Touch of Grey: WI-8 Edition

A quick look at the Brown County unofficial vote totals reveals the following:

In the GOP primary there were over 26,000 votes cast. The winner, Reid Ribble, got a little over 14,000 of those.

At the same time, current Congressman Steve Kagen received almost 7500 votes. Keep in mind that this was an uncontested primary and basically meant nothing for Kagen, yet almost 7500 people voted for him. I'd like to believe that these came from people who were motivated to go to the polls in order to vote for Tom Barrett, but that primary was practically non-contested.

That leaves me to conclude that in Brown County there are at least 7400 committed hardcore Democrats who turn out to vote no matter what. Does anyone doubt what a formidable asset such a group can be in a tight general election?

If you combine Roth's 7000 votes with Ribble's it yields a total of about 21,000 or about three times the number of Kagen's votes. Looking at the total number of ballots cast, there were about three times as many Republican ones as Democratic ones.

In other words, WI-8 is still most likely a closely divided electorate, and the general election could all come down to who shows up to vote.

Ribble has remarked on just how hard he has worked up to this point. I'd say now is when the real work begins.

Roth Caught Without a Roadmap

All three of the remaining GOP candidates for WI-8 appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio this week. As I mentioned on Monday, I didn't think that Reid Ribble or Terri McCormick had won many converts with their performances, and this created an opening for Roger Roth during his appearance on Tuesday. Overall, I thought Roth had the strongest performance, but it wasn't perfect by any means.

Roger had the best short answer to why he was superior to his GOP primary opponents. This centered around his unique mix of experience in business, in the state legislature, and in the military, which made him ready to "lead from day one." His answer was succinct and sincere and was likely to catch on with voters paying attention.

He went on to draw a distinction between himself and his opponents on the issue of immigration. Arguing that he was strong on securing the border, and always has been. For those of us following the primary closely, this was obviously a shot at Ribble. The only problem is that I'm not sure many voters are paying that close of attention. Roth could have made this stronger by saying something along the lines of "unlike at least one of my opponents, I have always been in favor of taking a tough stance on immigration." In a forum like a public radio interview, there is a very fine line between distinguishing yourself and turning people off with an attack on your opponent, so it's hard to fault Roth on this score.

On the other hand, Roth's answer to one call-in question had the feel of a "not ready for prime-time moment." The caller was clear and concise, asking Roth whether or not he would support Paul Ryan's Roadmap for America's Future. In response, Roth admitted that he had not read all of Ryan's Roadmap. To which I could only reply, "what?" If you are a serious GOP candidate from Wisconsin, the one policy proposal you had better be ready to discuss in detail is Ryan's Roadmap.

Not only has the Roadmap gotten national attention, it is the only substantive major GOP proposition to reform entitlements currently being considered. Add to this the fact that Ryan is from Wisconsin, and this guarantees that the Roadmap will be an issue in the general election, including here in the 8th.

Additionally, just prior to this question Roth gave a lengthy answer on the fact that he did not favor privatization of Social Security. An answer that will no doubt help him in the general election, but maybe not so much with primary voters.

Overall, Roth did the most to help his cause among the three candidates during these radio interviews. Even so, it is clear that the GOP in WI-8 has some things to learn if we plan to defeat Steve Kagen in November.

Here is a link to the Ribble, McCormick, and Roth interviews on Wiscosin Public Radio.

Marc Trager Drops out of Race for WI-8CD

GOP candidate Marc Trager today announced he was leaving the race for Wisconsin's 8th congressional district seat due to health concerns and that he was endorsing candidate Roger Roth. From the press release:

After much deliberation and council from my family and physician, I have decided to withdraw from the 8th District Congressional race due to health concerns,” said Dr. Trager. “I am confident we would have been successful in November, but the physical strain of the campaign trail has caused me to step back and evaluate my priorities....

