Kagen gard Debate, Check Out This BS:

[Dinger]

http://www.wispolitics.com/index.iml?Article=138307

I don't know about you, but this doesn't pass the smell test, at all.

[undeterred]

1. I couldn't find another report on it, though it will probably

show up in the blogs. Kagen has a substantial lead over Gard though, so there's no reason he should let Gard jerk him around.

...Kagen opens a big lead over Gard...

THE BIG QUESTION: Will Democratic Congressman Steve Kagen Win a Second Term?

Wisconsin's 8th Congressional District rarely elected Democrats. And it almost never re-elects them. In fact, the last Democrat to win a second term representing the northeast Wisconsin district was Father Robert Cornell, a progressive Roman Catholic priest who was elected in the Watergate year of 1974 and was reelected two years later when Wisconsin backed Democrat Jimmy Carter for president. Cornell lost the seat in 1978. No Democrat would win it again until 1996, when television anchor Jay Johnson won it. Johnson got beat in 1998 by Republican Mark Green, who would hold the seat until he made his ill-fated 2006 gubernatorial race.

That year, Democrat Steve Kagen beat Republican John Gard by a narrow 51-49 margin. Former Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Gard is back, running a aggressively negative campaign against Kagen. National Republicans have long ranked this seat high on the list of those they hope to win back this year. But, among frustrated Republicans, the gallows-humor joke says that Gard is the only Republican who can't win the seat. And that may turn out to be the case.

A new poll, conducted by Survey USA for the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call has Kagen leading by a solid 54-43 margin, with 3 percent undecided. Gard's got two problems? First, he has never been personally popular in the district, where voters were never impressed by the fact that he lived in the Dane County community of Sun Prairie during his years as a legislator. Second, he's a Republican running in a year when Republican President George Bush has a mere 26 percent approval rating in the district and when Republican presidential candidate McCain trails Democratic candidate Obama. (The Survey USA/Roll Call poll, which was conducted over the weekend, has Obama up 52-45.)

Kagen has done well be getting ahead of the economic issues facing the country and the district. He voted against the Wall Street bailout bill, and he has been outspoken in his support for workers at the NewPage/Kimberly Mills plant in Kimberly, where hundreds of workers lost their jobs to a plant closure. Here's a photo gallery of the congressman at a recent rally in Kimberly. http://www.kagen4congress.com/media/media-photos/photos-kimberly-mills-rally/

http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/308469