NJ-05 moving, moving, moving...

by: Thurman Hart

Fri Oct 24, 2008 at 05:56:31 PM EDT

Rasmussen has issued an update of House races and it indicates that as many as 27 House seats may be wrestled out of the hands of Republicans.  NJ-03 and 07 are still listed as "toss-ups" but the real news is that NJ-05 is moved from "Likely R" to "Leans R".  Even more notable is the reasons given:

When blind rabbi Dennis Shulman announced his House candidacy in November of last year, it seemed more likely to end up in Reuter's Oddly Enough than in Sabato's Crystal Ball. Shulman, however, has turned a surefire GOP win into a competitive race, on the strength of his fundraising and a generally strong campaign.

Shulman began running television ads in the primary phase of the campaign, but strong fundraising has allowed him to keep up the pace. His second-quarter haul of over $270,000 almost matched that of incumbent Rep. Scott Garrett, even though Garrett clearly leads in the category of cash-on-hand.

Why is this race competitive? It is hard to say. Voters don't seem to dislike Garrett in particular, as evidenced by an early Shulman poll showed that 31 percent of voters would vote to re-elect Garrett and just 19 percent favored definitely replacing him. Instead it seems Garrett is the victim of the environment, both anti-incumbent and anti-GOP, and the candidate, a strong fundraiser with a compelling narrative. While Garrett has the definite advantage in this district which gave Bush a 14 percent margin of victory in 2004, he'll still have to spend the last few months of the campaign sweating what should have been an easy victory.

With the McSame-Paler campaign being total absent, and the overwhelming number of new Democrats recruited in the last year, this may be the sleeper of the election season.