This blog has adopted the VA 10th district race as one of our favorite turnover opportunities, only partly because both Mark’s and my public policy programs would benefit by damaging the competition at Georgetown, and electing its dean to congress would definitely do that, hee hee.
Today’s insider poop is that the DCCC, which listed it as an “emerging race” several weeks ago (this status does not come with money), has now given Judy Feder $75,000, implying new expert judgment that she’s a good bet where money can make a difference. Yours too; the DC media market is expensive. \
UPDATE: Feder has just been upgraded to the Red-to-Blue DCCC list. So has Jerry McNerney, whose election in the CA-11 would displace a particularly odious incumbent, Richard Pombo.
Author: Michael O'Hare
Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, Michael O'Hare was raised in New York City and trained at Harvard as an architect and structural engineer. Diverted from an honest career designing buildings by the offer of a job in which he could think about anything he wanted to and spend his time with very smart and curious young people, he fell among economists and such like, and continues to benefit from their generosity with on-the-job social science training.
He has followed the process and principles of design into "nonphysical environments" such as production processes in organizations, regulation, and information management and published a variety of research in environmental policy, government policy towards the arts, and management, with special interests in energy, facility siting, information and perceptions in public choice and work environments, and policy design. His current research is focused on transportation biofuels and their effects on global land use, food security, and international trade; regulatory policy in the face of scientific uncertainty; and, after a three-decade hiatus, on NIMBY conflicts afflicting high speed rail right-of-way and nuclear waste disposal sites. He is also a regular writer on pedagogy, especially teaching in professional education, and co-edited the "Curriculum and Case Notes" section of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.
Between faculty appointments at the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, he was director of policy analysis at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. He has had visiting appointments at Università Bocconi in Milan and the National University of Singapore and teaches regularly in the Goldman School's executive (mid-career) programs.
At GSPP, O'Hare has taught a studio course in Program and Policy Design, Arts and Cultural Policy, Public Management, the pedagogy course for graduate student instructors, Quantitative Methods, Environmental Policy, and the introduction to public policy for its undergraduate minor, which he supervises. Generally, he considers himself the school's resident expert in any subject in which there is no such thing as real expertise (a recent project concerned the governance and design of California county fairs), but is secure in the distinction of being the only faculty member with a metal lathe in his basement and a 4×5 Ebony view camera. At the moment, he would rather be making something with his hands than writing this blurb.
View all posts by Michael O'Hare
Thanks, was looking for a good low-profile candidate to contribute to.
$75K is a slightly-more-than-token amount.
My impression is that DCCC will go wall-to-wall in 35-40 districts, while giving a small amount to another 10-15. Feder seems to be in the second category.