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I think that if we can hold at least three of the Texas Five Seats (Sandlin, Stenholm, Edwards, Lampson, and Frost), we could potentially (though it would be a slim chance) take back the House and make Nancy Pelosi speaker. Obviously, it would be better to take back the House if we could take four or even five of the Texas seats, but it can be done. We would have to take, however:
Open Seats Washington-8, New York-27, Colorado-3, and Louisiana-3, all very marginal districts that could all four swing to the Democrats, must be won in 2004. We have great candidates in Alex Alben, Brian Higgins, John Salazar, and Charlie Melancon, New York and Washington's districts will both be going strong for Kerry nationally, CO-3 will also have Ken Salazar on the ballot to boost his brother's chances, and Lousiana has been very kind to Democrats lately.
Then there are the Republican-leaning open seats where we have a fighting chance-Pennsylvania-15, which has a strong Republican candidate in State Sen. Charlie Dent, but is nearly dead even for the Gore/Bush votes. In Nebraska-1, Matt Conneally could prove that there is some life left in the Nebraska Democratic party and get elected (not too long ago, Nebraska did have several House Democrats in Congress). And then there is Washington-5: this will take an almost miracle of an upset for Dan Barbieri, but that miracle may be coming-Republicans are facing a tough primary battle in September and Barbieri continues to raise much money and publicity for this district.
Defeating Incumbents Democrats two best chances at pickups are Georgia-12 and Arizona-1-both musts in the battle to retake the House. John Barrow and Paul Babbitt will likely be our nominees and given the marginality of these districts, we should be able to win both.
Other incumbents that are vulnerable include Jon Porter, who attracted a very high profile challenger in Tom Gallagher, Jim Gerlach, who could fall to Lois Murphy if Kerry is running well in Pennsylvania, and John Hostettler, who likely will fall to Jon Jennings this cycle.
Then there are the perennial candidates-Anne Northup, whose district will definitely be close since KY-4 will be coming out for Kerry, Rob Simmons, who will always be vulnerable, as he is in the most Democratic-leaning Republican-held district in the country, and Heather Wilson, who is running once again against Richard Romero, but Romero will be helped by having Kerry at the top of the ballot and having support from Bill Richardson.
Other than that, we have Steve Pearce and Bob Beauprez, both of whom won marginally last time, could fall after their freshman terms, and then there is the potential for (if we are winning back the House, it will be by a sweep), Clay Shaw or Chris Shays to fall to their very strong, attractive candidates: Jim Stork and Diane Farrell. Finally, there is the question mark in MN-6, where Patty Wetterling (who may arguably have higher name ID than Mark Kennedy) will be running. If we can win 18 (16 seats after Texas-redistricting, plus giving room for losing two of the Texas Five) of these seats, we'd have the majority.
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