As her Republican opponent files the biggest single quarter fundraising report from a Kansas congressional candidate in the state's history, Congresswoman Nancy Boyda (D-KS) actually finds herself increasingly more secure in her first re-election bid.

Even with a $681,000 quarter and running in a district that went to George W. Bush by double digits, Republican Kansas State Treasurer Lynn Jenkins woke up today to not only still find herself behind in cash-on-hand, but she also had to read that The Cook Political Report had moved the race in the Kansas 2nd out of the "Toss Up" column and into "Leans Democratic." 

The question is: Why?

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Crossposted from BoydaBloc

On Friday, Congresswoman Nancy Boyda did something courageous.  She did something brave.  She did something historic.

And she did what was right.

On Friday, Congresswoman Nancy Boyda voted for an update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillances Act, or FISA.  She voted, in every procedural motion, to send the House version of the bill- the version without retroactive immunity for the phone companies- to the floor for a vote.  It's exactly the way she voted in August, too.

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I just had to tell ya'll about this because its something that makes me crazy.  

Last year around Christmas time - the Kansas GOP sent out what I'm sure they thought was a normal everyday fundraising email.  What they mistakenly did was talk about all the great work they are doing and talked about their Vote Caging program.

This erupted into a huge thing here, here, here, and here.

BoydaBloc - a pro-Nancy Boyda blog just broke this story while going through Jim Ryun's campaign finance report disbursements.

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Crossposted from Show Me Progress:

Last Monday, Jake Zimmerman, the Democratic rep from Olivette in St. Louis County, spoke at the West County Dems meeting.  But he had nothing of substance to say.  He announced that to begin with.

He and Rachel Storch are heading the House DCCC, and, on the assumption that he was speaking to people who already understood the importance of getting Ds elected in this state, he spoke not about policy issues but about his new responsibility to be "a cynic", to calculate coldly what moves will get the most Democrats elected to the Missouri House in 2008.

What follows is close to being a transcript of the first ten minutes of his talk, but his words and mine are so intermingled that I gave up on putting in quotation marks.

The last election showcased a grand strategic debate within the Democratic Party at the national level, and that debate is important to understand, not only for its national implications but also because the same debate is currently playing out at the state level.  

The debate involves three universes of people. The first universe is represented by Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emanuel.  Their goal before the 2006 election was short term, to get the Democrats into the majority in the House.  The only thing we care about, they'd have said, is immediate victory, because if we control the House, we can stop the Bush agenda and change the direction of the country.

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OR "What a difference an election makes." 

One could say that there is a lot that is the matter with Kansas.  It's Republican and it's conservative.  And until January 2007, the second congressional district ("KS-02") was "represented" by ultra-right winger Jim Ryan, who voted in lock step with Tom DeLay - wrong on virtually everything.  Few believed a democrat had a chance here.  KS-02 has a PVI of R+7 (meaning that the district votes 7% more republican than the county as a whole).   But in 2006, Nancy Boyda turned this district blue, winning the seat even while being outspent by 50%.  Only two seats in the country more red than this one turned blue in 2006 (IN-08 and TX 22).  

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