Friday, February 29, 2008

Revisiting the Legislative races: House

Ryan over at the Dome blog has had some interesting posts on what races the Democratic and Republican parties are targeting in the legislature this fall.

I'd say Republicans actually have a better chance of taking the Senate this fall than the House, even though they'd have to flip 7 out of 50 (14%) of Senate seats compared to 9 out of 120 (7.5%) of House seats.

Looking at the Republican House wish list, three out of five Democratic incumbents on it survived the election in 2004, which was not a particularly good year for their party in the state. With the political climate much better now than it was then, I doubt Alice Graham Underhill, Walter Church, or Jim Harrell is going to lose this year barring some major shift in fortunes.

Ray Warren and Ty Harrell, both of whom beat Republican incumbents in 2006, are the other two on the list. Their districts certainly trend GOP but each has done a good job during his first term of not being too offensive to anyone and they would seem to be in good shape as well.

It's quite a tribute to Cullie Tarleton, Jimmy Love, and Van Braxton, all of whom flipped their districts in 2006, that they're not even on the top 5 list of Republican targets.

Since I don't think the Republicans have much of a chance with their top 5 I sure don't see how they're going to get 8 or 9.

I was also glad to see the House Democrats have their own list of seats they're hoping to take. You should always be playing some offense along with a strong defense.

No comments:

 
Web Statistics