In the last couple days, there have been several posts across the blogosphere citing what various candidates running for Congress have said on FISA and retroactive immunity for the telecoms.  But so far, it's been all over the map.  I'll try to corral all their statements into this diary, so you can see who the "good guys" are.

First, let's start off with the current House and Senate members who voted against this bill.  They do deserve credit, as it's their jobs on the line.

Follow me below the fold to see the dozens of Democratic challengers who are standing up for the Constitution, and are against this FISA bill and retroactive immunity.

There's more...

Per Chris Cillizza, Rep. Jim Saxton, who represents NJ-03 (PVI of D+3) and was widely expected to retire after his current term, may announce as soon as today that he won't seek re-election to the House.

Rep. Jim Saxton, the twelve-term Republican from New Jersey's 3rd District, plans to retire after his current term, an announcement that could come as early as today, according to sources familiar with his decision.

Saxton's retirement opens up a seat he has held since 1984 and creates another vulnerable open seat for House Republicans. President Bush narrowly carried the district with 51 percent in 2004, and Democrats had been making noise about a potential challenge to Saxton in 2008.

Charlie Cook has featured this race in his House Competitive Race Chart but labeled it as "Likely Republican." Expect that to change to "Toss-up" or even "Lean Dem" now that it's an open seat. Swing State Project says NJ state senator John Adler is our man for the job.

The second retirement that was leaked today is that of Rep. Barbara Cubin who's held Wyoming's At-Large seat since 1994.

From Roll Call:

Rep. Barbara Cubin (R-Wyo.) is expected to announce her retirement on Saturday at a meeting of the state GOP central committee in Casper, a Republican source said Friday afternoon. [...]

Cubin, long rumored to be retiring from her Republican-leaning at-large House seat upon the conclusion of her current term, has been absent from Capitol Hill for much of the year to tend to her
hospitalized husband in Wyoming.

While not surprising, Cubin's retirement, unlike that of Saxton, is bad news for Democrats. Our returning challenger to the seat, netroots all star Gary Trauner, had come just 1,000 votes shy in 2006 against Cubin in this R+19 PVI state and by far his best chance to win the seat would have been a rematch in 2008. Best not to underestimate Trauner though. The GOP primary promises to be a brutal one, with three challengers having already announced, almost 48% of the state has already voted for Trauner and mcjoan calls him

the most amazing door-to-door campaigner I have ever seen.

These two retirements make it 16 open seats for the GOP to defend next year, while Democrats only have 3.

There's more...

As Jonathan linked in the open thread earlier, Rep. Barbara Cubin's 2006 Democratic challenger and netroots all star Gary Trauner had scheduled an announcement today although to announce what was unclear -- would he run for one of the senate seats (both of which are up in '08,) the house seat he almost won last year, or run for nothing at all? I have to say, having been extremely impressed with his appearances on a couple of panels at YearlyKos this summer, I'm thrilled to see that he's opted for another run for Wyoming's At Large congressional seat.

New West Politics was at his announcement and relates (via mcjoan) what led him to decide to run again:

"I had gone to the grocery store when I heard my name called," Trauner said. A gentleman having coffee in the grocery store pointed to a newspaper and asked Trauner if he'd read about the growing controversy over expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which Congress had approved, President Bush had vetoed and had that veto sustained by a Republican minority.

Trauner said the gentleman having coffee was upset with the partisan politics, and said "I've been a Republican all my life, but don't we deserve something better?"

Trauner, after long discussions with his wife, decided the answer was "Yes."

You may remember this race as one of the true heartbreakers from last year. In Wyoming, where only about 25% of voters are registered Democrats and where John Kerry only won 29% of the vote in 2004 (Cook gives it a PVI of R+19,) Gary Trauner came within 1,012 votes of winning Dick Cheney's old seat. How'd he do it?

He distinguished himself through his approach to campaigning, going door-to-door across Wyoming to 15,000 homes--a style that was in marked contrast to Cubin's campaign style. Cubin once famously said she'd "rather eat roadkill" than go door-to-door.

Clearly, Trauner's best shot at this seat would be in a re-match against Cubin, although that is currently up in the air. As of now, Cook's Competitive House Chart lists the seat as merely "Lean Republican" but also lists Cubin as a potential retirement and with a serious primary challenge.

mcjoan elaborates:

Cubin has said that she's running again, but hasn't filed yet. She could be waiting to see if State Rep. Colin Simpson (former Sen. Alan Simpson's son) decides to join Swede Nelson of Cheyenne and Kenn Gilchrist of Casper in challenging her in the primary...but there's been some talk in the national party of trying to convince Cubin to retire.

Great to see Gary giving this race another run and giving Wyoming a chance to finish what they started in 2006.

There's more...

Earlier, I attended the The Future Leaders Panel at YearlyKos, which featured the following brave '06 congressional challengers going for another round next year: Charlie Brown (CA-04), Darcy Burner (WA-08), Larry Grant (ID-01), Eric Massa (NY-29), Scott Kleeb (NE-03), Dan Seals (IL-10), and Gary Trauner (WY-AL.)

As many electoral successes as we had in red and purple districts last year, these panelists represented some of the more heartbreaking close calls. In fact there was a running joke that it was the losers' panel, but as one of the panelists said, "We are redefining the word loser. I am a proud loser." Charlie Brown put it well when he turned the joke on its head and said proudly, "The reason we're winners is that most of us got more votes than any Democrat ever had before in our districts." But the most poignant reason the loser moniker doesn't fit is that these challengers, despite falling short in votes in their districts, undeniably contributed to our winning the majority last year. They forced the Republicans to spend precious time and money in these districts, which they'd taken for granted just a cycle before, and that was time and money that couldn't be spent defending other districts. In other words, sitting on that stage was the 50-state strategy incarnate.

Another interesting thread that ran through the discussion was just how much has changed in 2 years. Scott Kleeb said he "literally knocked on the DCCC's door" last year and told them he was running in NE-03. "And they said, that's nice." Now they're all getting offers of support whereas last year they couldn't get past the receptionist. Sure, it's a function of their having proved themselves viable last year, but in addition, there is a greater openness to grassrots and netroots candidates on the part of the DC establishment. All of the challengers on that stage gave credit to the netroots for not only providing the support when no one else would, but also for challenging the DCCC to pay attention to these races. And they urged us to continue to do so.

More from the convention later...

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I recall reading that Newt Gingrich advised Republican candidates who lost House races by less than 10% to run again in the next election; some of the infamous Class of '94 freshmen who rode the Republican wave into the House had run close races in '92, and some of '94's losers won seats in '96.  I think this is one Gingrich idea we need to adopt -- and further, we need to push the DCCC to adopt it as well.

What I would ideally like to see is a petition with a huge number of signatures delivered to the new DCCC chair on his or her first day on the job.  I think Moveon.org would be the ideal forum for collecting signatures -- on-line petition drives are a large part of what they do, and their mailing list can generate literally millions of signatures in a matter of days.

If anyone on MyDD has contacts in the management of Moveon.org, I would greatly appreciate your help in bringing this to their attention; I intend to submit it via their feedback form after incorporating any comments or suggestions from the MyDD community which seem useful.  I'd especially appreciate any information on who the new DCCC chair is likely to be, what the selection process is, and when we'll know for certain.

(petition text below the fold)

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