Bill Durston

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.

Throughout the 2008 campaign cycle, PolitickerCA.com will follow campaign finance filings with the Federal Election Commission. Here are stories on the filings reported Tuesday in three California congressional races:

Democratic congressional challenger Bill Durston kept up a respectable fundraising pace in relation to his opponent, incumbent U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Gold River) during the second quarter of 2008.

But Durston, a doctor from Gold River, still faces a large deficit in cash on hand against Lungren in the 3rd Congressional District race.

U.S Rep. Dan Lungren agreed to debate Democratic challenger Bill Durston Monday night, after Durston publicly challenged him to do so at a town hall meeting held by Lungren in Ione.

Lungren (R-Gold River) objected to Durston's tone in his challenge, in which Durston said Lungren was almost being dishonest in his characterization of why gas prices have risen so high in recent months.

"My question is, when are you going to stop using taxpayer money to speak at events like these and present only one side?" asked Durston, a Gold River emergency room doctor, before Lungren responded.

U.S. Rep Dan Lungren will host a pair of town hall workshops early next week in his 3rd Congressional District.

According to his congressional Web site, Lungren (R-Gold River) will focus on gas prices at the town halls, along with other energy price spikes. The workshops are on June 29 from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in Rio Vista, and from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on June 30 in Ione.

U.S. Rep.Dan Lungren (R-Gold River) should expect a tough re-election race regardless of whether national Democrats take notice or not, challenger Bill Durston said Thursday.

Durston, an emergency doctor from Gold River, said he plans to make campaign issues of Lungren's recent appearance on a television report that cast him in a poor light and his refusal so far to debate Durston.

"I think he's going to avoid debating as much as possible," said Durston, who challenged and lost to Lungren in 2006.

He may be running unopposed in the 3rd Congressional District's Democratic primary, but Bill Durston still wants to turn out the vote on June 3. The Durston campaign asked supporters to consider phone banking for the Democrats' challenge to Republican Dan Lungren.

"Even though Bill is running unopposed as the Democratic candidate for Congress in the 3rd Congressional District, we want Democratic voters to know that he doesn't take their votes for granted, and we want to encourage ‘decline to state' voters to vote Democratic," read an e-mail to supporters.

Bill Durston hopes his second attempt at knocking off the 3rd Congressional District's Rep. Dan Lungren follows Jerry McNerney's storyline.

In 2006, McNerney - an under-funded, under-estimated Democrat - made a second, and successful, challenge to a sitting Republican Congressman, Richard Pombo.

"If McNerney can do it in the 11th District, which is right next to ours, we can do that here in the third," Durston told PolitickerCA.com Thursday.