They voted for the health care bill. With enough money behind the opposition, could they be voted out of office next year?

Republicans aim to find out with a new effort to raise campaign funds for challengers to two dozen House Democrats who voted for the health care bill earlier this month.

Reverse The Vote Victory Committee was established this week with the Federal Election Commission as a joint fundraising committee that will collect contributions to distribute among 24 GOP challengers.

It's still months until the first nominees will be formally selected in primary elections, so the committee for the time being will give campaign funds to 24 separate "congressional victory committees" that in turn will deliver the funds to party nominees once they are determined.

The 2010 census will confirm continued robust population growth among Hispanics, who hope to translate their status as the nation's largest minority group into more political power.

"The Latino electorate has been consistently increasing both their total number of voters as well as their share of the electorate," Andres Ramirez, senior vice president and director of Hispanic programs at the center-left think tank NDN, said at a briefing Tuesday in Washington.

This trend is evident across the nation, and not just in states along the U.S. border with Mexico. "As this trend continues, it will be increasingly difficult for any candidate to win either a state or a national election without the support of Latino voters," Ramirez said.

The question is whether Hispanics can parlay their beefed-up population numbers into greater clout in Congress, where there are only 23 Hispanics in the 435-member House, or 5 percent of the total.

With President Obama out of the country, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. stepped out on the campaign trail over the past two days with stops in Nevada and Arizona to raise funds and rally support for local Democrats.

And the Connecticut Democratic party announced Monday that he will attend a luncheon in support of embattled Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn. Dec. 11, signaling a new level of intensity in the vice president's party-building efforts that have already seen him visit, by his count, 54 House districts this year.

Biden's made appearances Sunday and Monday with vulnerable Reps. Dina Titus, D-Nev., Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz.., and Harry Mitchell, D-Ariz., all of whom face competitive races in states that have been particularly hard hit by the housing crisis and economic recession.

According to a report by the Pew Center on the States released last week, Arizona ranked second and Nevada fifth among states in the most "fiscal peril" in 2009. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., won Kirkpatrick's 1st District and Mitchell's 5th District in the 2008 presidential race, while Obama snared Titus' 3rd District.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, R, will run for a full term in 2010, she confirmed Thursday. Brewer filed the paperwork for a gubernatorial campaign and gave a speech in Tuscon, Ariz. outlining why voters should return her to the governor's mansion in her own right.

Brewer was elected to a second term as Arizona secretary of State in 2006, then succeeded Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano after she resigned to become Secretary of Homeland Security.

But she has had a rocky first nine months as governor in which she has battled her own party in the state legislature over how to best close the state's $2 billion budget deficit. A Public Policy Polling survey released in September pegged Brewer's approval rating at just 26 percent. That and her reticence about whether or not she would run has drawn other Republicans into the race.

Paradise Valley Mayor Vernon Parker announced Wednesday night that he is preparing to run for Arizona governor, signaling to Republican incumbent Jan Brewer that she will not have a free ride, even from her own party.

Parker, an official in both Bush presidential administrations, would be the first black Republican governor, should he be elected.

First he will have to get through what is likely to be a crowded GOP primary. Brewer, who rose from secretary of State to the governor's post after Democrat Janet Napolitano became Secretary of Homeland Security last winter, has not indicated whether she will seek election to the office in her own right. Even if she does, she is not the clear favorite.

The conservative Family Research Council's political action committee plans to target 16 congressional races in 2010. The group's president, Tony Perkins, said the PAC has a goal of raising $1 million to boost grassroots activity in targeted races.

The group wants to spend money to help favored candidates take over the seats now represented by:

Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat who is running for a full term in Colorado after his appointment this year;

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, a Democrat who is running for re-election in Connecticut;

New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, a Republican who is retiring;

Missouri Sen. Christopher S. Bond, a Republican who is retiring;

Rep. John Boccieri, a Democrat who represents Ohio's 16th District;

Back from another trip to the Senate's public records office, which is busy processing the dozens of campaign finance reports that senators and candidates had to mail by a July 15 deadline.

Most of the reports, which cover receipts and expenditures for the second quarter of 2009 and often run into the hundreds of pages, aren't yet available for viewing. (Unfortunately, the Senate doesn't mandate electronic filing of campaign finance reports). But here are some useful nuggets of information from campaign reports I did view earlier today.

Alabama: Talk about low overhead. Republican Sen. Richard C. Shelby, a shoo-in to win a fifth term in 2010, raised $1.4 million and spent just $96,000 doing so. That's less than 7 percent of his second-quarter receipts. Even at this early stage, most campaigns spend a larger percentage of their receipts on fundraising and staff expenses. (For example, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid raised $3.3 million and spent $976,000, or about 30 percent.) Shelby has a whopping $14.8 million cash-on-hand as July began.

Two Arizona Democrats are building up solid defenses in advance of 2010. First District Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick and 8th District Rep. Gabrielle Giffords -- both members of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's Frontline program to defend vulnerable incumbents -- both expanded their cash reserves in the second quarter of 2009 as they work to fend off likely Republican challenges for their seats.

Giffords raised $370,000 in the second quarter, boosting her cash on hand from $895,000 to an impressive $1.2 million. Kirpatrick raised less -- $261,000 -- but it helped her nearly double her available campaign funds from $241,000 at the end of March to $423,000 as of June 30.

Thus far, only Giffords has declared Republican challengers, led by GOP recruit and Iraq War veteran Jesse Kelly.

Duncan Hunter, a retired Republican who once chaired the Armed Services Committee, has decided that Iraq War veterans are the perfect candidates to revive the Republican Party in 2010.

Hunter -- a Vietnam War vet who briefly sought the 2008 Republican presidential nomination -- is already backing two such candidates as they launch challenges to two of the more junior members of the House Democratic majority: Jesse Kelly, who wants to take on two-term incumbent Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona's 8th District, and Vaughn Ward, whose target in Idaho's 1st District is freshman Democrat Walt Minnick.

Hunter will be attending a series of brunches, receptions and a golf outing in Tucson this weekend with Kelly, who said Hunter is a big attraction in conservative circles in his district in Arizona's southeastern corner. "He did very well in early presidential polls down here," Kelly noted, referring to Hunter's 2008 bid.

During much of his House career, Hunter represented a California district that stretched from San Diego east to the border of Kelly's home state of Arizona, though for the past decade the 52nd District has been confined to San Diego County in California's southwest corner.