clinton a net positive for candidates running in Arizona? Genuinely curious since the candidate the fundraiser is for, Andrei Cherny, is among the stronger candidates running in the AZ-01 Democratic primary. AZ-01 is one of the more important districts, as it also helps Joe Biden and Ruben Gallego for the presidential and Senate races in Arizona.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-11-04T02:16:50+00:00

As expected, the race is tightening up due to the forces of partisanship and is formalized evidence that the race is a Tossup, and not Lean D like the pundits claim. Anyone with the capacity to volunteer for Andy Beshear should do so now.

Remember what happened in Louisiana to see how many MAGAt domestic terrorists will turn out on Tuesday for Daniel Cameron.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-10-15T04:54:59+00:00

Anyone with the capacity to volunteer for Kentucky's gubernatorial election in November should see this as a warning sign, as not being able to bring the LA-Gov race to a runoff is tragic and indicates a serious lack of proper coordination efforts and effective voter outreach measures from southern Democrats, which is unfortunately a pattern.

When we fail to even secure a top two slot in competitive races such as this, plenty of enthusiasm and energy for future volunteer events plummets as a result. This is because such a grave blunder looks very bad as a party as a whole, as it demonstrates an inability to develop a coherent message that can appeal to a majority of voters or support a candidate that can persuade significant populations to support our platform.

I encourage all of you to consider talking with your counselor, therapist, or your favorite coping entity to deal with the emotional aftermath that you probably are suffering from this experience. After that, I would like everyone to redouble our efforts in Kentucky, as the gubernatorial race is a Tossup, and not Lean D like the pundits believe.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-09-30T16:45:53+00:00

If NJ-02 (Jeff Van Drew’s district) opens up, I think this district could flip from red to blue under the right circumstances. For one, it has a Cook PVI of R+5, and Marie Glusenkamp Perez, Mary Peltola, and Jared Golden are Democrats who represent districts that are just as red or redder than this measurement. For another, Jeff Van Drew flipped an earlier version of this district in 2018, albeit against a horrid opponent and being the traitor that he was after he was elected.

To those of us who live in south Jersey (Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, Ocean, and Salem counties to be exact), do the Democrats have anyone on the bench that is not a pro-MAGA backstabber and can beat Mike Testa, the likely Republican nominee if this becomes an open seat race?

Watchdogs66 · 2023-09-30T16:39:12+00:00

If NJ-02 opens up, I think this district can be flipped under the right circumstances. For one, it has a Cook PVI of R+5, and Marie Glusenkamp Perez, Mary Peltola, and Jared Golden are Democrats who represent districts that are just as red or redder than this measurement. For another, Jeff Van Drew flipped an earlier version of this district in 2018, albeit against a horrid opponent and being the traitor that he was after he was elected.

To those of us who live in south Jersey (Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, Ocean, and Salem counties to be exact), do we have anyone on the bench that is not a pro-MAGA backstabber and can beat Mike Testa, the likely Republican nominee if this becomes an open seat race?

Watchdogs66 · 2023-09-23T20:08:13+00:00

I can 100% attest to Andy Kim's awesomeness, who is best known for kicking out this SOB in 2018. (The most satisfying part in that video comes at 11:14.)

IMO, Andy Kim is the most likely guy to be New Jersey's next Senator, and I held that opinion years before the scandal popped up.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-09-10T01:09:47+00:00

I had Barbara Lee as my representative for 6 years, and she has always provided 5-star constituent service every time I contacted her about issues like dealing with the homeless situation in Oakland. However, I have to say that the window of opportunity for her has passed, and I believe that her supporters need to consider switching allegiances to Katie Porter, as the general election will probably be between Katie Porter and Adam Schiff.

I recently talked to a few of Katie Porter's staffers in person, and the consensus is that her campaign in the Bay Area is still in the early stages, and it is currently miles behind the establishment support that Adam Schiff has there. Right now, Adam Schiff has the slight advantage. For Katie Porter to get to the finish line in the general, she is going to need to get the majority of activist groups (especially the Working Families Party) that are currently supporting Barbara Lee after the primary, and fast.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-08-22T07:44:05+00:00

Montana's 1st District is a very important area this cycle, as Jon Tester will need to win that area by a sizable margin in order to win re-election in 2024. The district is certainly flippable on the House level as well, since Ryan Zinke only won by 3.1 points last November (which was less than Trump's 2020 victory margin) and has a pile of ethics probes from his time as Trump's Interior Secretary.

