Fred, don’t know why Jeanne Ives was not included on this initial list. As the press release said, the PAC will be supporting other candidates throughout the 2020 election cycle, but there are 3 or 4 possible reasons why Ives was not part of the initial list:

1) Age, Ives is 55 and the group bills itself as helping young conservatives. Don’t know how MavPAC defines “young” but the first name on the list, Young Kim of California, is 57, so age in mid to late 50s does not rule someone out.

2) The Democrat incumbent/district rating. The 14th is rated a “toss-up” in most ratings like Cook Political report among others. The 6th district was changed just this week from leans Democratic to likely Democratic, so perhaps the priority in the initial endorsements are targeting toss-up districts.

3) The candidate needs the money more. Ives’ 3rd quarter fundraising for a 1st time federal candidate was really impressive, topping $340K. While Lauf’s total for the first 38 days ending September 30 was impressive, it is not at the Ives’ level, and MavPAC feels a candidate receiving the initial $2,500 will go farther with Lauf than with Ives.

4) Highly competitive primary. Ives’ primary against Dr. Jay Kinzler, at this stage, is perceived to be one-sided, and Kinzler needs to do a lot to change that, particularly on his FEC quarterlies next month. Lauf is in a multi-candidate field in the 14th where a plurality of 40% is the most any candidate will receive.

All of the candidates are impressive reads. Our friend D J lives in the TX-24 district, so maybe he can tell us a little more about Beth Van Duyne.

That’s my take, which is little more than an educated guess, for what it’s worth.

Correcting, I’m going to postpone my predictions of how the candidates will win, place or show come March until much later.

One must be careful with name recognition/ID–it cuts both ways.

Don’t know if you saw my response to Mr. Ward’s response to me, but where his assessment of Oberweis goes astray is when you compare the times Oberweis was in a race like this with more than 3 candidates, and that’s only happened in 2004 for U.S. Senate with 8 candidates and 2006 for governor with 5 candidates.

Governor he lost because the 3-term state treasurer had the name ID, but needed another candidate to split the social conservative vote away from Oberweis, which is what happened.

The 2004 U.S. Senate primary is the better comparison because Oberweis entered that race with significant name ID from 2002, but also his dairy/financial businesses and he peaked when he had his breakout on immigration.

He still came in 2nd to Jack Ryan, who had youth, good looks and a healthy bank account of his own.

As you may recall, when a judge ordered Ryan’s divorce case records to be unsealed is when he was forced to give up the nomination.

Many parallels can be drawn to 2020, but you can read what I said on Ward’s blog for the rest.

You could be right about Catella or Evans.

Petition objections are due on Monday, and I’m sure there will be objections filed in the 14th race.

With Catella and to a degree Evans, it’s the electoral equivalent of a “short stack squeeze” in tournament poker, given Catella has very little money and Evans unknown to afford the attorney fees needed to defend from a strong objection case.

Will we see similar “games” being played with the other 5, possibly.

Marter has run twice before, so he knows how to stay on the ballot.

Similar with Oberweis and Rezin, and Gradel and Lauf had hired help to insure they covered the bases to stay on the ballot.

We’ll see.

Gradel, Rezin and Lauf need to get better known in the district, which we’ll start to see in earnest after the first of the year.

All of their campaigns, along with Oberweis, have professionally managed and fully staffed where they need to be at this stage.

Maybe one campaign needs to open their campaign HQ, but their infrastructure should be set.

Right now, in addition to insuring they stay on the ballot, they all want to finish strong fundraising, in spite of the Holidays in full swing.

Gradel has been cutting the videos to allow voters to get to know him.

His best one was the “On Life” video, and in social media the feedback was very positive.

Lauf, she is raising money and with the MavPAC endorsement, she’ll be able to raise more.

If she qualifies for Stefanik’s PAC endorsement (she has to raise a minimum of $250K from donors in fourth quarter to be considered for the endorsement), her national presence will be enhanced which will help her locally.

While young people and Hispanics do not traditionally play significant coalitions in a primary, she has two coalitions that traditionally do very well — 2nd amendment supporters and A.B.A.T.E.

The 2nd amendment passionate supporters will not forget Oberweis and Rezin voting for the Red Flag Law.

Not sure what Rezin is doing, as the last we saw of her was in the MSNBC interview last week, plus what she posts on social media, which last showed she spoke at McHenry High School this week.

Finally, as for credible independent polling, we all know the first media polls will be taken in mid to late January, and that poll will provide the baseline.

Oberweis will lead that poll, no doubt.

The rest of the campaigns will be fighting to be the clear alternative to Oberweis, and breaking double-digits in that poll will be the first goal.

Hopefully, the media will hold off on their first polls until after the 4th quarter FEC reports are made public.

It’s going to really be fun to watch after the first of the year.

One other significant distraction to all the races after the first of the year.

The President’s impeachment trial in the Senate.

Assuming the House approves Articles of Impeachment in the next 2 weeks, the trial will dominate news coverage in January.

That helps Oberweis, as average voters will be paying attention to impeachment.

The longer the impeachment trial, the one who benefits from it is Oberweis.

And that distraction is something no one has brought up until now.