THERE ARE REASONS WHY STATE REPUBLICAN PARTY ORGANIZATIONS ARE GOING THE WAY OF BEAR STEARNS

Likely Democratic winners against GOP rubber stamp incumbents

The GOP is basically selling congressional nomination endorsements. The national party-- which can at least blame part of their financial woes on crooked employees stealing from them-- isn't the only GOP entity as bankrupt as Bear Stearns. Many of the individual state Republican parties are as well. We've watched how one after the other first and second tier candidates are turning down the GOP and how their House and Senate recruitments committees are being forced to accept third, fourth and even fifth tier candidates to run-- basically self-funding vanity candidates or lunatic fringe true-beleivers off on some crazy jag. (It's either that or-- like they did in all the federal races in Arkansas, just skip the whole thing and let the Democrats have the seats uncontested; at least it's cheaper that way.) Seats that the Republicans were once bragging they would "take back" from Democratic freshmen have wound up with no credible challengers, just multimillionaires willing to put their own money in for the thrill and dubious honor of having run for Congress (and lost).

Today, Progress Illinois is reporting that the GOP county chairmen in the district being abandoned by crooked Republican House member Jerry Weller (IL-11) have smoked some cigars in a back room and come up with... a crooked Republican multimillionaire, Martin Ozinga III, to run against state Senator Debbie Halvorson. (The Repug who won the primary, New Lenox Mayor Tim Baldermann, dropped out of the race 2 weeks ago because the state and national Republican parties promised him a load of money to compete and then reneged, pleading poverty.)

Democrats are favored to take this seat south and west of Chicago (Joliet to Bloomington)

Weller decided not to seek re-election last year amid questions about his Nicaraguan land dealings, his wife’s investments and his relationship to an indicted defense contractor,  and House Democrats are eyeing the seat as a possible pickup this fall. Weller got 55 percent of the vote in 2006.

...Based on Halvorson’s fundraising, her electoral track record and the circumstances of Weller’s departure, national Republicans are attacking her as if she were an incumbent,  not a Democrat running in what has been GOP territory.

And now they're stuck with a far worse bet than Balderman. The only people who know Ozinga III and friends of Ozinga I and II-- and people who remember the scandal around his shady business practices. Shady business practices make nominees heroes in GOP circles; they don't do that well in moderate suburban and exurban districts like IL-11.

Of course it isn't only Illinois that can't afford to support mainstream or normal candidates. McCain's got his 66 lobbyists to raise money for him but state and district candidates are drowning in GOP debt-- and at a time when the brand is less than worthless in much of the country, they are desperate to find self-funders, even if they have no chance of being taken seriously-- and less chance of taking a seat. Retiring Virginia Congressman Tom Davis, former head of the NRCC: "It's no mystery. You have a very unhappy electorate, which is no surprise, with oil at $108 a barrel, stocks down a few thousand points, a war in Iraq with no end in sight and a president who is still very, very unpopular. He's just killed the Republican brand... The House Republican brand is so bad right now that if it were a dog food, they'd take it off the shelf."

The official word is that "a number of state Republican parties are struggling through troubled times, suffering from internal strife, poor fundraising, onerous debt, scandal or voting trends that are conspiring to relegate the local branches of the party to near-irrelevance." They worry that the grassroots won't be able to help McCain but the grassroots is worried that McCain is vacuuming up whatever resources there are for himself, leaving nothing for local Republicans who look like they will be swamped by far better financed Democrats who have the wind at their backs in many ways above and beyond finances.

“After twelve years of being in power, you tend to get fat and lazy, and in some cases arrogant with respect to your positions,” said Saul Anuzis, chairman of the Michigan Republican party. “There is no doubt that we have had people who have gotten caught up in both illegal activities and immoral activities and none of that helps the party as a whole. “If you go back to 2006 most people would agree that not only did we lose our brand, that we damaged our brand significantly,” Anuzis said.

According to figures compiled by the California secretary of state’s office, the number of registered Republicans there has dropped by roughly 207,000 since October 2006. At the end of January, California’s Republican party was in the red, with $3.2 million cash on hand but more than $3.4 million in debts. California Democrats, by contrast, had $5.5 million in the bank and just $83,000 in debts.

Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has clashed with conservatives in his party, used Hollywood terminology to paint a dire picture last fall at a state party convention.

“We are dying at the box office,” Schwarzenegger said. “We are not filling the seats.”

In New York, the situation is equally dismal. After a devastating 2006 election cycle marked by a Democratic statewide office sweep for the first time since 1938 and a Republican nominee who failed to win even 30 percent of the vote, Democrats are now within two seats of wresting a state Senate majority from the GOP, which would give Democrats control of the whole of New York government for the first time since 1934.

A January 2008 state Board of Elections report shows the state Democratic party took in $491,302 and had closing balance of $1.4 million. Republicans, by contrast, took in $26,000 and had a closing balance of $395,000.

And wherever you look-- from Alaska to New Hampshire, from Kansas to Arkansas-- it's the same story: people are sick of the Republicans, tired of their rapaciousness, corruption, dishonesty, incompetence, partisan divisiveness and, most of all, sick of Bush and Cheney and their regimeful of thugs and cronies. What this has meant is that a number of Republican seats that no one dreamed could be up for grabs, are competitive this year. Just today Phil Munger reports at Daily Kos how Don Young's Alaska congressional seat is in play, a seat once thought completely out of bounds for Democrats. Among the GOP incumbents who are facing defeat in November are many who have never even had serious challenges before, such as Dan Rohrabacher and Gary Miller in Orange County, California, John Shadegg in suburban Phoenix, Sam Graves in northwest Missouri, and-- despite Debbie Wasserman Shultz-- Mario Diaz-Balart in south Florida. And Democrats can expect to pick up a dozen or more red districts across the country where GOP incumbents saw the writing on the wall and prematurely announced retirements, especially in New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, Louisiana, Illinois-- and even in Wyoming.


UPDATE: ILLINOIS GOP HAVING SECOND THOUGHTS ON OZINGA III?

Ozinga IV isn't available and, according to Tuesday's Congressional Quarterly some Republicans think they should ditch the unethical Ozinga and give the nod to pizza maker, Harry Bond.

Dick Kavanagh, chairman of the Republican organization in Will County at the southern edge of metro Chicago, said district Republican leaders had spent more than 12 hours at a March 16 meeting discussing the situation and meeting with potential candidates.

“Unfortunately, someone who I thought was a terrific candidate ended up pulling out of the race,” said Kavanagh of Baldermann. “I was obviously very disappointed with him for doing that.”

“[Halvorson] has been running and raising money for six months now, so we’re six months behind in that sense,” said Kavanagh, referring to the Democratic nominee whose most recent report to the Federal Election Commission showed more than $427,000 in receipts and $393,000 cash on hand as of Jan. 16. Baldermann, by comparison, had raised slightly more than $100,000 and had $50,000 in cash on hand as of that date, with three weeks still to go before his primary election.

Nonetheless, Kavanagh said he believed the race is still winnable for the Republicans, as he signaled a strategy of trying to cast Halvorson as too liberal for the district. “The Democrats have been kind enough to give us a candidate who we can contrast with” on the issues,” Kavanagh said.

CQ Politics currently rates the 11th District race as Democrat Favored.