Over the past eight months, I have gotten to know Roger well, and I feel that his knowledge, character, and values are what the people of Northeast Wisconsin need,” said Dr. Trager

Trager was a serious candidate and had previously surprised me with some larger than expected fundraising numbers. Obviously, this is a boost to the Roth campaign.

By my count, this leaves five candidates remaining in the race: Ribble, Roth, Savard, McCormick, Williams.

Kerry Thomas confirmed to me in an email, he was no longer a candidate. He is a supporter of Terri McCormick.

I'm not sure how active Andy Williams' campaign is. The domain name for his campaign website appears to have switched to unrelated advertising, but he was still mentioned as a candidate on the WPR report I heard today.

WI-8: Ribble Endorsed by Physician's Group

From WisPolitics DC Wrap:

8th CD GOP candidate and Kaukauna roofing contractor Reid Ribble has won the endorsement of Appleton-based Physicians for Responsible Government.

Ribble's campaign touted that he received the endorsement of the 80-plus physicians in the group despite the presence of two doctors in the 8th CD race: Green Bay Republican and radiologist Marc Trager, and incumbent Dem U.S. Rep. and Appleton allergist Steve Kagen.

Jo Egelhoff at Fox Politics sums it up this way:

We have a real race going on here in northeast Wisconsin. I like to agree with those pundits that see Steve Kagen as in real trouble – and of course I believe the GOP needs to send up the best guy to defeat him.

Fact: As he tells us in every other sentence in his press releases, Steve Kagen is a M.D.
Fact: One of the five candidates in the GOP primary to run against Kagen, Mark Trager, is a M.D.

Fact: A group of more than 80 Northeastern Wisconsin physicians, frustrated as heck with their federal government, joined together to research, interview, select and most likely financially back the candidate they thought would best represent the views of common-sensical Americans in Washington.

With the primary only three months away and still clearly wide open, every piece of news like this helps.

Notes from the WI-8 candidate forum

I attended the WI-8 candidate forum last night with about forty other people. McCormick, Savard, Ribble, and Roth were in attendance. For now, I just want to offer two observations.

First, candidates just about everywhere should be warned that comprehensive immigration reform is a campaign killer. The ONLY thing you should say when asked about immigration is that we need to secure the border. The ONLY thing you should say when asked about Arizona's new immigration law is that we need to secure the border. Period. This is not based on anything the candidates said last night, it is based on my observations of the audience.

Second, it's tough to get up in front of an audience and give coherent and thoughtful answers to questions in two minute segments, even when you can anticipate some of what the questions will be. Audiences have a hair trigger for nonsense answers, so being substantive and understandable is important, but not all that easy. All of the candidates last night did this to one degree or another.

I don't think candidates that do this well get enough credit. While this ability is no guarantee of success in office, it is something that voters trying to make a decision with limited information can use as a signal.

WI-8 Candidate Forum Tonight

Two upcoming events from the Fox Valley Initiative:

MONDAY, MAY 10TH AT 6:30PM: 8TH CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE FORUM

Please join us next Monday for a candidate forum for the 8th Congressional District. We will be co-hosting this event with the Lawrence College Republicans. All candidates have confirmed that they will be attending. The event is going to be held at Lawrence University in the lower level of the new student center. Your best bet for parking are the side streets across College Avenue, or on Meade St just south of College. The student center sits alongside Lawe Street just south of College Ave. Everyone is welcome to attend and the event is free.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 12TH AT 6:30PM: FOX VALLEY INITIATIVE MEETING W/MARK NEUMANN

We would love to have you at our first public meeting of the Fox Valley Initiative. There will be two parts to the meeting. First on the agenda will be candidate for Governor Mark Neumann. Mark will be talking to us about his campaign and what he sees as the major issues. We will also reserve some time for questions from the audience. Primary season is just around the corner, so come get informed!

WI-8 Fundraising Numbers

Through 3/31/10 Steve Kagen has a commanding lead in total receipts:



No doubt much of this is due to the power of incumbency,but the large number of candidates on the Republican side must also be a factor. This may or may not prove to be a problem in the long term.

