Rematch, sure. The results will be the same, that's my money.
Posted on 09/24/2007 4:46:26 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
Next year's U.S. Senate race is looking like it could be a rematch between longtime Democratic incumbent Carl Levin and Republican Andrew "Rocky" Raczkowski.
Raczkowski spoke briefly Saturday at a Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference luncheon, the usual biennial kickoff for the following year's elections. He didn't commit while he was on the island to running, but says he has set up an exploratory committee and is considering challenging Levin a second time.
Another Republican, state Rep. Jack Hoogendyk of Kalamazoo, told The Associated Press by telephone Sunday that he's also considering the race. He said he has received encouragement from party leaders and from supporters who got to know him during his six-month bid for governor in 2005. Hoogendyk withdrew without challenging Dick DeVos for the 2006 GOP nomination and is serving his last two-term in the state House.
Raczkowski, 38, said his military service overseas since his unsuccessful 2002 run against Levin have given him a different outlook than when he took on Levin while still a state representative from Farmington Hills. Now a businessman and major in the U.S. Army Reserves, he said he has lost six friends in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He now considers himself less a Republican and more an advocate for U.S. soldiers and those hurt by Michigan's troubled economy
(Excerpt) Read more at mlive.com ...
What the hell is that supposed to mean ? It sounds like he has gone RINO.
Sure, it’s a long shot. But lightning does strike sometimes, and Michigan is in an anti-establishment mood. So who knows?
I wouldn’t read that much into it. The state has soured on Bush as well as Granholm, and Rocky is trying to tap into the independent, anti-establishment mood there.
After 30 years, we need a first tier candidate to take out Levin. Only Terri Lynn Land or Candice Miller should be running (and Land was the highest vote-getter in MI last November, she could run without jeopardizing her office). Raczkowski only got 38% of the vote in ‘02, the worst showing of any challenger to Levin.
You’re right about that, but Land and Miller have ruled out running. We can’t force them to run at gunpoint.
Hey, y’know, that’s fine. We’ll know who to blame when we slip down a bunch of seats next year in the Senate. Perhaps if the threat of an enlarged rodent majority directing our nation’s future isn’t enough to call up our best and highest vote-getters to run for the offices they need to be running for, maybe they need to get out of politics altogether. I’m serious. I’m sick of these people that win and park themselves in a single job for perpetuity and weasel out of moving up when they’re called upon, damn the needs of the party and the country.
I was worried it sounded more like he went Walter Jones, Jimmy Duncan, or Ron Paul on us with respect to Iraq. 3 RINO weasels that need to be disposed of.
That’s so true. Especially when they have little to risk by running, like Terri Land, Mike Huckabee, and Mike Rounds. Though Rounds may run if Tim Johnson retires.
Dang, I was hoping Miller would run. Maybe we could get rino Joe Schwarz to run instead(just kidding, don’t throw rotten eggs)
What the hell is the use of having a farm team when they won’t leave the damn bush leagues ? All the time, money, and exposure, and for what ? We’re left with second and third-tier candidates with no resources to tackle overfunded dinosaurs. A Miller or Land challenge is as good as a Shaheen in NH. As I said, it’s like we don’t want to win back our majority. No guts, no glory. And in Rocky’s case, he may have the guts, but with no bucks, there’s no Buck Rogers.
The GOP leadership is full of Rockefeller types who want to be the minority.
But the problem with Rounds is that in refusing to run against Johnson (again, with nothing to risk in doing so) and leaving a third-tier nobody to do the job that won’t be gotten done, waiting on Johnson to retire means he’ll face Steff Herseth-Sandlin, who received substantially more votes than he did last year (230k vs. Rounds’s 207k). Based upon that, she’d have a much easier time with beating Rounds.
Schwarz may run for his old job — as a rodent.
Good, then he can lose again.
