But I am struggling to find volunteers. I run a site called Philly Future http://www.phillyfuture.org, originally it was a singular effort, but is now a regional blog aggregator with more than a few twists. I would like to see the site evolve into a place where folks post on subjects covering the local political scene. Debating candidates and the issues. It's no where near there, but I hope I've built a platform that can be utilized as such.

Edit: It would be very bad for me not to mention Hallwatch.org. While not a blog, it is a must visit site if you are interested in Philadelphia politics. I'm talking to the site maintainer about getting a blog.

Some outfit called Civic Strategies, Inc. has a list of what they call "urblogs". I've not gone through it to see what's what, but there's probably something useful there in terms of items to go into a directory.

www.panhandletruthsquad.blogspot.com

-PS

http://www.peoplehavethepower.org is a great local news and politics site for the Columbus, Ohio and the general surrounding area. Plus, our local NBC affiliate http://www.nbc4i.com offers RSS feeds of their news.

Robert @ PHTP is a great guy on top of it. Good site! People comment, and I feel much more informed to act locally, for sure.

http://bluemassgroup.typepad.com/blue_mass_group/massachusetts/index.html

We're just started a new site, www.coloradopols.com, dedicated to politics in Colorado. It's a few weeks old, but already has a lot of good information and some inside-baseball on the 2006 Governors race and other topics.

The blog is new, in service of a subscription newsletter about a year-and-a-half
old. It's mostly state policy and some municipal and federal, but doesn't shy from politics. http://whatcheer.net

Hey Micah - Lots of good blogs here in DuPage County and surrounding areas:

* Rick Klau (chair of the Naperville Democrats)
* Steve Kierstead (vice chair, Naperville Democrats)
* WurfWhile (DuPage county board candidate)
* Elect Freedman (former circuit court clerk candidate, active Democrat)

And the Dems don't have it to ourselves:
* One Man Blog (Republican precinct captain in Aurora)
* Join Cross (blog of House Minority Leader Tom Cross)
* Openline (covering Aurora mayor's race)

Other good Illinois blogs:
* Archpundit (out of St. Louis, but focused primarily on Illinois politics)
* Capitol Fax (blog adjunct to daily IL politics news service)
* So-Called Austin Mayor
* DJW Info
* Polis
* Makes me Ralph

There are others, this is a good cross-section.

--Rick

All things Albany, NY. Started for Albany City/County politics but plans are to also have some fun with Spitzer 06.

For an intelligent and progressive (just to be redundant) look at Tampa and Florida politics and other bizarrities in the JEBshine state, try blogwood.com.

http://mngopwatch.blogspot.com/ - Minnesota Republican Watch, anti-GOP blog
http://minnesotademocratsexposed.blogspot.com/ - Minnesota Democrats Exposed, anti-DFL blog
http://minnpolitics.blogspot.com/ - Minnesota Politics, commentary from a liberal perspective
http://daytonvkennedy.blogspot.com/ - Dayton v. Kennedy, anti-Sen. Mark Dayton (D) blog
http://pawlentyexposed.blogspot.com/ - Pawlenty Exposed, anti-Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) blog

There are two that I know of in Mass.

The first is mostly about Springfield, Mass, but also deals with the surrounding towns and suburbs. It's at www.tomdevine.net, and is written by Tom Devine, who's of libertarian leanings but is mostly anti-corruption in his local political ideology.

The second is romneyisafraud.blogspot.com, which, as you might guess, is critical of Mass. governor Mitt Romney. It's pretty intelligent and funny about it, though.

Timshel
Your Right Hand Thief
2millionth weblog
Library chronicles
Louisiana Conservative

there are quite a few others (and lord only knows how many I don't even know about, but I'd guess my own (Timshel) may be the only one that really exclusively takes a look at the every day goings on in Louisiana poltics, and there's a distinctly liberal color to my shades. The others are all better than mine and originate from my fair state, but may not meet your criteria.

States Writes has a well-researched list of progressive blogs by state, many of which have a local/regional focus.

