Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Second rate reporter says what?

“woke” is the new caravan.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

In my day, never was longer.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

T R E 4 5 O N

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Tick tock motherfuckers!

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2018 / Local Races 2018 and earlier / Local Political Blogs

Local Political Blogs

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I haven’t been explicit about this, but some of the Rochester readers probably know that I ran a blog about NY-29 called the Fighting 29th. I thought that would be my last effort, but redistricting put me in a new district with a competitive race, so I started a new blog, Roc25, to follow it. Since I posted something over 1,700 items in the five years, and probably got as much traffic in that time as Balloon Juice gets in a few weeks, I know that it’s hard out there for local political bloggers. Generally, your site won’t generate enough traffic for ads (I never bothered), and comments are few and far between, especially now that Facebook and Twitter have sucked up so much of the social conversation. Local race blogs are really a labor of love.

So, other than the obvious self-promotion and navel-gazing, I’m posting to ask whether there are some local race or political blogs that you follow that are updated regularly and have good insight into local elections. If I get enough of them, I could put together some kind of list and post it as a page here so those blogs could get a little more attention. I’ll start with two: one that reader HW3 sent me from Washington State called The Political Junkie, and North Decoder, which covers politics back around where I grew up.

Reader Interactions

33Comments

  1. 1.

    jurassicpork

    While it may be an obvious choice, in my mind, you can get no better or more in-depth coverage of races in individual districts than Daily Kos. With an online army of about 200,000, the saturation level alone is enough to guarantee that all 435 CD’s get covered, plus all Senate races.

    At my blog, Welcome Back to Pottersville, I’ll be covering the race between Liz Warren and Scott Brown as it intensifies. Niki Tsongas’ seat in my district, MA-4, seems pretty safe but of more interest is who will be Barney Frank’s successor in MA-5 (West Newton-Auburndale). It’s been pretty low-key so far as both Brown and Warren have been running a clean race… so far. No doubt, that’ll change as summer approaches.

    In the meantime, here are Dick Cheney’s Top 10 Reasons For Getting a Heart Transplant.

  2. 2.

    WereBear

    Good idea… ummm… whoever you are. Because I can’t find the author name. Rochester rings a bell, but I’ve embarrassed myself too often by guessing; and it upsets the person I guessed wrong about.

  3. 3.

    MikeJ

    Horse’s Ass is a great blog from Seattle but its focus isn’t as narrow as it once was. Just another blog talking about the national horse race. They do it well, but there was something to be said for a single minded focus on the destruction of Tim Eyman.

    They do have an excellent blogroll that points to more local oriented sites.

  4. 4.

    zubalove

    I used to frequent the Fighting 29th! How strange. I’ll take any local blogging in Rochester. Rochester Turning has become unreadable. Rachel Barnhart’s blog is fine, but the comments can be painful. I used to run The Greater Rochester Weblog and from time to time I think about dusting it off again.

    It is crucial that competitive local races get blog coverage. It’s one of the best ways to get people engaged.

  5. 5.

    mistermix

    @zubalove: Yeah, I remember you, small world. It’s a shame about Rochester Turning. Rachel seems to be attracting a lot of the same kind of commenters as the ones who frequent newspaper sites.

    @WereBear: My pen name at Fighting29th and Roc25 is “Rottenchester”.

  7. 7.

    Shalimar

    @mistermix: He means he can’t tell which front-pager you are here because there is no author name on the comment page after the redesign.

  8. 8.

    Michael Bersin

    In Missouri, covering government and politics, Show Me Progress.

    We’re a group blog (okay, it’s self promotion) held together with spit, baling wire, and duct tape.

    We’ll continue to pedal as fast as we can covering the reelection campaigns of Gov. Jay Nixon (D) (very safe), Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) (who knows?), and others. With redistricting the General Assembly campaigns are gonna be really interesting this cycle.

    We follow the money, covering campaign finance. And we spend a lot of time and energy writing about the travesties coming out of the republican controlled General Assembly.

  9. 9.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    Blue Virginia is quite good in covering northern Virginia races as well as state-wide races. I like that lowkell also posts (and reposts) a lot about the myriad issues with the state party….

    http://www.bluevirginia.us/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  10. 10.

    amk

    Unless the democrats get their own frank luntz, forming & pushing their own talking points on msm through effective surrogates in a single fucking voice, I don’t see the narratives set by local or even national blogs carrying much thrust or effect. The dems have to completely revamp their sucky media management, even going to the extent of funding and nurturing their own pox news, if necessary.

  13. 13.

    Baud

    Unless the democrats get their own frank luntz, forming & pushing their own talking points on msm through effective surrogates in a single fucking voice,

    Ain’t no way the Democrats (rank and file, not just pols) will agree on a single voice to speak for them. Something will inevitably get left out, and that means someone will be offended.