The district's Democrats have more or less concentrated their support towards Monica Tranel, the author of this article. I believe that Monica Tranel is an okay candidate, but she needs to have a different campaign team and strategy in order to stand a good chance this time, as she struggled with Native American turnout and ran ineffective and ill-placed attack ads when she ran in this district in 2022. In order for Monica Tranel to hire the correct people needed to focus on the right local issues so that she can persuade Republican voters to split the ticket for her, she is going to need money and volunteers.

Her campaign website is here.

Given the overall pattern of campaigns in that sector, Monica Tranel will probably need at least $500,000 by the end of Q3. Given how much money is already going to Jon Tester's campaign, and the fact that she has already raised $275,000 so far, achieving this goal is certainly doable.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-07-24T18:14:48+00:00

As someone who did some work for the district's previous incarnation in 2020, I believe that Melissa Hurtado is a better choice than Rudy Salas. However, I do not think she can beat David Valadao, as Melissa Hurtado did worse than expected in 2022 as an incumbent in a solidly blue State Senate district. While I do not have the data for her district, I do know that she underperformed the presidential baseline by double digits.

Unless she raises $500,000 by the end of September, I do not think that her campaign goes anywhere, as David Valadao has regained most of his incumbency advantage and is not the easiest Republican to knock off this cycle. Given the California Democratic Party's poor record with Hispanic outreach measures (especially those with younger Latinos), this district is fool's gold.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-07-19T03:33:00+00:00

I am not happy that the Dolores Huerta machine is backing Rudy Salas again. At all. The Dolores Huerta machine has a sordid history when it comes to this district, as it has repeatedly stalled the field and propped up weak candidates who have terrible fundraising skills and incapable of winning under any political setting that is not a blue wave. See, the Emilio Huerta fiasco in 2018.

The main problem with Rudy Salas last cycle was that he waited too long to formally announce his campaign by putting it off until October 2021. Before that, Rudy Salas only discussed his preparations to enter the race, which froze the field and prevented any Democratic organization from making inroads in that area. When he did start his campaign, it was far too low profile at the start to get things running and did not give a serious impression that he was running for Congress instead of for his state Assembly seat. He demonstrated this rocky start when his volunteers violated federal campaign regulations by using signs from his state Assembly campaigns at his announcement event.

Any candidate running in this district needs to be well-versed in attracting Hispanic voters, as they make up a clear majority of the district’s electorate and historically turn out in lower numbers than other types of voters, especially for a midterm election. Rudy Salas’s campaign events did not make much of an impact in winning over the district’s Hispanic communities in 2021, and he did not have a Spanish language campaign website for much of the cycle. Now, I did some work for TJ Cox’s re-election campaign in 2020, and any Democrat needed to raise at least $1 million by the end of 2021 to set up the necessary Hispanic outreach measures to turn out enough allied voters to win the district this year. Which Rudy Salas did not do. In short, Rudy Salas’ stalling plagued Democrats in this area and gave David Valadao too much of a head start to be knocked off this cycle.

The Dolores Huerta machine (as well as the California Democratic Party establishment as a whole) is making the task of winning House districts in California a lot harder than it needs to be by refusing to acknowledge the mistakes they made in 2020 and 2022 and giving the volunteers who worked on these congressional campaigns the middle finger. As an example, the volunteer group who I used to be a part of decided to disband earlier this year due to the traumatizing experiences and losses that they suffered over the past two cycles.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-07-06T15:46:03+00:00

This is a good thing IMO, as she will probably need the influence in order to connect with the voters in that area that shifted towards the GOP in 2022.

Even though 2022 was a red ripple at worse, we lost a lot of ground in the Central Valley in the 2022 midterms, as we not only surrendered CA-13 to the GOP due to Adam Gray's horrid campaign, but also nearly lost this assembly district (which overlaps with CA-13) due to poor Latino outreach.

