Shuler, shaping up for ’08

CQ Politics finally picked up on the story about our own former U.S. Rep. Charles Taylor not running for congress next year in this article posted today. As you all know, Taylor said over the weekend that he would not run for the 11th Congressional District seat in 2008. And as you all know, Ashvegas missed yet another prediction – I thought he would run. Shows you how much I know.

Here’s the relevant part of the CQ article, which looks at Shuler’s prospects next year:

With the viability of these candidates so far untested, CQ Politics is holding its rating on the 2008 race at Democrat Favored. The district has long exhibited a generic Republican lean, though, and CQ Politics will continue to monitor developments in the race.

Shuler beat Taylor by 54 percent to 46 percent in 2006. A businessman and first-time candidate who profiled himself as a conservative-leaning Democrat, Shuler benefitted from his celebrity as a former star quarterback for his local high school and for University of Tennessee prior to a brief and less successful pro career, and from the national anti-Republican trend that boosted the Democrats to Senate and House majorities following that year’s elections.

Shuler also was aided by the culmination of years of ethics allegations leveled against Taylor, including a report in the Wall Street Journal, not long before Election Day, that questioned whether the incumbent had used his influential position on the House Appropriations Committee to benefit himself and his business partners.

Republicans argue that Shuler is vulnerable heading into the 2008 election. Democrats slightly outnumber Republicans in the district (41 percent to 36 percent, with 23 percent of voters unaffiliated), but the 11th District gave President Bush 57 percent of its votes in 2004.

So far, however, Shuler has performed strongly in one key aspect of campaigning: fundraising. Shuler raised $627,000 in the first three quarters of 2007 and had $532,000 on hand as of Sept. 30. He spent $1.8 million on his 2006 campaign and won even though Taylor’s expenditures of $4.4 million exceeded his own by more than a 2-to-1 ratio — an imbalance that the freshman Democrat almost certainly will not have to deal with in 2008.

Shuler’s worry may be summed up in this story.