Pam Spaulding, who is filling in for Glenn Greenwald over at Salon.com, has been keeping us up-to-date on the campaign to defeat Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina. The Dems. were having a tough time finding a candidate to run against the hapless Dole. No longer. The major revelation is that potential candidate Jim Neal is an unabashedly out gay man:
Enter investment banker, former Democratic presidential fundraiser and Chapel Hill resident Jim Neal. For those of you who may have missed this story over the weekend, my friends at the progressive blog community BlueNC broke big news, as Neal participated in an online forum with readers and moderator James Protzman ("Anglico").Pam is waiting for the DSCC to catch up with Neal's announcement.
He came out of the closet. And he did so in a very matter-of-fact manner that should be a lesson to all of the closeted head cases in the GOP, writhing in the pathology of their self-loathing that usually turns into anti-gay positions and policies -- and sometimes hilariously into scandal.
In the Maine race, Markos released a poll showing Susan Collins ahead of Tom Allen by a margin of 56 - 33:
This one won't be easy. But Iraq will loom large, and hopefully will work to peel away Collins' significant Democratic and Independent support. Crosstabs are below the fold. I'll be commissioning periodic polls of this race to track our progress. Allen needs to push Collins below 50 percent within the next 4-6 months for this race to become top-tier. He's got the material to work with.Very cool that Markos is doing these polls. Jonathan Singer offers an astute analysis of the race over at MYDD. I'd add one thing from a Maine perspective. This race is starting to remind me of the 1982 race between George Mitchell and David Emery. In 1980, Mitchell had been appointed to the Senate seat to replace Ed Muskie. Emery was a very popular four-term members of Congress. In 1981, this race looked like a goner. Emery was releasing polls showing he had a 30 point lead over Mitchell. On October 7, 1982, The New York Times (available in archives) described the situation:
Mr. Emery had a 2-to-1 lead in polls a year ago, his name wellknown after four successful House races; Mr. Mitchell had left the obscurity of a Federal judgeship for a Senate appointment in 1980 when Edmund S. Muskie resigned to become Secretary of State.Emery made a series of stupid mistakes, just like Susan's recent attack on Tom Allen for missing votes because Allen was at a family funeral. Like Collins, Emery was exposed as a very negative campaigner. Also, Emery was tied to an unpopular President -- and in 1982 in Maine, Reagan was unpopular. And just like Emery couldn't hide his support for Reagan, Susan Collins cannot hide from her support of Bush and his war in Iraq. Mitchell, who was down by 30 points in 1981, won 62% - 38% in November of 1982.
Both North Carolina and Maine offer opportunities for Democrats to pick up GOP seats -- very good opportunities that will take a lot of work.
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