For Texas, check out Texas Tuesdays for links to several dozen great blogs addressing local and regional politics. To that list I'd add Grits for Breakfast, an excellent blog focusing on criminal justice reform in Texas.

Cheers.

forgot about some rather important extremely focused blogs taking on a municipal bond issue in Lafayette, Louisiana that would provide just over a hundred million dollars for the local public utility to provide Fiber Optic cable/internet/phone service directly to the home. It's been a big story around here, and blogs probably don't get more local than these.

LafayetteProFiber Blog (pro)
LUS FTTH blog (pro)
Fiber411.com (con)
Letthepeoplevote.etc (con and run by some telecom executive probably at the behest of his employer)

My blog about Hawaii politics is Poinography (I figured I could pick up a few hits from ham-fisted perverts with this domain...) and I should also give a plug for two of the more popular ones from the right and the left.

My blog is new this week, so it's sparse for now.

A good man spends too much time keeping Blogwood.com going with a regular listing of the latest scoop from the dirty underside of Tampa Bay politics. www.blogwood.com is the place to go. Peas

The Swing State Project might not be exactly what you are looking for - it falls somewhere in between a broad-focused blog and a state blog. During the presidential election, we took a close, hard look at each of the swing states and followed the polls and other news in each one.

Now, we're looking at the key races (Senate and Governor) that are taking place in 2005 & 2006, state by state.

Some good Florida political blogs:

Florida News

Florida Politics

Florida Blog

I might humbly submit my blog, Basie!, which covers politics in Oregon and across the nation. Blue Oregon is another great blog covering politics in the state.

I've been interning at Progressive Majority's Washington office, where we've been doing some blogging aobut state politics. Here's our blogroll:

Between the Lines (Seattle Times)
Buzzworthy (Seattle P-I)
Cascadia Scorecard (NW Enviro. Watch)
Evergreen Politics
Eye on Olympia (Spokane S-R)
Jay Inslee
HorsesAss.Org
King County Dems Blog
Metroblogging Seattle
NW Progressive Institute
Orcinus
OurCongress.org - Washington
Pacific Views
Pleasing to Remember
Political State Report - Washington
Searching for Democracy (Spokane S-R)
Seattle Blogs
SeattleforDean.com
Upper Left
Washington State Political Report
Western Democrat - Washington

A new blog on the scene- Young Philly Politics.

The idea of a meta Philly blog is a cool one, though.

I started Kentucky Blog (http://kentuckyblog.blogspot.com) back in November, '04 - inspired by all you blogging pros out there. So far I have a lobbyist signed up to guest post, and have had some contact with a Democratic strategist and have tried some other groups. There was so much grass roots activism for the Dems in 2004 in KY, but everything was fragmented into small groups of individuals - no cohesive effort and the state party did not take the initiative to organize.

Thanks for taking the initiative that our "leadership" seems to lack in putting together this directory. It's a great way to combine our efforts and focus energy - red or blue, republican or democrat, we need to make our officials more responsive to us - and it starts with educating the masses.

I decided a few months ago to attempt on a local level what AL Franken did with his "Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them" book. There's a local Pittsburgh Rush Limbaugh wannabe named Fred Honsberger who misleads like the best of 'em.

Here's my blog:

honsmanlies.blogspot.com

We also tackle some other local conservative radio/tv folks - when the time is right

Mike

I recently began Bring Ohio Home, which is dedicated to Ohio races from presidential in 2008 to all 18 congressional races in 2006. We have a senate race, governor's race, secretary of state and other statewide races as well in 2006. I am also going to look at state house races (all 99 representatives and half of the 33 senators) in 2006 with an eye towards redistricting in 2011.

Besides commentary, the site features various resources of data from employment information to a page dedicated to each federal office holder from Ohio. Many more resources are planned in the coming months.

http://illinipundit.blogspot.com

Focused on Champaign County and Illinois politics. I just found this through Talking Points Memo - there's a lot to process here.

www.chimesatmidnight.blogspot.com

Notably anti-Romney in content.