In the cash on hand category, Kagen again leads by a wide margin:



On the Republican side Ribble, Roth, and Trager are all in similar positions.

There were no numbers reported for Williams, Stern, or Thomas, so they don't appear.

The biggest disappointment, has to be the numbers for Terri McCormick. In the first three months of this year, she spent about $18,000 and raised only about $9,000. Money in politics isn't everything, but it's not nothing either. At some point, I have to believe this becomes an unsustainable state of affairs for a candidate.

WI-8 Candidates in Green Bay, DePere

Thursday March 4th, two of the Republican candidates for the 8th congressional district will be in the area.

Marc Savard will be at Legends in Green Bay (2840 Shawano Ave.) from 6-9 PM. I've heard good things about the ribs at Legends.

Marc Trager will be in DePere at The Vault from 6-8 PM. The Vault is the former Ivan's, and is located on Broadway in East DePere. I haven't been to The Vault, but just earlier this week I was talking to someone who recently had a great burger there.

WI-8 Fundraising Numbers

My previous post on these numbers included a chart from the FEC with the data. Due to the limitations of the FEC website, the chart was hard to read and since I did it in two separate pieces it was out of scale.

Here is a new chart showing the same data, but in a more readable form. This chart was created with data from the FEC using google documents, and shows receipts through, and cash on hand as of 12/31/09. No amounts were reported for Williams, Thomas, or Stern.


As you can see Kagen has a large fundraising advantage, this is due not to his personal wealth, but to his $456,000 in PAC money (more on this soon).

As I said before, the most surprising number has to be that of Marc Trager.

WI-8 Fundraising Numbers

Since tonight's 8th district candidate forum was cancelled*, I thought I would put up the current fundraising numbers.

This information is from FEC.gov. The site had zeroes in for Stern, Williams, and Thomas, so that is why they do not appear on the screen shot.

I've been following the race pretty carefully, and I have to say the biggest surprise in these numbers has to be the $50,000 that Marc Trager reported. His candidacy has been the least talked about, and yet he raised almost as much as Roth, who was viewed by some as the first "real choice" to enter the race.

For those who are surprised at just how big Kagen's fundraising numbers are, it is important to know that over $450,000 of his receipts have come from Political Action Committees (PAC's). Much of it from organized labor PAC's.

*It's rescheduled for next Tuesday, the 16th. Check out the N.E.W. Patriots for details.

Kagen Votes With Pelosi 96% of the Time

Jeff at the Appleton Blog was wondering about the similarities in voting records between our own Steve Kagen and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Open Congress.org has a head to head vote comparison tool that makes it easy to find such information. According to Open Congress

Steve Kagen and Nancy Pelosi have voted together 215 times on roll call votes since January, 2007 in votes where neither abstained, representing a voting similarity of 96%.

More details at the link, including a side by side on all roll call votes.

Kagen's Fundraising Advantage May Not Matter

WTAQ reports:

Democratic incumbent Steve Kagen of Appleton has almost 5 times as much in his campaign account as his nearest challenger. Kagen had $550,000 in his war chest as of December 31st as he goes for his third term. And former roofing contractor Reid Ribble of Kaukauna had the most among Republicans with $115,000.

When Ribble addressed the Outagamie County Republican Women last August, a question about fundraising was among the first asked. Ribble's response was that in this race, Kagen would always be able to use his personal wealth to outspend just about anybody that the GOP put up against him. This is true even if the challenger is able to match Kagen's fundraising, which is probably not likely due to the advantage of incumbency.

Given this state of affairs, the "5 times greater" that WTAQ reported, and that I heard on Wisconsin Public Radio, doesn't seem like the critical number.

What is likely to matter for all of the GOP challengers in this race will be the absolute level of their own fundraising, not the level relative to Kagen. The question becomes will they have enough to finance a professionally run campaign? This includes reaching some minimum level that would allow for wide exposure in different types of media.

