[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

One year ago, Dean Andal announced his candidacy for Congress in California’s 11th congressional district. Since then, his campaign has been noticeably quiet, and Andal’s fundraising has started to dry up. (Perhaps Andal is too focused on his latest development project to be bothered with his campaign?) Regardless of his excuse, many observers have taken note of Andal’s conspicuous absence from the campaign trail ("GOP recruits show lagging fundraising").
 
However, we haven’t forgotten about Dean and his run for Congress, so we thought posing a few unanswered questions to him might jolt him back onto the trail.
 
Stockton has the highest home foreclosure rate in the United States. How do you plan to address the foreclosure crisis?

Last week marked the five-year anniversary of President Bush’s infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech. Do you support President Bush’s "stay the course" plan for Iraq?

Where do you stand on expanding the state children’s health insurance program (SCHIP) and California Healthy Families to provide health care to millions of uninsured children?

There's more...

Image courtesy the Lodi News-Sentinel.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By David Dayen
d-day

With just over a month to go until the June primaries, and six months to go until Election Day, there's a lot going on all over the state in the Congressional races. Of the 19 seats in California currently held by Republicans, 17 will be contested in the fall, and some strongly so. And we now have a full 34 Democrats with the election of Jackie Speier early in the month, and only one of them is a serious challenge. We also have the first quarter of 2008 fundraising numbers, which will raise some eyebrows. You can track these races yourself with the 2008 Race Tracker wiki.

A note: I'm mainly getting my numbers on cash-on-hand competitiveness from the Swing State Project. Fundraising information comes from the FEC.
Here we go...

DEMOCRATIC SEATS

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

Getting this one in under the wire.  On the last day of April, with just over a month to go until the June primaries, and six months to go until Election Day, there's a lot going on all over the state in the Congressional races.  Of the 19 seats in California currently held by Republicans, 17 will be contested in the fall, and some strongly so.  And we now have a full 34 Democrats with the election of Jackie Speier early in the month, and only one of them is a serious challenge.  We also have the first quarter of 2008 fundraising numbers, which will raise some eyebrows.  You can track these races yourself with the 2008 Race Tracker wiki.

A note: I'm mainly getting my numbers on cash-on-hand competitiveness from the Swing State Project.  Fundraising information comes from the FEC.

Here we go...

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By David Dayen
d-day

I noticed this before Swing State Project codified it, but there were some stunning numbers in the Q1 Congressional fundraising reports that augur well for Democratic upsets in November.

We know that Charlie Brown is raising tons of money and has close to $600,000 cash on hand, and his challengers are spending all their money in a bruising primary race (Doug Ose has a million dollars in debts on his books). We know that three California challengers raised six figures in the first quarter (Brown, Russ Warner and Nick Leibham) and have been consistently doing so. What's notable is the lack of fundraising prowess among key Republicans.

Dean Andal is supposed to be one of the top GOP challengers in the whole country. Yet he could only manage $90,000 in the first quarter, which considering how much effort the GOP is putting into his race is embarrassing.

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

When the National Republican Congressional Committee turned to longtime Stockton developer Dean Andal to challenge incumbent Democratic Rep. Jerry McNerney this fall, the GOP probably figured Andal if anything would be able to build a sizeable fundraising advantage thanks to his network of wealthy developer friends. Apparently, they overestimated Andal’s ability to tap into the GOP money machine.
 
According to today’s FEC filings, Andal raised only $90,313.45 in the first quarter of 2008. And of that amount, Andal spent more than $42,000 – almost half.
 
In comparison, the McNerney campaign raised more than three times Andal’s amount – more than $329,000 – adding to the Congressman’s substantial cash-on-hand advantage. Of that amount, more than $51,000 was raised from small, grassroots donors in amounts of $200 or less.

There's more...

by Lucas O'Connor [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

Cross posted at DailyKos

So as we've established by now, Darrell Issa thinks very little of 9/11 rescue workers and would prefer that the federal government not concern itself with their welfare.  Cause according to him, 9/11 is not and presumably was not a national issue.  We've also established that he has no qualms about throwing federal money around on local pork as long as it benefits him directly.  So the next logical question for me is "oh hey, are there any familiar names that don't mind taking Darrell Issa's money?"  As you may or may not know, Darrell Issa is filthy rich.  So he's spread a lot of money around on Republicans and conservative causes.  So as it turns out, there are quite a lot of Republicans currently running around the Capitol funded in part by Darrell Issa (partial list):

Dean Andal (candidate, CA-11)

Rep. Michele Bachmann (MN-06)

Rep. Brian Bilbray (CA-50)

Rep. Gus Bilirakis (FL-09)

Rep. Charles Boustany (LA-07)

Sen. Richard Burr (North Carolina)

Rep. John Campbell (CA-48)

Rep. Shelley Moore Captio (WV-02)

Rep. Steve Chabot (OH-01)

Rep. Tom Cole (OK-04) [head of NRCC]

read more »