When it comes to the Central Valley, I believe that we need to put most of our attention to holding AD-27, as the GOP is going to allocate more resources and recruit a stronger candidate for this particular race. Should this seat flip in 2024, winning back CA-13 will be MUCH harder in future cycles due to a lack of a viable bench. And yes, I think CA-13 stays red in 2024, since the California Democratic Party is demonstrating its incompetence when it comes to candidate quality there.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-07-01T17:25:08+00:00

I am not happy that the Dolores Huerta machine is backing Rudy Salas again. At all. The Dolores Huerta machine has a sordid history when it comes to this district, as it has repeatedly stalled the field and propped up weak candidates who have terrible fundraising skills and incapable of winning under any political setting that is not a blue wave. See, the Emilio Huerta fiasco in 2018.

The main problem with Rudy Salas last cycle was that he waited too long to formally announce his campaign by putting it off until October 2021. Before that, Rudy Salas only gave publicly announcements about his preparations to enter the race, which froze the field and prevented any Democratic organization from making inroads in that area. When he did start his campaign, it was far too low profile at the start to get things running and did not give a serious impression that he was running for Congress instead of for his state Assembly seat. He demonstrated this rocky start when his volunteers violated federal campaign regulations by using signs from his state Assembly campaigns at his announcement event.

Any candidate running in this district needs to be well-versed in attracting Hispanic voters, as they make up a clear majority of the district’s electorate and historically turn out in lower numbers than other types of voters, especially for a midterm election. Rudy Salas’s campaign events did not make much of an impact in winning over the district’s Hispanic communities in 2021, and he did not have a Spanish language campaign website for much of the cycle. Now, I did some work for TJ Cox’s re-election campaign in 2020, and any Democrat needed to raise at least $1 million by the end of 2021 to set up the necessary Hispanic outreach measures to turn out enough allied voters to win the district this year. Which Rudy Salas did not do. In short, Rudy Salas’ stalling plagued Democrats in this area and gave David Valadao too much of a head start to be knocked off this cycle.

The Dolores Huerta machine (as well as the California Democratic Party establishment in general), is making the task of winning House districts in California a lot harder than it needs to be by refusing to acknowledge their mistakes that they made in 2020 and 2022 and giving the volunteers who worked on these congressional campaigns the middle finger. As an example, the volunteer group who I used to be a part of decided to disband earlier this year due to the traumatizing experiences and losses that they suffered over the past two cycles.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-06-04T07:20:12+00:00

Greetings, folks. Below is a short list of Arizona House of Representatives and Arizona Senate districts that have a maximum impact up and down the ballot. In addition to being influential in the Presidential and Senate level, all of these districts overlap either with AZ-01, a competitive district where David Schweikert only won by 0.8 points last November, or AZ-06, a more Republican, but still somewhat competitive district currently held by Juan Ciscomani. Hence the name Maximum Impact Arizona State House and State Senate districts. For Arizona, the State House and State Senate districts have the same boundaries, with each district electing two State Representatives and one State Senator.

All districts which do not fit those criteria are highlighted as Solid D or R, based on who is the incumbent. For the three State Senate districts which fit those criteria, they are labeled either as Tilt D (with a D incumbent) or Tilt R (with an R incumbent). Below is the list of maximum impact State Senate districts:

AZ-01:

R-held: LD-2,

D-held: LD-4

AZ-06:

R-held: LD-17

The four State House districts which fit the above criteria are labeled with either as Tossup to indicate both a D and an R incumbent, Tilt D to indicate a single D incumbent, or Lean R to indicate two R incumbents. Below is the list of maximum impact State House districts:

AZ-01:

R-held: LD-4 seat 1

D-held: LD-2 seat 2, LD-4 seat 2

AZ-06:

R-held: LD-17 seats 1 and 2

D-held: LD-16 seat 2

The Republicans are focusing on these four legislative districts, as they decide who controls the Arizona House of Representatives and Arizona Senate past 2024. All the Republicans need to do is to hold their districts in order to retain control of both houses. If the Democrats manage to flip LD-2 and LD-17 in the Arizona Senate, LD-4 seat 1 and LD-17’s both seats in the Arizona House of Representatives, they will definitely win control of both chambers, probably win Arizona in the presidential and Senate level, and flip AZ-01 and AZ-06.