I'm not sure its quite what you're looking for, but there's a weblog for California state government/politics run by a writer at the Sacramento Bee, Daniel Weintraub, called 'California Insider'

http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/insider/

It was very helpful and informative during the recall, and with subsequent 'Arnold' propositions. And with California just entering another budget cycle...

This is a great start. I've also been getting a good number of replies via info@personaldemocracy.com. It's really helpful when folks include a few sentences of self-description. If you want to include a political leaning, and whether your blog is individually-written or a group site, that's usefull info too.

By the way, a number of folks have chimed in to ask about our "Top 25 Blogs" list. I know, I know--it's overdue for an update. I'm working on it. In addition to including a fresh ranking (based on Technorati's top 100 blogs by incoming links), we'll include a lot of noteworthy political sites.

I'm a huge fan of Tube City Online which is a blog about McKeesport, PA (The former home of US Steel's National Tube Works) and its surrounding areas which are often overlooked by the Pittsburgh news media. It's updated on most weekdays and almost always informs and entertains its readers.

For Iowa politics and rural issues, see Iowa Opinion at http://www.iowaopinion.com/
Also for rural issues see The Progressive Populist at http://www.populist.com/

I occasionally cover Los Angeles issues in this category and California in this category.

Other L.A. blogs include
mayorsam.blogspot.com
lavoice.org
lablogs.com

Due to occasional yet persistent dissatisfaction with some of the local paper's editorial decisions, about a year ago we started an openly partisan local 'blog, mostly as an experiment...

http://sbdems.blogspot.com/

Writing it has been somewhat useful, but it's been very, very difficult to build a readership and we're considering abandoning the effort. Promotion is either very difficult or I just haven't figured out the tricks yet.

On the other hand, we do have evidence that the people who read it tend to be thought leaders: reporters, politicos and local electeds and their staff. So it's been a mixed bag, and since we're not dumping massive quantities of time into it, we'll probably keep it around. But the promotion thing has been frustrating.

I humbly submit a blog from the Target City.

I've been writing Gotham Notes a few days a week since April 2003.

It's covered topics concerning both our fair Gotham and the wider world, but always through the lens of a typical New Yorker.

Because of the election, it's skewed heavily towards national issues this past year, but in 2005 I'll be bringing it back more to city and state issues.

And here in NYC, the land that brought you Bernie ("Who's Your Nanny?") Kerik and Morals Master Rudy, lord, we've "got issues!"

We have "George W. Light" Pataki as the Gov., who's just waiting for VP Dick Cheney to die or retire and open up that VP job that eluded George this summer at the convention here.

And of course, Colin Powell is sniffing around, looking for a real job. You just don't stand on the New Year's Eve podium with the Mayor and hit the button to make "the Ball" come down unless you're being seriously showcased.

So, you see, we'll be very busy here in New York this year!

Thank you to those who mentioned the States Writes list, BlueOregon and others I was ready to mention.

Micah, several points:

1) The State's Writes list is in the process of a major update. There'll be more than 500 blogs added to that site when I'm done, and I'm a few days away from that (maybe mid-January?) After that, I intended to offer it to any soul willing to deal with updates and with better tech skills than I have. I'd always hoped it could be divided into cities of 50,000 population or better, and that progressives could register and be categorized automatically (as my way has proven to be way too labor intensive.)

2) 99.9% of them are liberal to centrist in that collection.

3) While I'm not completely comprehensive on evaluating the better ones in the list, I have culled out a hundred or so that stand out for one reason or another.

4) I can't say which ones are affiliated with parties/local orgs. But in many states, I could direct you to 1-4 bloggers who are likely to know as well as anyone. For example, Charles Kuffner of Off The Kuff likely can give you the skinny on Texas blogs, and South Knox Bubba could do Tennessee. And I bet for about 40 of the 50 states, you could find a blogger willing to review/contact the others within his/her state, to get what info you need.

5)I also have far more categories in the vertical column, arranged by topic or specialty rather than region... in the new version.

