[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]

by Sandra Verthein [courtesy of Blog for America]

On November 17, 2007, just two months ago today, Rahm Emanual's "Our Common Values" PAC made a $2,500 contribution to Congressman Dan Lipinski's reelection campaign.

• AFTER Mark Pera's endorsement by national DFA
• AFTER Mark Pera's endorsement by us, Northside DFA.
• AFTER Mark Pera's endorsement by NARAL Pro-Choice America
• AFTER Mark Pera's endorsement by pretty much the entire progresive netroots, including Daily Kos, Open Left, Swing State Project, Firedoglake, Crooks and Liars, and Down with Tyranny

In other words, when we were freezing our toenails off knocking on doors trying to get rid of Lipinski and elect Mark Pera, when we were asking people to scrounge for couch change to donate to Mark Pera on our Northside DFA Act Blue Page, Rahm was writing a check to help Lipinski's re-election campaign.

And what are the "common values" that inspired Rahm to support Congressman Lipinski?

From local blogger Archpundit:

by juls [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

This one might be bigger than winning the Democracy for America Grassroots All-Stars competition.  Matt Stoller just announced that Charlie Brown and Donna Edwards are the first two additions to the Daily Kos/MyDD/Swing State Project Act Blue page for the 2008 cycle called Blue Majority.  The same page brought $101,504 into Rep. Jerry McNerney's coffers last cycle.  Note that Jerry also won the DfA Grassroots All-Star competition last year on his second attempt to unseat a corrupt Republican in Northern California.  Hopefully we will have the same ending with this race in the 4th CD.

Charlie has put a lot of time into cultivating his netroots support and he is getting some great returns.  This is the plum cherry of all the ActBlue pages.  We have a great relationship with Charlie and his team here at Calitics and this should be the hub of information that will turn into stories over at Daily Kos, thus driving his fundraising.

I would expect an announcement post profiling Charlie Brown over at Daily Kos some time today or tomorrow, as is tradition.  This is fantastic news.