Wednesday Night Items

On the Expand the Map! ActBlue page, we're still desperately yearning for $73 more for Larry LaRocco and $88 more for Rick Noriega. Please, please, please, please, please!

New Hampshire: With turnout for the Democratic primary in New Hampshire way up and turnout for the Republican primary down, John Sununu should be very worried. 2006 was not an aberration - New Hampshire really is becoming Blue Hampshire.

Montana: Disgraced Republican Michael Lange will have some company in the 2008 Republican Senate primary courtesy of engineer Kirk Bushman.

Maine: Oy. An independent candidate for Senate, Laurie Dobson, is joining the 2008 race; and she's making opposition to the Iraq War the cornerstone of her campaign. Um, Laurie, Democratic Congressman Tom Allen has an unblemished record in opposition to the Iraq War and in support of bring our troops home safely and responsibly. I can't fathom what Dobson hopes to accomplish.

Oregon: Speaker Jeff Merkley nutshells it:

"...we have a U.S. senator who votes 90 percent-plus time with Bush and Cheney. And he is in a state that has the lowest opinion of Bush and Cheney of any state in the nation," Merkley told a group of 30 people who gathered at Chi’s Garden Restaurant in Roseburg. "He is dramatically out of synch with this state on the war on Iraq, on health care, on energy policy, on education, on creating family wage jobs."

Check out the Center for Public Integrity's 2008 edition of The Buying of the President, the Center's "quadrennial investigation of how money shapes presidential campaigns." Some fascinating reading.