Outlook for Congress: Part 1, Open Seats

by Mimikatz [courtesy of Open Left - Front Page]

With Tuesday's eight-point victory by Travis Childers in MS-01, a district with a PVI of R+10, nearly all of the open GOP-held seats must be considered to be in play this cycle.  There are now 26 open GOP-held seats, and all but CO-06 (Tancredo) and MS-03 (Pickering) should be in play.  We appear to lack a strong candidate in CO-06 (R+10) and MS-03 is an R+13 district.  That leaves the following 24 seats, with their current occupant, PVI and Dem candidate(s) and current Swing State Project rating:

AL-02 (Everett)       R+13     6/3 primary, Bright and others          Likely R
AZ-01 (Renzi)          R+6       9/2  primary, Kirkpatrick, Shanker     Tossup
CA-04 (Doolittle)      R+11      C. Brown                                         Lean R
CA-52 (Hunter)        R+9        6/3 primary, Butcher, Lumpkin           Safe R
FL-15 (Weldon)       R+4        8/25 primary, Blythe                         Likely R
IL-11 (Weller)          R+1        Debbie Halvorsen                            Lean D
IL-18 (La Hood)       R+5       Colleen Callaghan                              Likely R
LA-04 (McCrery)       R+7        primary 11/3                                     Lean R
MD-01 (Gilchrest)     R+10      Frank Kratovil                                  Likely R
MN-03 (Ramstad)     R+3        Ashwin Mahdi                                  Tossup
MO-09 (Hulshof)       R+7       8/5 primary, Gaw, Baker                 Likely R
NJ-03 (Saxton)         D+3       John Adler                                      Tossup
NJ-07 (Ferguson)     R+1        Linda Stender                               Tossup
NM-01 (Wilson)        D+2        6/3 primary, Heinrich                   Tossup
NM-02 (Pearce)        R+6        6/3 primary, McCamley, Teague       Likely R
NY-25 (Walsh)         D+3        Dan Maffei                                      Lean D
NY-26 (Reynolds)     R+3        9/9 primary, Powers                      Tossup
OH-07 (Hobson)       R+6        Sharen Neuhardt                          Safe R
OH-15  (Pryce)         R+1         Mary Jo Kilroy                                Tossup
OH-16 (Regula)        R+4        John Boccieri                                 Tossup
PA-05 (Peterson)     R+10       Mike McCracken                          Safe R
VA-11 (Davis)           R+1        6/10 primary Byrne, Connolly        Tossup
WY-AL (Cubin)         R+19       Gary Trauner                              Likely R

So there you have it--that's 24 possible seats, 11 of which are already Tossup or Lean D.  In some others our candidate isn't the greatest, but neither is theirs, so we have a chance.  In some the PVI is high, but in MD-01 the GOP candidate is a wingnut.  We should be able to take 12-16 of these seats.  Not too many real progressives, but all of them would be an improvement over the current occupant, in some cases a very substantial improvement.