The Associated Press has projected Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as the winner of the open Vermont Senator's seat and Peter Welch (D-VT) as the winner of the VT-AL seat in Congress.  Sanders was expected to win easily.  Welch, however, had a fight on his hands in a race for a the open congressional seat vacated by Sanders.  The fact that the AP is ready to call the race the moment the polls close indicates that Welch likely won handily.  This is a good sign for Democrats across the country.  

I spent the day canvassing and then spent the evening phone banking, working on the Democratic (and Sanders) GOTV operation in Burlington and its suburban communities.  While at campaign headquarters, I overheard a Vermont State Senator say that the turn out appeared to be approaching the 2004 turn out, which would be great for a mid-term election!  

My experience in canvassing today indicates that Democrats were voting.  Every single target that I talked to indicated that they had already voted, or at times earlier in the day, that they definitely planned to vote.  Towards the end of the day, I couldn't find a single Democratic target that had not voted yet.      Not one!

Second, the Vermont Democratic Headquarters had strong participation from volunteers.  When I completed my initial canvass list, I came back and was sent back out to a neighborhood that we had already canvassed once earlier in the day to look for people that weren't at home the first time.  In this particular neighborhood, we reached more than two-thirds of the targets and every single target we reached had voted.  

These are great results.  I am optimistic of our chances up and down the ticket, even for the governor's race!

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The contest for progressive hero Bernie Sanders' old seat in Congress promises to be a hot one this year, and I would guess it will be closer than many contests in districts with much more even partisan indexes.

In fact, I would guess that best case, Democrat Peter Welch (current State Senate President Pro Tem) can hope to achieve a 55% victory over former VT National Guard leader Martha Rainville (R), but he will have to work hard for it. It is also possible that this will be one of the true nail-biters on Nov 7. It is even possible that Rainville could pull it off.

Why, in a state that rates the lowest approval in the nation of Bush and the current Republican crowd in Washington?

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I have been fairly skeptical towards claims tha the Republicans have a shot at picking up the House seat being vacated by Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats. But a new survey released by GOP pollster Public Opinion Strategies has caused me to be slightly less optimistic than before. Jonathan E. Kaplan has the details in Tuesday's issue of The Hill.

Vermont state Sen. Peter Welch (D) barely leads Martha Rainville (R) in the race for the state's at-large congressional seat, according to a poll released late last week by Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm.

Welch leads Rainville 45-42 percent; the poll's margin of error is 4.6 percent. Republicans like their prospects in this race because Rainville, the former head of the National Guard, has high name recognition.

Even though the poll shows that 28 percent of voters are "definitely" voting for Rainville while 30 percent are "definitely" voting for Welch, she is narrowly leading Welch in some of Vermont's most Republican counties. In Burlington, she leads Welch 47-41 percent.

This is a Republican poll, so the results should be taken with at least a grain of salt. But according to the firm's website, it has polled in Vermont before -- in 2002, during the successful gubernatorial bid of Republican Jim Douglas -- so the numbers should not be dismissed out of hand.

There are a few factors that temper my newfound -- well, let's call it decrease in optimism. The first is that Vermont is a progressive state, one that does not like President Bush very much. In fact, according to the June polling from SurveyUSA, George W. Bush's approval rating in Vermont was lower than in any other state. The second is that the Senatorial contast up the ballot is not even close to competitive, with Sanders blowing Republican Ritchie Tarrant out of the water. The third is that the Iraq War is not popular around the country -- and especially unpopular in Vermont -- so Rainville's military qualifications may not only be a positive for her. The fourth is that, as of the latest filing period, Welch holds close to a 2.5:1 cash-on-hand advantage over Rainville.

At this point, I tend to agree with the rating ths race has garnered from the Cook Political Report (.pdf): "Leans Democrat." That said, we should keep an eye on this race through election day to make certain that it doesn't get away from us and make it that much more difficult to retake the House this fall.

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Not too long ago, I posted an examination of Republican candidates running away from President Bush, even while accepting the administration's assistance, albeit quietly, in raising funds for their campaigns. But it's not just Bush whose shadow the candidates are trying to outrun. The Republican leadership in Congress is also quite unpopular with the nation's electorate.

A perfect example of this is Martha Rainville, the Republican candidate for Vermont's at-large House seat, currently held by independent Senate candidate Bernie Sanders. You may recall Rainville as the candidate I wrote about back in February who was cynically campaigning in her military uniform, dodging reporters' tough questions by hiding behind her position at the head of the Vermont National Guard. Earlier this month, the Vermont Guardian caught her saying one thing and then doing another.

At her campaign kick-off less than two months ago, Rainville steadfastly assured her supporters that she would be a different kind of Republican in Washington than the current crop of ne'er-do-wells.

"I am a Republican," she crowed. "But candor compels me to say that some of the Republicans in control of the House have lost their way. In doing so, they have lost the respect of many Americans. Together, we can begin to restore a respectable Congress."

Who was she talking about -- DeLay? Blunt? Speaker Dennis Hastert? Majority Leader John Boehner? Or, maybe she had someone else in mind who hasn't yet been indicted or engrossed in the Abramoff imbroglio. It couldn't be them, because otherwise why would she take nearly $20,000 in campaign donations from Blunt, Hastert, and Boehner.

Given that, maybe she would have taken money from DeLay if he hadn't announced that he was resigning his seat in Congress.

In Blunt, Rainville has cast her political die with someone labeled as one of the 13 most corrupt politicians in Washington, according to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. He's got ties to DeLay and Abramoff and may have violated federal bribery laws.

It's awfully hard for Rainville to talk about campaigning "to restore a respectable Congress" when those who have done the most damage to peoples' respect for Congress are exactly the people bankrolling her campaign. It's even somewhat humorous to see this dynamic play out at all levels of the GOP leadership. Republicans all across the country will be running in the fall on the idea that, "hey, I'm a Republican, but not one of those crooked Republicans who's too weak to govern." But with said crooked Republicans stuffing bills into their back pockets, it's pretty clear that it's all just an act.

If conservative candidates really want to distinguish themselves from their corrupt Republican leadership, the answer is simple -- don't run as Republicans. Otherwise, their cowardly acceptance of so much dirty money exposes them for what they are -- lackeys for the GOP-directed status quo. Something tells me that's not going to fly in a state like Vermont.

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Ever since Howard Dean catapulted to the front of the Presidential primary in mid-2003, his home state of Vermont has acquired a label of being the only state more ridiculously liberal than Massachusetts.  And indeed, Kerry's margin of victory in VT last year was his largest gain over Gore (in 2000) of any state in the nation.

But consider this: VT is the only truly rural "blue" state: Burlington, its largest town, is less than 39,000 people.  Dating back to the Civil War, it has voted mostly Republican on the national level.  Until 1992, Lyndon Johnson was the only Democrat it backed for President.  VT has elected only one Democrat, Patrick Leahy (in 1974), to the Senate.  And only one Democrat, in 1958, has won a Congressional seat.  He wasn't re-elected.

Most people assume the open at-large seat in Vermont will go to a Democrat next year, no question.  But just how likely is that, really?

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