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Fri Aug 26, 2005 at 01:00:00 AM EDT
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Alan Fox (interview
with Matt Ferguson, June, 2005):
MF: One race that I added to your list, that wasn't on there before, is
the seat now held by Tom Casperson in the Upper Peninsula. He's the
lone Republican up there. Just looking at the numbers, John Kerry did
not do that well in his district, although the U.P. has traditionally
been a Democratic area. Is this district a possibility at all?
AF: It is, because the U.P. is the one place where probably the Kerry
vote understates the core strength of...those are places - unlike
suburban Kalamazoo - where Democrats are not voting for the anti-gun
candidate, and so the Democrats downstate are not going to do well in
the U.P. Kerry, as well as Gore before him did very poorly in the U.P.
They were perceived as being a little bit too much of the Ann
Arbor-East Lansing-Kalamazoo kind of Democrat and not of the Dominic
Jacobetti-Rusty Helman kind of Democrat.
MF: In other words, they're more blue-collar than white collar up there.
AF: Absolutely blue collar and hunters and not people who are going to
vote against shooting doves. So in that sort of situation the district
is one that's winnable - it's gone back and forth over the past 30-40
years - but it is a winnable seat for the Democrats. They took a shot
at it in 2002 with Laurie Stupak as the Democratic candidate and her
loss was a complete surprise - it was one of those that was not on the
board as a race in play in 2002 and Casperson won it. That probably
speaks to him having some personal strength and it may be that
Democrats don't try to take it back until 2008. |
| matt :: Analysis |
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