Pombo Loss a 26-Point Swing

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What a difference two years make. A refrain heard all around today, but perhaps most pronounced in California’s Central Valley. That’s where, you might remember, Bush’s buddy Richard “Marlboro Man” Pombo pummeled Jerry McNerney by 20 points in 2004.

Yes, 20 points. So wide a margin, in fact, that the democratic party didn’t even put money behind McNerney this year until just weeks ago, when well, things got interesting. Now, after a 26-point turnaround McNerney is the one left standing, which must be some kind of record. Maybe Bush can dub him The Comeback Kid.

Pombo’s opponent in the Republican primary, old-school GOPer and author of the Endangered Species Act, Pete McCloskey, may have put it best telling Mother Jones a couple months ago, “I’m ashamed of what my party has become, and to me, Pombo represents the very worst of it.”

Seems, months later, voters agree.

More on how the new congressman will lead the largely Republican district in a recent MoJo interview, here.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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