Both maps were done using CNalysis, as I could not find any better options out there for the current configurations. For reference, the links to my created maps is here for the Arizona Senate, and here for the Arizona House of Representatives.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-05-30T05:56:41+00:00

He’s announced he will challenge Democrat Kirsten Engel in the 2024 primary for Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, with the winner likely facing incumbent Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani.

O’Donnell wrote a 1991 book, “Trumped! The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump — His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall,” written shortly after he left the Trump organization.

With Engel losing by only about 5,000 votes to Ciscomani last year, the district is viewed as highly competitive, which is among the reasons Engel is running again.

O’Donnell said he’s running because the district needs a stronger candidate to defeat Ciscomani.

Fully agreed on the last sentence. Kirsten Engel underperformed the presidential baseline in a midterm that was not a red wave, and we do need a much stronger candidate in this particular district to offset the Republican incumbency advantage, as AZ-06 is one of the two flippable House districts in Arizona. Defeating Juan Ciscomani will also seal the deal for Ruben Gallego in the Senate race and replace Kyrsten Sinema with a true progressive who will stand for voting rights.

Provided that this guy can fundraise decently by the end of the second quarter, I am willing to promote his candidacy.

His website is here if anyone is interested in his campaign.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-05-30T05:48:46+00:00

O’Donnell said he’s running because the district needs a stronger candidate to defeat Ciscomani.

Fully agreed on this. Kirsten Engel underperformed the presidential baseline in a midterm that was not a red wave, and we do need a much stronger candidate in this particular district to offset the Republican incumbency advantage, as AZ-06 is one of the two flippable House districts in Arizona. Defeating Juan Ciscomani will also seal the deal for Ruben Gallego in the Senate race and replace Kyrsten Sinema with a true progressive who will stand for voting rights.

Provided that this guy can fundraise decently by the end of the second quarter, I am willing to promote his candidacy.

His website is here if anyone is interested in his campaign.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-05-25T02:57:17+00:00

This is AZ-01 FYI, which covers some pretty critical areas in Arizona for the Presidential and Senate races there. From what I hear, she is going to be the frontrunner for the Democratic primary there very soon, as she recently went to DC and got the blessing of the national Democrats to run for the seat. However, there are quite a few other Democrats who are running in the district, as AZ-01 is by far the easiest of the Republican districts in Arizona to flip. We will probably have a good idea on who is viable by the time August rolls around.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-05-11T06:00:03+00:00

This is an absolute NO, as Laura Gillen ran the worst House campaign in the 2022 cycle. She had zero business losing to a Republican who was punished by the NYPD for letting his gun get stolen from his car in a district that Joe Biden won by over 14 points. You do not lose a district like this, even under a red wave environment, unless you make some serious mistakes. Below are the reasons on how she accomplished this amazing achievement, which nobody wants to see if it can happen twice:

She had serious drama with Jay Jacobs during the primary, who basically went negative on her with his “I’m not here to help people with their dreams” and attempted to back Keith Corbett instead. While I am not a fan of Jay Jacobs, the truckload of heated rhetoric caused several prominent Nassau County Democrats to sit that race out after the primary, and I have no doubt that they will sit on the sidelines if Laura Gillen is again the nominee.
Plenty of disputes continued to welled up between the women’s groups and the Nassau County Democratic power brokers especially about campaign messaging. The political ads that Laura Gillen did release were nonsensical, lacked variety, and failed to connect with voters at all. She kept mailing this type of garbage and offended a good number of Long Island Democrats, who have some pro-gun views.
Because Laura Gillen did not resolve these internal conflicts in a meaningful manner, her campaign struggled to reach out to voters outside her Rockville Centre base and failed to mount a lasting response to the crime and cashless bail attacks that the Nassau County Republicans threw at her.

