NORTH CAROLINA ELECTORAL OVERVIEW (FEDERAL RACES)

The filing deadline for the North Carolina congressional races passed on Friday. The picture is now clear who exactly is running for what. As you may recall, this weekend Blue America endorsed Jim Neal, the progressive, grassroots candidate running for the U.S. Senate seat held by Bush rubber stamp Elizabeth Dole. (You can read the transcript of his two hour blog session with us here and if you'd like, you can contribute to his campaign here.) Before Jim gets to go head to head with Dole, he has to overcome the Republican-lite candidate of the Insider Establishment, Kay Hagan, a shallow and transparent Dole wannabe, as well as a truck driver named Duskin Lassiter, a podiatrist named Howard Stanley and a lawyer named Marcus Williams. Only Hagan-- a veritable money machine with deep connections to every lobbyist in Raleigh-- and Neal have raised any money, $536,000 and $215,000, respectively. She can depend on Big Business and special interests. He needs to count on regular folks who want to see real change. (As an aside, a perennial candidate named Peter DiLauro is challenging Dole in the Republican primary; she is expected to prevail and has already raised nearly $5 million. You see, if Hagan is lobbyist-connected in Raleigh, Dole is that times 50. She did an historically abysmal job as Chair of the RSCC-- and they couldn't get her out of there fast enough and replace her with John Ensign-- but she's used all the contacts she made there to fill her own coffers.) If you'd like to vote for Jim Neal today you can do it at the eQualityGiving website which will award $1,000 to whichever Democrat gets the most votes. When I voted a while ago, Jim was gigantically in the lead with 60% of the votes.

There are five congressional seats the Congressional Quarterly rate as worth watching. The big one is, of course, is in the 8th CD, a rematch between our old pal Larry Kissell and another pathetic Bush rubber stamp, Robin Hayes, who managed to hold on to his seat by just over 400 votes in 2006. Larry was virtually unknown and had no support from the DCCC. This time Emanuel is no longer running the D-Trip and Van Hollen is championing Larry big time. The Republican Establishment and lobbyists have pumped way over a million dollars into Hayes' desperate bid to hold the seat while grassroots Democrats have donated $400,000 in mostly small donations to Larry. He's done a great job of drawing sharp lines of distinction between himself and Hayes, especially on the unending war in Iraq, on helping military personnel and veterans, and on popular domestic issues like S-CHIP.

In the 11th CD reactionary Democrat Heath Shuler has the worst voting record of any freshman Democrat and voted so similarly to the right-wing Republican who he replaced, Charlie Taylor, that local Republicans are happy to keep him. When Rahm Emanuel needed a patsy to carry anti-immigrant legislation, he knew he could depend on Shuler to team up with Tom Tancredo on a bill. Unfortunately no Democrat has challenged Shuler in the primary. The Republicans running against him are like the 3 stooges and it looks like the Democratic caucus will be burdened with another 2 years of this worthless member.

On the other end of the spectrum, progressive incumbent Brad Miller (NC-13) is being challenged by a former state senator, Hugh Webster, a right winger but not one nearly as extremist as Vernon Robinson, the loon who managed to get only 36% in 2006 against Brad.

There are two Republican incumbents to watch. In NC-03 Walter Jones is one of the few Republicans in the House opposing endless war in Iraq. The GOP Establishment has targeted him for political extermination and they've recruited a slobbering wingnut, Joe McLaughlin, to go after him. Jones has $191,000 in his warchest and the wingnut has only managed to tuck away $30,000. It is expected, however, that independent expenditure groups like Club for Growth will dump money in the district to slime up Jones. The two Democrats in the race, Craig Weber and Marshall Adame, both former Marines, haven't managed to raise enough money to put up competitive campaigns so far.

And that brings us to the 10th, home of the only closeted gay Republican who has come under suspicion of murder (and in relation to a gay GOP prostitution ring he's involved with). McHenry, who has been a constant source of embarrassment for his district, is one of the only Republicans to score a zero on Progressive Punch's When the Chips Are Down ranking of congress-- indicating, basically, that he is far to the right of Mussolini and Hitler in his approach to governance. McHenry is being challenged by a mainstream conservative, a retired Air Force officer named Lance Simon who hasn't raised any money. The real hope for retiring McHenry-- other than an indictment in the Orlando murder case (which is unlikely to ever happen)-- is decorated Navy veteran Daniel Johnson.

"Wake Up Everybody" was the song Jim Neal was listening to when he made his mind up to run for the Senate against Dole. It's a great idea, not just for North Carolinians, either: