Ohio Republican incumbent Rep. Jean Schmidt has been ousted by political newcomer Brad Wenstrup in the Republican Primary. Mark her down (along with Charlie Crist and Mike Castle) as another Establishment Republican taken down by the Tea Party. John Fund comes to the same conclusion on NRO, noting “votes to raise the debt ceiling and for the Wall Street bailout, support for the pro-union Davis-Bacon Act, and a record of supporting tax increases when she was in the state legislature.” Among the issues the Super-PAC Campaign for Primary Accountability (who spent $241,000 in advertising against her) cited in opposing Schmidt were her taking money from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee PAC in her first race for congress, her love of earmarks, and various campaign-related abuses of taxpayer money.
This is a safe Republican seat, so the replacement of a Washington establiushment Republican with a fresh conservative is a good thing. And, as Micky Kaus has noted, defeating wayward Republicans in primaries does wonders for keeping the others from wavering…
I’ve made my feelings about district-shopping and carpetbagger bids clear before. Roger Williams’ home of Weatherford is smack dab in District 12, currently represented by Republican incumbent Kay Granger. I can certainly understand not wanting to take on an entrenched Republican incumbent, but that still doesn’t justify district shopping.
That said, I think either Williams would make a solid Republican Representative.
The latest Democratic Party filing information shows Daniel Boone no longer running for U.S. Senator, but rather running in the U.S. 21st Congressional District against the SOPA-loving incumbent Republican Lamar Smith. I’m not sure this is a good move for Boone, since I think he was at least as likely as Paul Sadler to win the nomination. Republican Charles Holcomb has also dropped out.
Conversely, a Grady Yarbrough now appears on the list of Democratic candidates. He appears to be a personal counselor [update: apparently not the same Grady Yarbrough; see comments] and his named is spelled differently than the late Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough, who helped transform the Texas Democratic Party from a majority conservative party to a minority liberal one.
There’s some talk of Kucinich moving to Washington State and running for congress there, but one wonders why Democrats there would feel inclined to elect a carpetbagger. He could try a Senate run, but after this year, the next Senate race in Ohio will be 2016. Barring another gadfly run for President, Kucinich’s national political career is most likely done.
On the plus side, that will give him more time to spend with his wife…
Today was going to be the day Texans went to the polls, but the redistricting lawsuit put the kibosh on that plan. Now we get six more weeks of winter twelve more weeks of campaigning.
David Dewhurst denies that the meeting he attending in Washington, DC at Democrat Tony Podesta’s house was a fundraiser, and he says the people attending were Republicans who worked for the Podesta Group, not Democrats. I would link directly to Dewhurst’s denial, but the recent reorganization of the Andrew Breitbart empire (evidently already planned before his untimely death) has broken the links.
David Dewhurst also hits Cruz for (in their words) “Ted Cruz’s close ties to the Obama Administration.” How close? Big donations to Democrats from…partners at the Morgan, Lewis and Bockius law where Cruz is also partner. Given that there are some 1,300 lawyers employed by Morgan, Lewis and Bockius, of which some 469 are partners, and the firm isn’t named Morgan, Lewis, Bockius and Cruz, this is pretty weak sauce. (Weaker even than the working for Red China slam, which at least had the virtue of involving Cruz directly.)
Cruz won three more straw polls: the Downtown Houston Pachyderm Club, Brazos County GOP and New Braunfels GOP Women. However, do note that the Cruz campaign’s claim that Cruz “has now beaten all the major candidates in 20 straw polls by wide margins” is carefully phrased to omit the fact that Glenn Addison won two straw polls in that timeframe…
The “insiders” polled by the Texas Tribune were somewhat split, but 62% think the Republican Senate race will end up in a runoff. They also think Greg Abbott can take Rick Perry in the 2014 Governor’s race, should Perry run again. Also this from one respondent to the “biggest surprise” question: “Doggett switches to U.S. Senate race.” I’ve had similar thoughts myself. With his $3 million war chest and name recognition, Doggett could easily win the Democratic primary…only to be creamed by Cruz or Dewhurst in the general election. Hmmm, lose a Senate race in the general election, or potentially lose your congressional seat in the Democratic primary? Decisions, decisions. (It’s not to be, as Doggett, as expected, filed for the District 35 race today.)
In related news, here’s a piece from last year in the liberal Texas Observer talking about Republican outreach to Hispanics. That seems to be working out a lot better than the “inevitable Democratic majority” theory people like Ruy Teixeira have been pushing for the last decade.
Iowahawk on Andrew Breitbart: “How did this socially liberal Jewish RINO from Brentwood become the Emmanuel Goldstein of the left’s unhinged 2-Minutes Hate? A big, lovable, random, generous, fearless, patriotic grinning goofball.”
Down With Wind: “If wind power was going to work, it would have done so by now. The people of Britain see this quite clearly, though politicians are often wilfully deaf. The good news though is that if you look closely, you can see David Cameron’s government coming to its senses about the whole fiasco. ” (Hat tip: Powerline.)
UT to student media director: Balance your department budget. Student media director: OK, how about we sell these TV and radio licenses? UT: Not that balanced. You’re fired. (Hat tip: Mike Godwin’s Facebook page.)
I just read that professor James Q. Wilson has died. Wilson studied a wide range of issues, but I was most familiar with his work Bureaucracy, which I reviewed for The Freeman back in 1991. One of the books central insights was that, unlike private enterprise, a government bureaucracy is not driven by incentives, but by constraints. He was also one of the first (if not the first) proponents of the theory that crime was dropping because more criminals were being put into prison, as well as one of the first proponents of the “broken windows” theory of policing, which would later underlie much of the remarkable reduction in New York City’s crime rate achieved by the Giuliani Administration.
He was an important writer and thinker, and he will be missed.