This level, of course, is going to be quite high, but the fact that Kagen will probably raise some multiple of the GOP candidate's funds shouldn't necessarily insure his victory.

Brief tour of WI-8 Congressional District

Wisconsin's 8th congressional district has been mostly quiet lately. This soon will change as we start the new year and as the 2010 election season gets underway in earnest.

Here are some recent items related to the candidates for WI-8 (in no particular order)

As of 12/17 only Kerry Thomas and Terri McCormick were listed as official candidates by the Government Accountability board.

I couldn't find a website for Joe Stern so I'll link my original post on his candidacy.

Andy Williams For Congress now has a facebook page. Become a fan today.

Marc Trager recently spent three days in Washington meeting with Paul Ryan and others.

Reid Ribble sold his business to campaign full time (H/T Fox Politics), signed AFP's no climate tax pledge, but hasn't yet moved into the district.

Christmas wishes from Roger Roth.

Marc Savard is looking to raise $2,010 for 2010. Doing it $9.14 at a time.

Kerry Thomas offers a strategy for saving money on a Disney vacation. I wasn't really interested so I dove into the archives. His Personal Message to Paul Ryan was scathing but well-written.

Terri McCormick on the issues. She is also featuring a good introductory video on her home page.

Steve Kagen joins group seeking Don't Ask Don't Tell data

Steve Kagen signed a letter by congressman Jim Moran (D-VA) to the Secretary of Defense seeking data on the military's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy.

Though the request is only for data, it is clear from the letter that the ultimate goal is an end to the policy:

We write yoday with regards to the current prohibition on openly gay and lesbian service members in the military, commonly known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT)....

Through these monthly updates, Congress and the public will get a clearer picture of the continued costs and damage to our national security inflicted by this policy.

Moran's press release states explicitly that he seeks repeal of DADT.

620 WTMJ on Steve Kagen

I was trying to work this into my latest Roger Roth post, but couldn't quite do it. Besides, it is good enough to stand alone. Jeff Wagner writing at 620WTMJ.com describing Steve Kagen:

Second-term Congressman Steve Kagen (pictured below with Barbara Lawton) is arguably one of the most vulnerable members of Congress. Kagen, a political gadfly, is largely an accident of history having been swept into office in the anti-Bush, anti-GOP fervor of the last two election cycles. Now, having to run on his own dubious merits and heading into a political headwind, smart money suggests that Kagen will be on the outside looking in come January of 2011.

Roth makes run for WI-8 official

Today was the day that the Republican field to unseat Steve Kagen got just a bit larger with Roger Roth's entry. The Press Gazette reports:

“This is between me and Kagen,” Roth said Tuesday after kicking off his campaign before a group of supporters at Coldwell Banker The Real Estate Group.

Roth, a 31-year-old Grand Chute homebuilder and two-term lawmaker, is counting on his legislative experience, military background and name identification to help him pull ahead of six other candidates in the 2010 GOP primary.

WBAY included this in the report on their website:

He's the nephew of former U.S. Representative Toby Roth, who served the 8th Congressional District for 18 years.

With the name recognition, legislative experience, and military background Roth will no doubt be a formidable candidate. He will have to be careful not to find himself on the receiving end of a quip like the one Reagan used on Mondale with regard to their respective ages.

I do have to say I'm a bit surprised at how muted the response to Roth's announcement is in general. Perhaps it's just too early, or Obama's Afghanistan speech just looms too large today. Either way, I did think that this particular announcement would have a bit more buzz surrounding it. Though Roth did update his website.

So at this point, Kevin is still right, Roth's entry takes the bulls-eye off of Reid Ribble, but also presents a major challenge to all the candidates. At this point though, I would characterize the race as still wide open with a long way to go toward the eventual goal of defeating Kagen.

No News in WI-8 is Good News for.........whom?

