CA-03

Energy was high in the final hours of Bill Durston's uphill push to take the 3rd Congressional District from U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Gold River).

Durston campaign spokesperson Pat McConahay said her election office was besieged by volunteers Tuesday who wanted to make get-out-the-vote calls for the Democrat.

Another report on hot political races around the country has bumped the 4th Congressional District race into the "toss-up" category.

The Rothenberg Political Report switched the race to replace retiring U.S. Rep. John Doolittle (R-Roseville) to a toss-up on Sunday morning.

An emergency room colleague of Bill Durston makes the case for the Democratic candidate in a new commercial from Durston's 3rd Congressional District campaign.

Teresa Jones, a nurse who's worked with emergency room doctor Durston for 17 years, describes in the commercial how Durston works diligently to diagnose problems in patients and helps make them better.

Final registration numbers for the Nov. 4 election show that Democrats narrowed the lead Republicans had in some contested Northern California districts, but none of those districts outright flipped from one party to another in the last weeks of the race.

In the 4th Congressional District, Democratic registration was nearly unchanged from the 60-day election report, with just over 31 percent. Republican registration dropped from 40 percent to 39.8 percent, while decline-to-state voters - which rose in most districts - went from 17.8 percent to 18.4 percent.

A rumored Democratic target in the 3rd Congressional District saw slight Democratic gains, up from 37.2 to 37.6 percent, and a decline for Republicans, from above 40 percent to 39.8 percent. DTS voters rose as well, to 18.2 percent.

Lieutenant governor and 2010 gubernatorial candidate John Garamendi endorsed Democrat Bill Durston's bid for Congress Friday, while also calling Durston's opponent, U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Gold River), a draft dodger.

Garamendi said in a video posted on Durston's campaign Web site that he was particularly incensed by mail pieces Lungren's campaign sent out in recent weeks that said Durston vowed not to spend an additional cent on the military if elected.

Congressional candidates Bill Durston and Dan Lungren will have their first actual debate on Wednesday, though the two men had pledged to debate as far back as June.

Durston, a Democrat, and 3rd Congressional District Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Gold River) will speak at a two-hour evening debate in Angels Camp, moderated by Calaveras Enterprise publisher Ralph Alldredge. Questions will come from Alldredge and audience members.

U.S. Rep.  Dan Lungren (R-Gold River) raised just $25,000 more than his Democratic opponent in the most recent fundraising period, but holds a sizable cash-on-hand advantage going into the last month of the campaign.

During the period from July 1 through Sept. 30, Lungren raised $173,715.68, to $148,624.43 for Democrat Bill Durston, an emergency room doctor from Gold River.

Third Congressional District challenger Bill Durston accused U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren of failing to show at a candidate forum again, but Lungren's campaign quickly noted that Lungren was never scheduled to attend the forum in question.

The campaign for Durston, a Democrat from Gold River, sent a press release Wednesday that said Lungren didn't attend a forum Tuesday sponsored by the National Active and Retired Federal Employees.

Bill Durston's congressional campaign confessed Tuesday to a somewhat embarrassing gaffe in a television commercial: Identifying the wrong consumer group as rating U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren as a zero.

U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren's (R-Gold River) congressional re-election campaign released two surveys Monday that showed the incumbent with a sizable lead over Democrat Bill Durston.

One survey, with a sample size of 400 registered voters in the 3rd Congressional District, showed Lungren with a 47.2 percent to 26.5 percent lead over Durston, an emergency room doctor from Gold River. That survey, completed Oct. 7, was done by pollster Val Smith and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent.