Reply #9: The DCCC started running ads for her recently

[Mabus]

so they're paying attention.

I understand there are hundreds of races and it is a Kansas race that everyone has assumed would be a cakewalk for them. Boyda's running a real grassroots campaign. A few years ago the districts were gerrymandered with an eye to get the only Dem out of the House. One of the ways this was accomplished was to split Lawrence (my city) in half. Those of us who live east of Iowa St. remained in the 3rd CD. Those who live west of Iowa St. were moved into the 2nd. And to put it bluntly, they fucked up. Lawrence is a college town. We have a number of liberal faculty members who live in the newer part of town, the west side. The number of apartment buildings, housing those liberal students, has increased on the west side. A lot of volunteers for Boyda in Lawrence in 2004 were from the KU Dems. This got a lot of students involved and many of them still are. So, after the redistricting the drumbeat started building and more people have gotten on board. The first chance we got we elected an almost solid slate of Democratic officeholders on the city, county and state levels. Then Dean came through here and in front of two SRO crowds (private KSDP fundraiser and public fundraiser downtown) he spoke to the party faithful as part of his kickoff to the 50 State Strategy and it is working. Every year we have more and more people showing up at our annual picnics.

Lat week on CSPAN, a Poli-Sci prof from K-State said that Lawrence went 50-50 on the Ryun-Boyda match-up in 2002 and said, "if Boyda can crack Lawrence she could pull off an upset." From the looks of things, she cracked Lawrence. Because Bush scheduled a stop to campaign for her opponent late last week, Boyda decided to fight back. She sent out an e-mail Saturday night and asked people to show up in Topeka for a Boyda rally on Sunday. Over 1,000 people showed up on short notice. Another 100 -125 people protested at Bush's appearance later that day.

This morning, apparently in response to the robo-calling, I saw Nancy's new ad. She tells people that there are a lot of lies being spread about her and her positions. She comes right and says she won't raise taxes on the working class and she has never advocated blanket amnesty for illegal immigrants. Then she goes on to remind people that she has written three newsletters that tell people what her positions are on different issues. She paid for these newsletters to be included in local papers because she believes Kansans deserve to know the truth about who they are voting for. I think it is a masterpiece. She stays positive. In contrast, Ryun has a commercial featuring his daughter whining that "people are lying about my daddy," which might work better if she didn't look like they had a gun on her, forcing her to do the commercial.

Anyway, we'll find out tomorrow.

btw, incumbent Dennis Moore (D-3rd CD) is favored to retain his seat. He's running against a book-burner/creationist/fundie. So there's a lot of excitement at the prospect of having two Dems from Kansas in the US House.