District Of The Day 3: The Countdown Begins

The state and federal filing deadline for the November 6 election was minutes ago and, as long promised, the third and final epic length installment on all 126 state legislative races and the 24 holdover Senate seats will be posted tonight, beginning as soon as Team Schultz posts the final * candidate list.

The * means candidates can drop out through Friday, August 24. I'll update accordingly.

I'll start in the northwest with Senate 1/House 1 and 2, and finish in Dubuque with Senate 50/House 99 and 100. When it's all done, hopefully before dawn, the whole thing goes up at the Register as a place YOU will want to bookmark for this fall.

Voter registration numbers are as of August 7, active voters only.  This is a more accurate read than the previous stats that included inactive voters, but it does make comparisons to District Of The Day 1 and 2 less precise. As we all know thanks to the monthly press release from A.J. Spiker bragging about it, registration has trended Republican the past few months. That's more pronounced in seats that had Republican primaries (the part Spiker doesn't brag about). The measure I use is Democrats minus Republicans or vice versa. My experience is that for all their bragging about being "independent," no party voters break out in about the same percentages as partisans in a given district.

Campaign finance numbers are through the July 19 Iowa Ethics deadline. I have links to everyone who filed by then; I only examined the numbers if multiple candidates had filed. Usually I use cash on hand as my baseline unless something else sticks out like Massive Loans To Self. Candidates must form a committee if they raise or spend $750; if a candidate did not form a committee, it generally means they did not reach that level and are probably Some Dude:

Some candidates start out with certain built-in advantages: They already hold office, they have personal wealth, or they have a prominent public profile. Some Dude has none of these. If you Google Some Dude's name, you'll find very little information-probably just the news article or blog post where they were first mentioned as a possible candidate. A good hint you're dealing with a Some Dude is that they're described as an "activist" or "Tea Party member" in press accounts. Note: Some Dudes sometimes win!

After you run and lose three times you graduate from Some Dude to Perennial Candidate.
I'm assuming that if you are reading this novel-length post for the third time, you know something of Iowa politics: the primary was in June, we have clean redistricting, the Senate Majority Leader is sometimes called Governor Gronstal, and so on.

Statewide Map: Front | Back (with City Insets) | Old Senate, House

As always I appreciate and will incorporate corrections, tips, rants and feedback from my readers. Stay tuned; the countdown will begin shortly.