Today we left the voters of 4 House districts with no Democratic choice to vote for.
That is conceding nearly 1% of US House on the first day of the first state’s congressional filing deadline.
We are likely to concede 2 more seats on Monday when a second states filing deadline passes.
That is not a good start for next year’s elections and recruitment is at crisis levels. We have 4 more states with filing deadlines in 2015 and another 3 states with filing deadlines in January 2016.
This is at a time that 57% say they’d rather fire their member of Congress than re-elect them, the Democratic Party isn’t giving voters a choice.
The current state of play in US House races:
• We need to pick up 30 seats to win back the House ad actually have a shot at governing
• 34 of the 79 Republican Members of the House of Representatives who represent districts where President Obama got at least 47% of the vote currently are running unopposed
• 143 Republican Members of the House of Representatives currently have no Democrat running against them
• In many of the seats where we have candidates, those candidates do not have the resources currently to get their message out
• Ohio’s Congressional filing deadline is December 16, 2015 and currently 8 out of 12 Republicans in Ohio are running unopposed
This problem is often even worse at the state legislative and local levels. As was noted during Tuesday’s DKos Election Returns Live Blog when many of us took note of Michael McDonald’s tweet that “62 of 100 VA House of Delegates/17 of 40 Senate seats were uncontested by two major party candidates.” And as Steve D’s Recommended Diary noted about his experience going to vote in Up State NY and finding many offices with no Democrats running.
Before I start sounding too much like a DCCC email about how all hope is lost, let start with the point that not only is all hope not lost and we can crowdsource our way out of this if we do what DKos does best: be a think tank where readers of DKos brainstorms solutions.
Netroots Nation was created in the comments thread of DKos. Debate questions have been brainstormed here. Draft movements have been born here. Let’s do it again.
Many of us have already started that effort and you can help.
Go to politics1.com/congress.htm to see who is running or considering running in your area or your friends’ areas. Who do you think should run? What can you do to get them to run?
Follow the links there to that state’s Secretary of State or equivalent’s website to find the filing rules. Sometimes petition signatures need so let’s not procrastinate.
Help write and recommend Diaries about the filing deadlines, candidates, candidate vacancies, draft efforts, rules to get on the ballot. Time to take the break from the pie or at least pitch in while still throwing your pie and make sure whether your preferred candidate is Bernie, Hillary, or Martin that they have a Democratic Congress to work with once they are elected to they can pass their agenda.
Take the initiative in your state or congressional district or state legislature or local races. You have the power. If no one else will run, then run yourself. I did. I ran for city council in a race no one in local politics thought could be won, I door knocked the district and recruited friends to help, we doubled the turnout, and I won by 21 votes.
Follow me below the fold to see the filing deadlines: