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My grandparents all live in the new 8th District. My paternal grandparents won't vote for you because you're a Democrat, while my maternal grandmother will vote for you for that same reason. This is true of all but a small number of voters according to voluminous political science research; voters don't change parties.

You can have the best intentions and the most progressive platform in the world, but ultimately you're facing a near impossibility. Boehner has won by at least 28 percentage points every election for more than two decades. Before that, Republicans have controlled the district (in its former incarnations) since the 30s. You need to get around 18% of 8th District voters to swap parties if you want to have a chance, and that's not super likely.

So what makes your campaign more than yet another a Sisyphean effort? Have you took a leave of absence from Miami U to campaign 7 days a week until election day? Do you have a team of enthusiastic volunteers, independent wealth to blow, or a wealthy backer? Do you have any support from the DCCC?

Have you consulted any lawyers during the process of establishing your business and preparing to get it going? What has your experience (or the experience of your co-workers) been like dealing with the various regulations and regulatory agencies in Washington?

I'll offer some unsolicited comments as someone who works in appeals at the public defender's office (not sure who is representing OP, but it isn't me).

If you're going into criminal defense thinking you'll be fighting for justice, you're likely to be quickly disillusioned. At the trial level, the vast majority of your clients plead guilty (well over 90%). Your job as a trial attorney comes down to negotiating plea deals and sometimes writing losing pre-trial motions. On the rare occasions when you go to trial, you just cross-examine witnesses to little effect, since your client won't testify and you don't have any defense witnesses or evidence. There's certainly plenty of room to make a difference in trial work, as trial attorney are often rather poor. But be aware that you're mostly negotiating deals.

At the appeals level, there are tons of barriers to the kinds of claim Mr. LaMar is apparently bringing here. In habeas corpus, defendants are completely barred from filing a petition if it been more than a year since their direct appeal ended. Doesn't matter how good the defendant's argument is, the courts won't hear it (there's some exception for actual innocence; I don't know a ton about habeas). To file a new trial motion, defendants to prove they were unavoidably prevented from making their argument at trial. This is a difficult standard to meet.

This means as an appeals attorney, you spend most of your time doing two things: arguing about procedure to try to get a court to hear your client's case and arguing about things unrelated to guilt. The former is frustrating, particularly when your client clearly should win on the merits but the courts won't consider those merits. And the latter can be rewarding, but it isn't the same as freeing wrongfully convicted people.

I just generally don't agree with the various doctrines that preclude courts from reaching substantively correct outcomes. There's certainly a balance between accuracy and certainty, but I think that balance should lean very heavily toward accuracy when we're talking about depriving people of their lives and liberty.

As I parenthetically noted in my prior comment, I don't know a ton about habeas; I've researched the statute of limitations a bit, but my office mostly does state law stuff. However, I've encountered numerous procedural barriers to substantive relief in other areas.

For example, indigent defendants who await trial in jail are supposed to get credit for that pre-trial jail time against their eventual sentences (this required by the Equal Protection Clause; otherwise, rich defendants would spend less time in jail). Trial judges often screw this up, either by intentionally denying defendants credit or by miscalculating time. Defendants rarely find out about this until several months after they are sentenced. And appellate attorneys rarely look into the issue when filing a direct appeal. When defendants do eventually discover an error, they contact my office and we try to fix the errors. But trial courts routinely say that they won't consider the merits because defendants had to raise the issue on direct appeal. Thus indigent defendants serve unconstitutionally long sentences because their attorneys' minor omissions.

A second example comes from new trial motions. Say you get wrongly convicted of robbing a store and sentenced to 8 years. A few years later, you're talking to someone who mentions getting caught on security camera footage and you think that maybe the store you were accused of robbing has footage showing it wasn't you. You contact my office, one of our attorneys pulls the footage, and you clearly aren't the one robbing the store. My office writes a new trial motion based on the footage. The court may very well refuse to even look at the footage, because with reasonable diligence you could have discovered and presented that footage at trial.

I don't our criminal justice system should ever place value on ensuring the finality of incorrect judgments. As long as someone is still wrongfully incarcerated, they should not be procedurally barred from relief. Of course many people disagree, which is why AEDPA exists.

Sure thing.