Don't write off Old Media yet. . .

AZ Congress Watch already beat me to is but there was a rather detailed and informative article published by Congressional Quarterly.

I do wish however that we could get articles written without the main sources being Jim Kolbe and Margaret Kenski. The conventional wisdom that Graf is skating only because Hellon and Huffman are splitting the vote is old and broken, and demonstrably so. Graf is winning because he has run a far more effective campaign thus far, and is not merely picking up the "sloppy seconds" left by the other two major candidates.

I really haven't seen the "temper tantrums" referred to either, other than Hellon's refusal to drop out of the race, which is plain silly. Hellon isn't in some sort of cabal with Huffman and doesn't really owe him anything. It would be just as valid to point out that a Huffman victory places the party in greater danger of losing the election to the Democratic challenger with the utterly inept and embarrassment of a campaign he has run to this point, so Hellon should withdraw and support Graf. That isn't going to happen either.

I also enjoy the term "many Republican officials, including Kolbe. . ." as being concerned that Graf cannot win. Either name them or just quote Kolbe like everyone else. The Graf issue seems more like a Kolbe crusade more than anything else, unless one counts Jim Click as "many Republican officials. I'm not going to pin this on CQ, however as this has been the only thing the national people had on this race for months.

My favorite part, however, was the damage control attempted by Dave Spuempfle which was promptly cross-checked against Chuck Coughlin. If you can't even get out a couple lines pumping your campaign without CQ checking your accuracy, things aren't really going well for your primary campaign.

Overall, however the article was well researched, well written, and insightful which is a direct counter example from the AP article I cited previously.

More please.