(Also at OC Progressive)

What happens when you combine a Democratic fundraiser in North San Diego County, a homophobic right-wing neighbor disturbing the peace, and the San Diego County Sheriffs? Apparently, one BIG, nasty mess! Here's the original TPM story:

The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that a fundraiser for Francine Busby, who previously ran for the deeply-Republican Fiftieth District and came close to winning in the 2006 special election and subsequent regular election, was raided by sheriffs after an unnamed neighbor made a noise complaint. Busby now calls it a "phony" noise complaint, and the article says that multiple neighbors said there was no great noise at all.

Here's the twist: The fundraiser was hosted by a lesbian couple, and shortly before the sheriffs came a particular neighbor had shouted anti-gay slurs at the assembled crowd. "It was a quiet home reception, disrupted by a vulgar person shouting obscenities from behind the bushes," Busby says.

As one neighbor told the paper: "We didn't hear anything until the sheriff came, with eight patrol cars and a helicopter."

And yes, the new developments are becoming more sordid by the minute. Details after the flip...

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This week Scott Harpers's campaign in IL-13 was one of only five races nationally and the only one in Illinois to be upgraded to the Red to Blue Emerging Races list by the DCCC.

On top of that this week Harper was also endorsed by DAPAC (Democratic Advancement Political Action Committee). From their website: "DAPAC is a unique progressive political action committee that targets Republican held seats in the U.S. House and helps "new progressive" Democratic candidates run and win in those districts." They only support progressives:  "All of our elected members of Congress from the last cycle have voted progressively on the issues. No other Democratic organization comes close to having a record as progressive as ours."

All the smart, hard work Scott, his campaign manager Sarah Topy, her staff and the  volunteers flocking to the campaign are putting in to elect this great candidate to the House is really paying off.

Read on for how this race is shaping up to be one of our biggest House wins this cycle.

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Last Monday July 21st Sarah Topy and her staff at the Scott Harper campaign were looking forward to a week of data processing, fundraising and preparing for a big push in August after the immensely successful event they organized called "13 for the 13th" on July 13th, the single biggest Dem canvass ever held in IL-13.

There was a lot of file updating yet to do and wouldn't you know Monday was the day the state guys finally had the new voter file ready to download. The new VAN basically updated and transformed all our files to new software and it was an all day procedure installing it. The files were still offline Monday night when I showed up at campaign HQ to make some calls. Rich Caparrell the field director was in Maryland for a much deserved long weekend off. We had another canvass scheduled for Saturday but volunteer turnout was expected to be light in the middle of vacation season and especially so soon after the big effort on July 13th. It wasn't downtime but it's as close as they'll get in the next few months on Harper's campaign.

Well that was the plan anyway, but it wasn't to be. Read on for how those best laid plans went out the window in an instant and what happened next.

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   Hillary Clinton's win in West VA is a good win for her. Though I wonder now if the Clinton supporters will stop the bullshit argument that Obama victories in red states don't matter, as Hillary supporters are certainly offended at the notion that West VA is meaningless. I'm glad they don't like it so much, so hopefully that garbage won't be spouted any more.

  Now on to another Hillary argument made in recent days that has been clearly disproven. That is the argument that Obama would be a detriment to down ticket races, that Obama's ties to Jeremiah Wright will kill us in November and that Hillary is the stronger candidate for down ticket candidates.

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Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post's The Fix examined the vulnerability of Republican House seats in light of the Foster win of the Hastert seat.  

I would have pointed this out Monday, but being a New Yorker, the news was preoccupying.

"[Eighty] percent of the Republican open and Republican incumbent seats the DCCC is targeting this cycle have better democratic performances than Illinois 14," wrote committee communications director Jen Crider in the memo. "Forty out of the 50 seats the DCCC is targeting have Democratic performances of 45 percent or higher."

snip

"Illinois' 14th district has a PVI score of R+5. A quick look at Cook's PVI ratings reveals that 53 Republican-held seats have a score more Democratic than that."

Cillizza decided to use the Cook PVI's of R+1 to R+5 to check out how many Republican seats would be vulnerable now that a seat like the Hastert seat had fallen. As noted there are 53, 22-26 of those 53 are in States Hillary Clinton not Barack Obama  carried.

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