The crowded Republican primary field for Wisconsin's 8th Congressional District was the subject of both an article and an editorial in the Green Bay Press Gazette today.

Unfortunately, both were remarkable for saying so little*. As anybody with an internet connection and a free blog could tell you there are at least seven Republicans and one independent running for Steve Kagen's seat. The PG's coverage in this case didn't add much to that. I don't think they even mentioned that a quick check of the WI GAB website indicates that as of 11-16-09 Kerry Thomas was the only officially registered candidate.

The Press Gazette also included this anti-Kagen piece, which I think was a letter to the editor, but it isn't very well marked as such.

I didn't notice any talk of the field getting bigger, so perhaps the current list will be the group to make the final run to the primary and then on to November.

The news in WI-8 this week will be dominated by coverage of Roger Roth and his promised announcement on December 1st. Based on my totally unscientific analysis of google searches that end up on this blog, Roth seems to have the current lead in "buzz". This is probably due to his being the latest entrant in the race and the compelling aspects of his personal story, chief among these his relative youth and his military service.

So in my judgement this quiet time in the 8th isn't exactly good news for anyone in particular, but certainly the proliferation of opponents can't be good news for Kagen.
__________________________________
The editorial listed Andy Williams as being from Ashwaubenon. I'm pretty sure Andy lives right here in De Pere.

Roger Roth to Run for WI-8

OK, with this post, I think I am up to date on the candidates. Of course, by the time I wake up tomorrow, two or three more people may have joined the race.

Wis Politics (H/T Lakeshore Laments):

State Rep. Roger Roth, a Republican from Appleton, has sent out a fundraising appeal announcing his intention to seek the GOP nomination to take on U.S. Rep. Steve Kagen in the 8th CD.

Under a header that reads "Roger Roth for Congress," the letter blasts Democrats for taking the United States down the wrong path. Roth will make an official announcement on Dec. 1 on whether or not he will enter the race.

Here is the link to Roth for Congress.

The most interesting part of this announcement for now at least is what Kevin has to say about who benefits by Roth's entry into the race:

On a short-term matter, this announcement probably helps Roofing Company Owner Reid Ribble the most. With Roth in, he takes away "The Establishment Candidate label" (if such a label exists in a seven-way primary) from Ribble and takes the pressure of the bulls-eye off him and onto Roth now since many people -- myself included -- likely view Roth as the first "real choice" to enter the race.

McCormick Seeks WI-8 Seat

A little late, I know, but I've been busy this week. I also realize that I am at least one other candidate behind at this point.

Post Crescent:

Former state Rep. Terri McCormick, R-Greenville, announced Tuesday she would join a host of Republican hopefuls in the 2010 8th Congressional District race....

"The mess we're in is generally because of a lack of leadership," McCormick said.Referring to the government's involvement in using bailouts for economic recovery as "perpetual meddling in the free market," McCormick said limiting government spending and encouraging private sector growth are key. Job recovery and growth are her No. 1 priority, she said.

Here's a link to Terri McCormick for Congress.

I don't personally wish to wade into the intraparty sniping that seems to surround McCormick, but I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that it existed. If you don't have any idea what I'm talking about and want to get up to speed in two minutes, go read this post and the comments.

I'm not exactly a "let a thousand flowers bloom" type, but I think we have room for at least 8 or 10 flowers. In any case, this is going to be an exciting race.

Joe Stern for WI-8

I realize I'm a little late to this party, but thought I would join anyway (it was all that econ blogging this week.)

Former Niagra Mayor Joe Stern will run for Wisconsin's Eighth Congressional District against Steve Kagen.

I can't help but think that the proliferating opponents has to be a sign of weakness for Kagen.

Here's Berry Laker on Stern. Here's the CQ story on Stern (H/T Fox Politics)

So by my tally in addition to Stern we have Williams, Thomas, Trager, Savard, & Ribble. Oh yeah, and McCormick.

Should be interesting.