WHAP week Oct 5-12 — ANTZ running for House/Senate
I decided to look up the statuses of House members and Senators who have repeatedly made headlines as major ANTZ.
The Apprentice and Master quests for the week will be related to the information I found.
Here is the info:
HOUSE:
- Waxman — CA 33rd — retiring.
- Dingell — Mich 12th — retiring. Wife Debbie running. Terry Bowman is R opponent. Dingell favored.
- Pallone — NJ 6th — running. Opponents Dorit Coikhman, L (Libertarian), Anthony Wilkinson, R
- DeGette — CO 1st. — running. Martin Walsh(R) is opponent
- Pelosi (smoking lounge ban) — CA 12th, opponent John Dennis (R), Republicans considered unelectable in San Francisco.
SENATE: For this I used Google and http://www.govtrack.us
- Harkin — Iowa — retiring
- Rockefeller – West Virginia — retiring
- Durbin — Illinois — Oponnent Jim Oberweis(R)
- Blumenthal — next election 2016
- Boxer — next election 2016
SO, now to the tasks:
APPRENTICE (or busy person) task for the week: If one of these people is yours, consider getting involved in that election. If none of them are yours, consider if there is anything you can do for their opponent remotely, if you are interested in doing so.
MASTER job for the week: Apprentice task PLUS take a look at some very interesting sites I found with political information and statistics:
For incumbents, https://www.govtrack.us/ has interesting ideology X leadership graphs:
For candidate information in serious detail, one of several voting-record sites that looks pretty good is http://votesmart.org. They have folders for Bio Votes Positions Ratings (From assorted organizations) Speeches Funding. I am NOT finding how to tell who their opponent is on that site, though:
And http://ballotpedia.org has a Sample Ballot Lookup feature that looks interesting, and was a way to find out what third-party candidates might be running:
Gratitude. Grr! Attitude! 