Some amazing opportunities to expand our House majority before next November.

OH-05:

I posted earlier that the DCCC went up on the air in the district this weekend with a $148,000 ad buy. You can watch the ad below.

As you can see, it very effectively links Robin Weirauch's Republican opponent, Bob Latta, to disgraced Ohio Republicans Bob Taft and Tom Noe in last year's coingate scandal. This ties in nicely with Weirauch's campaign theme of running against "business as usual in Washington."

Even better, how does the NRCC respond? They're investing $280,000 in the race, money they don't have. Gotta love it. The Republicans are shaking in their boots. There's more background on Latta over at dailyKos and Robin Weirauch is now a part of the Blue Majority ActBlue page.

VA-01:

The Ohio 5th isn't the only red district special election taking place next Tuesday. We're also fighting for VA-01, which, with a PVI of R+8.9, is slightly less red than OH-05 (Bush won the district with 60% in 2004.) Yet, unlike in OH-05, it doesn't look as though there's much investment from the DCCC here...yet. And Raising Kaine isn't happy about it. They're hearing the race can be won.

I'm hearing that a poll taken at the start of the race indicated that, after biographies were compared, voters in the 1st CD supported Forgit over Wittman by a 45%-44% margin.

I'm also hearing that Gov. Kaine and former Gov. Warner are planning to stump for Forgit in coming days.  Finally, the Forgit campaign is trying to get Wittman to commit to a debate about Iraq and military issues, but Wittman seems to have gone AWOL (in other words, Wittman is ducking debates).

The bottom line is this: Forgit can win this race and he's working hard to do just that.

The Republicans must agree. They've dropped over $40,000 in the district on ads and phonebanks. Here's hoping the poll bears out and the DCCC jumps into this one as well.

Get to know Phil Forgit HERE and at his website. Show him some love HERE.

IL-14:

Governor Blagojevich has finally called the special election to replace Denns Hastert in IL-14. The primary will be held on February 5th, the date of the presidential primary, and the general will be on March 8.

This district, with a PVI of R+4.8, should be the best shot we have to pick up a Republican seat prior to next November. By dragging out his resignation, Hastert made it a bit more difficult, all but ensuring that the primary would be held on Feb. 5th rather than the general, which would have likely seen the Democrat carried to victory on Obama's coattails. As it is, as DHinMI puts it

IL-14 is a solid but not overwhelmingly Republican seat.  Winning a seat where Bush pulled 55% in 2004 won't be easy.  But as we're seeing in OH-05, the DCCC isn't afraid to go after seats that should be Republican, and the deficit-spending NRCC is sufficiently afraid of not holding on to seats that should be safe that they're spending even deeper in to the hole. [...]  

As I said, this isn't a seat that will be easy to win.  But with the presidential primary just one month earlier, Democrats have an excellent opportunity to do serious grass roots organizing, volunteer recruitment and excellent GOTV.  Let's hope the Illinois Democrats seize the opportunity.