When handicapping legislative campaigns seven weeks out there are several factors to consider.  You look at how well a candidate is known in the community (name id), resources available to the campaign (fundraising and volunteers), where the candidates stand on issues important to the district.

In Assembly District 29, currently held by Mike Villines, we have three Republican candidates that would all claim to be the leading candidates in the race.  Of those three Dr. Linda Halderman has everything breaking her way right now.

Halderman is a surgeon that spent most of her career treating breast cancer patients.  This makes for a compelling story that she has told on local conservative radio station KMJ dozens of times over the past few years.  She has some name ID and a compelling and memorable story to tell.

Halderman entered this race in late January and started behind the two other candidates that have been running for much longer. At the last report she had been running for six weeks and raised more than $80,0000.  Since then there is no doubt which candidate is moving faster than the others.  She even picked up endorsements from the California Republican Assembly and Clovis Chamber of Commerce. Meanwhile the other two candidates are kind of stuck in neutral while Halderman is raising money and has an active volunteer base.

Then we have the issues.  Halderman’s conservative stances on taxes, guns, personal freedoms, abortion, and marriage make her a perfect fit for this solid Republican district.

Halderman is also prolific in her writing – she has written for us previously on the FlashReport, and has a featured column today.  She is able to articulate her conservative positions on paper and in her articulate personal presentations.  We need more Republican officials that are able to use the written word to communicate out values in writing. Halderman certainly will be able to do that.  At this point she appears to be clear favorite in AD 29.

I don’t endorse in contested GOP primaries, of course, as a Republican Party official.  But I certainly can handicap races as I see fit, and as I have done here.  The momentum in this district is all with Linda Halderman.

(It’s probably also blog worthy, certainly for this Jewish Republican, that if Halderman wins her election, we will have two Jewish Republicans in the legislature — along with Jeff Miller, they could form a caucus!)

This entry was posted on Friday, April 23rd, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.