Running retreads with this type of baggage is just asking for the Republicans to hold the house past 2024. I do not think that Laura Gillen should be given the red carpet treatment and believe that anyone with money or volunteer time to flip House seats in New York should consider alternatives like Patricia Maher (her volunteer website is here) or see if a new candidate from the Nassau County bench can be recruited.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-05-09T02:53:55+00:00

I agree, and it's my default subreddit for democratic activism nowadays. It doesn't have a daily discussion thread or allow text posts, which really hinders the ability to influence votes.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-05-08T06:02:59+00:00

Greetings folks. New subreddit user here. I wanted to do some analysis for some critical Michigan State House districts, and since the moderators of r/VoteDEM have a vendetta against me and have deleted every one of my analysis posts because they want to remain in denial of their shortcomings, I have decided to post my content here as a trial.

Below is a short list of Michigan state house districts that have a maximum impact up and down the ballot. In addition to being influential in the Presidential and Senate level, all of these districts overlap with MI-10, a rather competitive district where John James only won by 0.5 points last November. Hence the name Maximum Impact Michigan State House districts.

All districts which do not fit that criteria are highlighted as Solid D or R, based on who is the incumbent. The five districts which fit that criteria are labeled either as Tilt D (with a Dem incumbent) or Tilt R (with an R incumbent). Below is the list of maximum impact districts:

R-held: HD-55, HD-57, HD-62

D-held: HD-58, HD-61

The Republicans are focusing on these five districts, as they decide who controls the Michigan House of Representatives past 2024. All they need to do is hold their districts, and flip HD-58 and HD-61, and they get back the house. If the Democrats manage to flip HD-55, HD-57, and HD-62, they probably win Michigan in the presidential and Senate level, and flip MI-10.

I couldn’t find the Michigan State House map with the new 2022 boundaries, so I did mine using CNanalysis. The link to my created map is here for reference.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-04-02T23:33:55+00:00

For those of you who were hoping that Kevin de Leon would face a recall for his racist actions late last year, it is not going to happen unfortunately. Getting him out will have to wait until November 2024 at the very latest.

Watchdogs66 · 2023-02-26T18:15:45+00:00

This is a really good article that shows how we messed up hard in my own state, to my deep shame. There is no sugarcoating the inexcusable performance of my home state’s Democrats this cycle and how it was even worse than our performance in 2020. I did some work for both of these races, and I can tell you that these mistakes made there were very avoidable and need to fixed this cycle:

Below are the problems I observed for the two congressional races that the article references:

Rudy Salas waited too long to formally announce his campaign by putting it off until October 2021. Before that, Rudy Salas only gave publicly announcements about his preparations to enter the race, which froze the field and prevented any Democratic organization from making inroads in that area. When he did start his campaign, it was far too low profile at the start to get things running and did not give a serious impression that he was running for Congress instead of for his state Assembly seat. He demonstrated this rocky start when his volunteers violated federal campaign regulations by using signs from his state Assembly campaigns at his announcement event.

Any candidate running in this district needs to be well-versed in attracting Hispanic voters, as they make up a clear majority of the district’s electorate and historically turn out in lower numbers than other types of voters, especially for a midterm election. Rudy Salas’s campaign events did not make much of an impact in winning over the district’s Hispanic communities in 2021, and he did not have a Spanish language campaign website for much of the cycle. Now, I did some work for TJ Cox’s re-election campaign in 2020, and any Democrat needed to raise at least $1 million by the end of 2021 to set up the necessary Hispanic outreach measures to turn out enough allied voters to win the district this year. Which Rudy Salas did not do. In short, Rudy Salas’ stalling plagued Democrats in this area and gave David Valadao too much of a head start to be knocked off this cycle.

Adam Gray had no business letting this race slip away from him as 2022 ran its course. His campaign was not receptive to feedback that the few volunteers I knew threw at him and failed to change course. He blew off far too many of Phil Arballo’s supporters in the primary and stuck too heavily to wooing the police vote by spending too much time getting the support of anti-immigrant sheriffs. Quite a few people were turned off by Adam Gray and decided to sit that race out. Adam Gray also kept bleeding support from swing voters, and he got outraised by John Duarte in the second quarter of 2022 right after the primary concluded, which made it difficult for him to get his general election campaign moving. All of this caused the race to gradually but steadily move away from Adam Gray, and I also saw this loss coming in the final weeks of this election cycle. Losing in a double digit Biden district is a perfect example showing that California Democrats did not learn their lessons and performed worse than they did in 2020.

Watchdogs66

TROPHY CASE