The Top 20 House Races You Should Support
If you've been here long enough, you've noticed that I'll occasionally show up on a post in support of a candidate to throw water on the proposal. My point isn't that the candidate isn't deserving of your help, it's that, as far as financial support goes, I've determined that contributing money would be a poor choice in comparison to other, more competitive races.
By way of background, I've been politically engaged since 1968 when I was 9 years old and helped my mother campaign for Gene McCarthy. In college, my wife-to-be and I worked as Ward Committee representatives in Philadelphia. As we got older, our available time dropped and our available cash grew, so we shifted to financial support to deserving candidates.
In 2004, we gave money to five Senate candidates (four of them lost). In 2006, we supported 25 mostly successful House and Senate candidates. In 2008, I was contacted by close to 100 candidates as our name got known in the donor and candidate community.
To handle all the requests for support I was receiving, I started to collect data on how competitive they and their districts/States were. This evolved into a database to make decisions on who to support and who to deny. The first lesson I learned was: don't get involved in Primaries. Wait for the voters in the district to make their choice, and then judge his/her prospects. The seocnd lesson was: don't let emotion cloud your judgement. I don't care if you want to beat Devin Nunes or Steve King; I want to know that you CAN. My model identifies candidates for whom my support isn't needed, and candidates for whom my support won't make a difference.
Last week, I gave a talk on a panel that included the race rater for Larry Sabato's "Crystal Ball", the head of America Votes, and a representative from Emily's List, where we each explained to the NYC donor community who WE would support. My talk was on my data-drive approach, which works off the following goals:
• “Toss-up”, “Lean R/D”, ”Likely R/D” ratings from:
o Cook Political Report
o University of Virginia Center for Politics (Larry Sabato)
o Inside Elections (Nathan Golzales)
• Democratic competitiveness (“Partisan Vote Index” from Cook Political Report)
• Districts won by Hillary Clinton in 2016
• “Red to Blue” certification by DCCC
• Financial status (FEC quarterly filings)
Identify States with complementary up- and down-ticket races
• Senate seats we need to hold: MO, ND, OH, WV, MN, IN, ME, FL
• Potential Senate pickups: AZ, NV, TN, TX
• Governorships: NM, FL, IL, ME, MI, OH, NH, AK, MN, CT
• State House and State Legislative chambers: OH, NC, FL, WI, MI
Identify Critical 2020 States where a Democratic incumbent will help turn out voters for our Presidential candidate
• States we need to win in 2020: PA, OH, MI, FL, WI
• States we might try to win in 2020: NC, GA, AZ, TX
Based on my model, here are the House races where your support will have the most impact:
CA-10 Josh Harder
CA-25 Katie Hill
CA-48 Harley Rouda
CO-06 Jason Crow
FL-26 Debbie Mucarsel-Powell
IA-01 Abby Finkenauer
IL-06 Sean Casten
IL-12 Brendan Kelly
ME-02 Jared Golden
MN-02 Angie Craig
NC-09 Dan McCready
OH-01 Aftab Pureval
NJ-07 Tom Malinowski
PA-01 Scott Wallace
PA-07 Susan Wild
PA-17 Conor Lamb
TX-07 Lizzie Fletcher
TX-23 Gina Ortiz-Jones
TX-32 Colin Allred
VA-10 Jennifer Wexton
I'm finishing edits on my master database whic covers House, Senate, Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Controller and Auditor races. As soon as it's done, I'll be happy to make it available.
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