Blanche Lincoln catches a break:
Former interim U.S. Attorney and Karl Rove aide Tim Griffin says he’s no longer considering running for the Republican nomination to challenge Sen. Blanche Lincoln next year.
Griffin said Sunday that he’s focused on his other responsibilities, including his service in the U.S. Army Reserves’ Judge Advocate General’s Corps as a major. Griffin told The Associated Press that he thinks Lincoln, a Democrat seeking a third term, is still vulnerable and will keep a close eye on the race.
Who knows what “keep a close eye on the race means” – maybe he’d let himself be dragged back into it in the future. But for now, at least, Griffin is laying down his arms. And it’s a good thing for us, too, as the lone poll of this race showed him quite competitive with the incumbent Lincoln. Griffin has all sorts of baggage, as a Rove acolyte who was at the epicenter of the Alberto Gonzalez-US Attorney scandal – but still, we’re better off without him in our faces, since the GOP bench is otherwise not terribly strong:
State Sen. Kim Hendren, as one Republican operative recently put it, “that Jewed” himself out of the race with his completely inappropriate reference to Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. State Sen. Gilbert Baker has yet to make up his mind. That leaves Curtis Coleman, the Little Rock biotech executive, who recently formed an exploratory committee. He’s the only candidate inching toward the race.
Lincoln may get very lucky in the end.
every dirty trick in the book, going back before whitewater, to try and gain a foothold in Arkansas. The trends of the state should have made this easy for them.
Instead, they still have almost no presence. It’s astonishing.
he only won 53-47 in 2–8 in what is a fairly, (by state standards), Republican Senate Seat. He was mired in several scandals and led, as chairman of the state Republican Party, to its weakest levels since the 1970s, loosing 6 house seats and gaining no senate seats, even when they should have, and two statewide offices they already heard, and they didn’t crack 44% in any statewide race that year. I’d like to see what kind of Senate race he could run.
Was Griffin the strongest potential candidate? I’m not sure that it is a good thing for Lincoln that he’s not running, it may help the GOP avoid a tough primary. Not sure how good of a candidate Coleman is…
candidate against Lincoln, she really has no excuse to vote against EFCA. I wonder if Arkansas has any ballot access laws that would screw the GOP over if they don’t run anyone against Lincoln or Beebe – they already didn’t run anyone against Pryor, after all.
It’s not quite so recent, but South Carolina only began electing Governors in 1865 and since then has had unopposed candidates for Governor 25 times in the general election including 13 out of 14 elections between 1918 and 1962. During that period the only opponent was Republican Joseph Tolbert who got 283 votes in the general election compared to 49,009 for winner Burnett Rhett Maybank (D).
Some of the unopposed candidates were quite well known: Strom Thurmond (1946) former US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes (1950) and Ernest Hollings (1958). Except for Civil War General Wade Hampton and Populist Ben Tillman, I have not heard of the others but then again I am not from South Carolina.
Before the Civil War the South Carolina state legislature elected the Governor and chose the electors for President. Turnout before the modern era (pre 1966) tended to be very slight for US House and US Senate elections as well and these often went unopposed. In 1942, for example, the six unopposed “races” for the US House drew 23,356 votes total for an average of 3,893 votes. The average US House race nationally drew 64,539 votes . The average non-Southern race drew 82,335 votes.
Maybe the Republicans could run Jim Bob Duggar!