6) There's also a couple of groups busy creating a Drupal/CivicSpace platform (many in the former Dean hacker camp) for the specific purpose of providing the space and platform for NGOs and activists, so activists can obtain the technology & help to broaden their reach and build communities. I'd encourage you to contact Nick Lewis of the Progressive Blogger's Alliance or Rebecca MacKinnon of BloggerCorps, as this sounds like something you might find benefit from if you can utilize their tech expertise to set up blog space for folks in states and municipalities that currently lack blogs.

Kevin Hayden
The American Street

I just noticed Rebecca's already on your board. Ah well, always a day behind and short a clue.

Kevin Hayden
The American Street

For VA politics, there's Commonwealth Commonsense

Not alot of local discussion (yet), but regular and insightful posts by the maintainer.

Another one, regional to Philly, is KeystoneBlog.

I've been blogging daily on Dryden, NY (between Ithaca and Cortland, NY) for the last year or so:

Living in Dryden

I've also got a list of locally-focused weblogs at:
http://simonstl.com/dryden/localBlogs.html

I've written a few times about this kind of blogging for the O'Reilly Network as well:
A year of local weblogging
Looking for locally-focused weblogs
Why I'm not blogging for Dean
Escaping the Googlearchy
Blogging Locally

For commentary on New York State politics and sometimes Syracuse, I recommend NYCO's Blog. She's got a nice blogroll on the left-hand side with a lot more locally-oriented sites.

A small site that deserves more recognition and submission from subscribers:

http://43rdstateblues.com/

The writers are decent, but the submissions are slow. More users and more contributors may make this a blog that can hasten Idaho's return to Democracy.

Ohio Liberal

Brand new blog that focuses on Ohio politics both statewide and local/regional.

It's great to see so many local political bloggers! I had no idea y'all were out there. We definitely need to aggregate or affiliate or something.

I started a group blog on local politics in the Chapel Hill area in September 2003: Orange Politics

This is a great idea. Best wishes in the effort. My insights from Missouri:

www.bluntwatch.info/ -- Focused on Keeping Tabs on the new Governor
www.blogkc.com -- From Kansas City, often with political content
bsl.archpundit.com -- Blog St. Louis, lots of St. Louis politics, some on Missouri
http://www.johncombest.com/uptospeed.html -- Not really a blog, but daily political headlines and conservative press releases

Individual Bloggers with Political Posts:
www.toddelkins.net
www.ericrogers.org/weblog/
chuckcurrie.blogs.com -- faith and politics
diatriber.com
missouriliberal.us
gonemild.com

http://wnyc4p.blogspot.com/

The blog for our new group, Western New York Coalition for Progress. WNYC4Progress is a group of close to 300 people who still want to live in (and near) Buffalo and enjoy it! (Can you imagine?)

We are active, community oriented and interested in developing our natural assets, especially Lake Erie, along environmentally sound principles.

We've had a lot of fun and learned much through the Kerry campaign and our local congressional races. We thought the best way to capitalize on our success was to start this new 'Think Tank" type group of area progressives...so here we are.

NYS or Penns. bloggers especially, are encouraged to visit and post your blog contacts on ours.

A couple of local blogs that focus to a greater or lesser degree on local politics:

The Inside Scoop, http://blog.news-record.com/scoopblog, published by my colleagues on the government team at the News & Record

Hogg's Blog, http://radio.weblogs.com/0128341, published by local entrepreneur and former political candidate David Hoggard.

We're getting more local blogs every day, and as some crop up that are politics-related, I'll come back and add 'em.

[unabashed promotion of self and employer]
I'm starting on a major revamp of the paper's Web site to move us as a news organization closer to open-source journalism, produced in cooperation with the community we serve -- news as conversation, not lecture, to use the current phraseology. (Info here and here.)I welcome suggestions, constructive criticism, etc.
[/unabashed promotion of self and employer]

Lex
www.lexalexander.net
blog.news-record.com/lexblog

Corked Bats

I have just started a new site for Kansas, PoliticsKS.net.

13 different blogs from DuPage County, but there's no room to list my site, Peoria Pundit?

Downstate is disrespected once again.