  14. 14.

    Anya

    @amk: Dems cannot speak in one voice because they represent diverse voices. I think that’s the beauty of our party. Maybe on some issues like the ACA and other national issues the dems need to sharpen their talking points, but I don’t want the Democratic Party to be like the republicans. Republicans don’t represent the interests of real people, which is diverse and complex to fit into one simple talking point — that’s why they rely on snake oil sales people to create slogans and talking points for them.

  15. 15.

    bemused

    Some Minnesota political news & opinion blogs:

    minnpost
    bluestem prairie
    mnprogressive
    polinaut at mpr
    the cucking stool
    minnesota brown
    city pages blotter
    mn2020hindsight
    mn political round table

  16. 16.

    Walker

    It has been reported numerous times that blogs skew older. Blogs average boomers and Gen-X. I am John’s age, but my wife is 10 years younger. She never reads blogs, and none of her cohorts do either, unless it is a specific post that they are directed to from a more mainstream social platform. For a blog to survive these days, it has to have a Facebook or Twitter “storefront” and spend as much time managing that as it does the blog itself.

  17. 17.

    Chris

    Ubu is right about Bleeding Heartland for Iowa.

    The John Deeth blog also has detailed coverage of Iowa state legislative races, plus general commentary on Iowa politics. He just had a marathon week reporting on all the candidates filing to run for the legislature across the state. It’s exactly the kind of one-person labor of love you’re describing.

    There’s also Blog for Iowa, “The Online Information Resources for Iowa’s Progressive Community.”

  19. 19.

    kideni

    Some Wisconsin blogs that cover local issues:

    Forward Lookout: Madison and Dane County. One of the bloggers is an ex-alder who goes to all the city and county meetings, no matter how long they go.

    Cognitive Dissidence: Milwaukee and Milwaukee County. This is also the best source for all things Walkergate. The blogger is a long-time county worker with excellent sources. He’s also part of Milwaukee County First, which is more fully locally oriented.

    Root River Siren: Racine and surrounding area. Very snarky. She’s in Paul Ryan’s district, and her state senator is being recalled.

    Rock Netroots Commentary: Janesville and Rock County. This is also part of Paul Ryan’s district.

    Blogging Blue: group blog with front pagers in Milwaukee, Waukesha, and the Madison area; I think another of the bloggers is up North somewhere, but he doesn’t post a lot, and what he does isn’t usually about his local stuff. They mostly post about general Wisconsin-y stuff, but there are frequent posts about local races, and one of the Waukesha posters writes about the growing Democratic presence in her city.

    The Political Environment: Milwaukee and statewide. He covers some local races, but he also covers environmental issues, particularly those in his backyard, but he also had great coverage of a mining bill that would have been horrible for northern Wisconsin.

    The Facebook page for Shit Scott Walker Is Doing to My State is an incredible resource if you want to follow some of the on-the-ground activism in Madison. Arthur, the guy behind the pager, puts together incredible videos documenting a lot of the crap that’s been going on (he took the video of the assembly rep voting for all his buddies), and he’s gotten arrested a number of times on trumped up charges that always get dropped. He was also in NYC last fall for Occupy, and some of his footage from the Brooklyn Bridge was used in national coverage.

    Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op is a new-ish site whose members are local activists writing about the ongoing violations to freedom of speech and assembly at the Wisconsin Capitol that the rest of the media refuses to cover. They also go to a lot of the legislative hearings and court proceedings and report on the atrocities.

  22. 22.

    Morbo

    Am I the only one who was disappointed that the link for “the fighting 29th” wasn’t a link to a Colbert Better Know a District segment?

  29. 29.

    Carl Ballard

    @MikeJ:

    Thanks! It’s been over a year since Goldy left, and we’re still trying to figure out exactly what to do with the space. I still try to do some local stuff, and I think we had the best coverage of federal redistricting in WA (and there may be a comparison of the old and new legislative districts coming from one of the other contributors, or not). But you’re right it has gone more national than we were 2 years ago. It’s tougher to go in depth on state issues when you’re doing it part time as a hobby than when it’s full time like Goldy.

  32. 32.

    Nancy

    We have an excellent state blog for Missouri at Fired Up! Missouri http://www.firedupmissouri.com/ and they cover many local races as well as the cluster that is the MO legislature.

    One of the most recent outrages is the choice of Missouri’s Speaker to honor Rush Limbaugh with a bust in the hall of famous Missourians beside the likes of Harry Truman, Mark Twain, Gen. Omar Bradley, Jack Buck, Buck O’Neill, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Thomas Hart Benton… This is one of the highest accolades the state can bestow upon a citizen of Missouri.

    He won’t be the first clown, however. Emmett Kelly beat him to it.

    Anyway, it’s a first-rate blog.

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