After making two unsuccessful tries at knocking off incumbent U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Gold River), Democrat Bill Durston said he plans on making a third bid in 2010.

Noting how his support in the 3rd Congressional District race improved between 2006 and 2008 - from 37.9 percent to 43.8 - Durston said he believes Lungren could be vulnerable in two years.

"We came close enough this time despite some fairly severe obstacles," said Durston, an emergency room physician from Gold River. "Our campaign ran with the same basic philosophy both times, and that was to tell the truth.

"This time, the truth got out to more people."

Durston said he's encouraged that voter registration trends in the 3rd Congressional District have favored Democrats, who were behind seven percentage points to Republicans in 2006 but closed the gap to 2.2 percentage points by Election Day.

He added that there's plenty of voter dissatisfaction with Lungren among both Democrats and Republicans as well as decline-to-state voters, a sizable chunk of the district's electorate.

Voters told Durston that they found Lungren arrogant and more willing to support his campaign donors than his constituents.

"The people of this district deserve better representation, someone who will work for them," Durston said.

But Durston may have more challenges than just Lungren in two years. Some party activists in the district quietly said this fall that Lungren might be more vulnerable if he was challenged by a Democrat who already held elective office, adding credibility to visibility.

If there's another Democrat in the 2010 race, Durston said, he'll probably still run, but he'd welcome the chance to raise the race's profile.

"If it's a good candidate, that would be more than fine with me," Durston said, adding that he only ran two years ago because no other Democrat did.

And though Durston said he could've used the help, there were few signs that the national Democratic party was willing to get involved in 2008, a potential problem again in two years.

He said his campaign spent much of its cash-on-hand early on for advertising in the hopes that subsequent polling would show Durston with enough support to convince the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to get involved.

One poll in early October showed Durston fairly close, but the DCCC stayed out.

"I think if we had gotten support from the national Democratic party, the turnout may well have been different," he said. "If we hadn't won, it might have at least been quite a bit closer."

Lungren received about 49.9 percent of the vote, with third-party candidates receiving another 6 percent.

The presence of a Peace & Freedom Party candidate, along with a lack of campaign funds and an endorsement of Lungren by the Sacramento Bee, Durston said, were too much for his campaign to overcome.

"That's why I decided to announce early that I'd run again, so that the national party would see that there's a candidate who can come close," he said.