Periodically I take a look to see how many members of the House face no challenger at all in 2010. You can’t beat an incumbent if you can’t find a warm body who’s willing to collect enough signatures to get his name on the ballot.

Michigan’s filing deadline for federal office is in five days. As of today, according to GreenPapers.com:

No Democratic challenger to Dave Camp, R, 4th district.
No Democratic challenger to Fred Upton, R, 6th district.
No Democratic challenger to Candice Miller, R, 10th district.
No Republican challenger to Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, Democrat, 13th district.

Even John Conyers has a challenger, Pauline Montie, running on the slogan, “Time for a housewife to clean up the mess in Congress.”

Obviously, most of these incumbents will return, and a lot of these challengers will face steep uphill climbs regarding their district’s demographics, turnout, money, etc. But there are quite a few districts where the local Democratic-party organization has effectively given up trying to unseat GOP incumbents.

UPDATE: Perspective from earlier in this series:

[In Ohio, Republicans] Jim Jordan in the Fourth District, Bob Latta in the Fifth District, and Steve Austria in the Seventh District [will face no Democratic challenger] . . . Nine of the ten House Democrats from Ohio will face a Republican opponent, except for Marcia Fudge in the Eleventh District.

In Indiana, the only incumbent who will not face any major-party opposition is . . . Rep. Mike Pence; ironically, it is only the fourth-most Republican district in the state, according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index. Six House Republicans in Texas have no Democratic opposition.