With the primary settled, it's time to get down to the business of defeating the Bush enabling, ethically challenged Mike Turner. I posted a piece a few weeks ago arguing that the Ohio 3rd was, far from a safe GOP seat, in play. We started in 2006 to turn Ohio blue, but my little corner of it is painfully red. Now, with a well funded campaign and a great candidate in Jane Mitakides, it's time to turn the rest of Ohio blue.
Following up on my earlier post, some of the numbers from the Democratic primary are encouraging. Here's a look at some of the voting from the counties that make up the Ohio 3rd.
In Warren County, in spite of 41,377 to 12,440 advantage in registrations, 28,683 R ballots were cast as opposed to 27,855 D. It's also important to note that 77,000 Warren County voters are registered as non-partisan.
In Clinton County, the results were more lopsided, but the Republican advantage of 6,807 registered voters to 2,062 Democrats is dwarfed by the total number of independent voters at over 17,000. When we look at ballots cast in the primary, the number of voters identifying with each party is evened out at 5,066 to 6,005. Clearly a large number of independent voters lined up with the Democrats in the primary.
In Highland County, a similar pattern emerges. Although the total number of registered partisans isn't available in their summary report, 5223 Republican ballots were cast for president as opposed to 5611 Democratic votes for president.
Meanwhile, in Montgomery County, a whopping 96,000 ballots were cast for the Democrats, while only 41,000 were cast for Republicans.
Granted, this is a primary, and there are crossover voters, and there's no guarantee that the Democrats voting for president in this primary are going to vote Democratic in the fall congressional race. Over 20,000 Democratic ballots didn't register a vote for the congressional primary, and those voters have to be brought on board. But when you look at these numbers, it's hard to accept the conventional wisdom that this is a solidly Republican district. In the current environment, and with the history of 06 in mind, the Ohio 3rd is very winnable for the Democrats.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Mitakides for Congress: This is a Dem-leaning district
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3 comments:
I wouldn't call Jane Mitakides a great candidate- if you've heard her speak, she sounds just like Mike Turner, only she has no experience and won't have near the money.
Just because people voted D for President, doesn't mean they'll vote D for Congress- look at the 22K votes that skipped the congressional race altogether in Montgomery County.
She better hope that Turner continues to be questioned for ethics- and that the economy keeps getting worse.
He's a formidable opponent.
David as I wrote on your site, I respect your run in the primary.
But I disagree with you here. Experience? Or fresh blood in Washington? Jane has no experience catering to lobbyists or launching partisan attacks from his committee seat at the orders of Karl Rove. Experience here is totally irrelevant.
The only thing that makes Turner formidable is the party money that will flow into this race and the gerrymandered lines of the district.
-ohdave
Jane isn't fresh blood in Washington- she's blue blood in Washington. She likes to name drop and tell you who she knows. Never heard a single issue discussed in a way that sounds even plausible. There is a reason she got mangled by Turner the first time- if it wasn't for his wife's little side slush fund he's still thought of as good.
We'll see.
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