Shamansky elbows into National Journal Top 60, Bev Campbell elbows way into blogosphere

Many people are eagerly awaiting the first BCS poll, which should show the Buckeyes first in line for the national championship game in January. Many fewer people are aware that there are rankings for Congressional races. The most frequently cited is from the National Journal, and OH-12 has made its debut on the National Journal list of most competetive races, coming in at #54.

This is tremendous news. Pat Tiberi was considered to have a "safe seat," and all of the country has been watching other Ohio races, especially the 18th and the 15th. It has been frustrating watching two of the other publications that monitor House races, CQ and the Cook Report, continue to list this seat in that category, as locally the perception of the competetiveness of this race has been continuing to increase. Chris Bowers at MyDD has been including this race in his list of potential pick-ups for some time, but the National Journal is non-partisan, and MyDD is a liberal blog. I don't know what new information caused Chuck Todd to include this race, but it has to be good news for Bob Shamansky and bad news for Pat Tiberi. I'll provide more details if I can get them.

On an unrelated note, some of you may have noticed that I've added a candidate link over in the sidebar. Yellow Dog Sammy, in addition to saying some really nice things about Blue Bexley recently, also gave a very nice profile of Beverly Campbell's efforts to unseat Jim McGregor for State Representative. Ms. Campbell will represent Bexley at the statehouse, and as such should probably have received a little more attention here than she's gotten, especially since she's running a very net-friendly candidacy. I'm sure she could use some help spreading the word, so check out her website and YouTube posts.