Why Nancy Johnson can lose to Murphy

Goldrick over at Daily Kos made some great points regarding the 5th district Congressional race and why Nancy Johnson should be worried.

From Daily Kos

Insightful Hartford Courant columnist Michelle Jacklin highlights Republican incumbent Nancy Johnson's (R-5th district) vulnerability and the strong fundraising start by her Democratic challenger Christopher Murphy.

Democrat Christopher Murphy, a second-term state senator from Cheshire, has quietly and methodically gone about the business of raising a quarter of a million dollars. It's more than any Johnson challenger has ever collected this early in a campaign and on a par with what Democrats in two higher-profile races - Joe Courtney in the 2nd District and Diane Farrell in the 4th - have in their treasuries.

Murphy will need all the funding he can get, because Johnson has been feeding mightily at the healthcare industry's trough. She received more than $1.2 mn from the healthcare industry last year and most of it still remains in her coffers. Johnson gained her place at the trough by dint of her chairing the Ways and Means Committee's subcommittee on health care.

Johnson was almost toppled in 1996 when she got mixed up in protecting Newt Gingrich.

Substitute DeLay for Gingrich and you've got a similar situation brewing. Also, the extremist agenda of President Bush and the GOP Congress hasn't resonated with Connecticut voters, even in the more conservative 5th, where Democrat John Kerry prevailed last year in traditional Republicans towns such as Canton and Simsbury and in Litchfield County.

Johnson is also vulnerable because she signed on to Bush's attempt to destroy Social Security through privatization early this year, although she is now attempting to slip away from the doomed plan.

Johnson is an architect of the new Medicare prescription drug program for seniors and the disabled, as confusing and cockamamie a program as ever was invented.

Chris Shays (CT R-4th district) is vlunerable for protecting Tom DeLay this year by voting to gut the Ethics Committee's power to launch a new ethics violation investigation. Nancy Johnson was chairman of the Ethics Committee in 1996 when she helped save Newt Gingrich.

It only takes the change of fifteen seats to retake the Congress; Connecticut has three seats to contribute!

Expect the races in Connecticut to be intense this election season.