how to monetize this niche

It depends on how far away the election is and how quickly popular you can get your site ready.

I run a few forums that cover city wide things. Then I sell tons of local advertisements.

That might be a better choice for long-tern money.

The answer to that could save a lot newspapers... though I have noticed a lot of "buy gold" commercials during news on TV, so maybe a cpa program for that would work okay.

If the election is local or only in a small area.
Then you can try getting local ads in your sites.
Or adsense will also be ok.

thanks for the suggestions

You have to consider who would be looking at your blog. I would either do some type of cpa offer or make a opt in and start creating a list. Maybe you can have a survey that the visitors can participate in and leave their email.

Well it depends on this on how quick you can make your site popular, but if you have time..

I would, build site

-add wordpress

-add seo plugins

-ask local businesses that you have a site built and are offering great pricing advertising and tell them this is a great way to get their name out there, and if they sign up for 6 months they can get a discount rate

-if this does not work--after your site is popular, send them an email and tell them that the offer is still on the table and that you are receiving lots of local traffic and clicks on your ads..and send a tracking screen shot if possible or if you want to even.
in the mean time

-add adsense-

-get cpa offers with there banners-cpa is even better i believe

-then I would put in opt in about some political thing to build a list
and then after you have traffic, gage the traffic with tracker

-go find cpa offers that would be a related topic to the opt in
and then give cpa offers..hehe-make sure the cpa offer is related to something of fashion or looks but that is a professional feel..a great way to find this is...LOOK AT THE COMMERCIALS THAT THEY PLAY WHILE THE POLITICAL THING IS ON TV. hehe..this will actually have them remember when you send them a cpa offer. this is the same method that Yahoo and Google uses with local and national businesses in regards to ad placements and when you get things in the mail that are related to your life in way or another.

-you will be able to multi-channel your efforts short time..have local businesses honestly interested in advertising, and a list built which you are sending follow up emails with cpa offers.

-and after you have collected payment from those cpa offers, do a press release with the money-and localize it and then email more local businesses with the local press release.

-again this is if you have time for it..I believe it would take 1 week to set everything up and add about 10-40 quality links and have it indexed rather quickly unless it is very competitive..