House Democratic Leader to Campaign for Busansky

Illinois Congressman Rahm Emmanuel (see photo) is chair of the Democratic Congressinal Campaign Committee (DCCC - known as the "D Triple C" or just the "D Trip"), the arm of the Democratic party solely devoted winning and protecting Congressional seats. He has a reputation among Congressional candidates as a demanding task master. Though not considered in the same tier as Florida's CD 22 (Shaw v Klein) or CD 13 (Jennings v Buchanan), where recent polling shows the Democrat with a surprising, double digit lead, our own CD 9 has earned Emmanuel's personal attention. The Congressman is hosting a mid-dollar breakfast fundraiser (minimum recommended donation is $250) for former Hillsborough County Commissioner Phyllis Busansky at the Tampa Club from 8:30-9:30 am on Thursday, October 19th.

As the number of competitive seats continues to grow and, more importantly, as more and Republican seats are being effectively conceded to the Democratic challengers, candidates like Busansky are getting more attention. Emmanuel insists though that any candidates who want help, need to prove first that they are capable of helping themselves. By raising over $1 million, she has proven exactly that.

CD 9 must still be considered a Republican leaning seat. State Representative Gus Bilirakis is favored by the marginally Republican nature of the seat (though less Republican than other seats in the country where Democrats are running strongly ahead), but more importantly by the fact that he is running to succeed his father, outgoing incumbent Mike Bilirakis, in this seat and the fact that his father has put all his Washington connections to work to give his son a strong financial advantage in this what is a relatively expensive media market (last time I checked, you can expect a week of television in the Tampa Bay media market to cost upwards of $250,000).