Based on that. But word in South Dakota is that Herseth-Sandlin wants to follow her father into the Governorship in 2010, which means that if Johnson retires, she might pull a Rounds and not run. And I’m betting that figures into Mike Rounds’ plans. Also, perhaps Rounds is afraid of being blamed if Johnson’s health declines on the campaign trail.
Rematch, sure. The results will be the same, that's my money.
Her father didn’t make it. Lars Herseth lost 48-52% to the late George Mickelson, the son of another Governor, in 1986. The Dems last elected a Governor in SD in 1974 (and haven’t sent a new Dem since 1970). Steff’s grandfather, Ralph, narrowly won in the disastrous (for the GOP) 1958 elections on his 2nd try (and that, only by 51-49%, but was beaten in 1960 and by an even wider margin in 1962).
Steff may actually be at a disadvantage running for Governor, since her bailiwick is federal issues, as she has never held any state legislative office, and the state clearly prefers Republicans to hold the top job. Of course, she could make the argument to break a continuous one-party control of the job, so I’d still probably give her a slight edge over her likeliest opponent, Lt. Gov. Dennis Daugaard. Of course, if Hillary is President in 2010 or Daugaard is the sitting Governor (if Rounds becomes Senator when Johnson dies or retires), then the edge goes to Daugaard.
Bingo.
Perish the thought.
John Engler could hypothetically take out Levin too, although he would have been a better candidate in '02 when his Governorship was still fresh in voters minds. I remember being on FR in '02 talking with Dan from Michigan about the Rocky-Levin contest, and at the time I said that this is not the year we're going to beat Levin but he'll be much more vunerable in 2008 due to the age issue. It's still somewhat true, as Lenin, eh, Levin, has become an old dinosaur.
I wouldn't read much into Rocky's comment as proof that he's gone RINO (sounds more to me that he's just trying to give nice sound bites that will get him Independant voters), but his 38% showing in 2002 is cause for concern. Jim Durkin had just about the same "success" against Durbin in Illinois' 2002 race, and Illinois more Democratic and Durkin was a token opponent who didn't even have the money to run TV ads. 33% of the vote seems to be the minimum any credible challenger will get as long as they have a pulse, and 38% seems to be the typical amount of "protest" votes a candidate with a pulse will get (whether they run a real campaign or not) if they're running against a really unlikeable polarizing incumbant.
Also, I agree that Teri Lynn Land would be our best bet. However, I said a while back that Jane Abraham would also be a terrific candidate against Levin. I still like the idea, although some freepers practically went off the deep end when Fred Thompson plucked her husband to be on his staff. Personally I don’t think it was that big of a deal (seems to be some freepers automatically assume any person of arabian background is a card-carrying Muslim)
Maybe if Abraham wasn’t such an open-borders doofus...
I don’t think Engler’s popularity is particularly high (did somebody mention he is no longer a MI resident, or was I thinking of someone else ?). He most certainly should’ve run in 2002. Outgoing rodent Governors often reflexively run for the Senate if there’s an available GOP-occupied or open seat, why the hell don’t ours ? If Jeb had run in FL last year, that was the ONLY seat in the Congress that would’ve gone to us, and that one seat made the difference. If we put up our best and brightest and most popular, we could have 70 Senators today. There’s just no excuse.
Jane Abraham would just be another MI spouse that went down in flames (along with Lenore and Ronna Romney), and she has no proven vote-getting record.
As for Spence Abraham, he has only himself to blame for losing a seat against Dangerously Incompetent. He became substantially unpopular with the base for kissing up to the open-borders lobby (for heaven’s sake, he won an award from the uber-racist La Raza !) and his actions made him look like he didn’t take Islamoterrorism seriously (refused to denounce Arafat). I’m rather glad he is no longer in the Senate, we don’t need people like that on “our” side. Fred should never have hired him in the first place.
You remember correctly, John Engler lives in northern Virginia, where he is President of the National Association of Manufacturers. And he wasn’t especially popular when he left office.
If he were still popular in Michigan, I would be pushing him as a running mate for whoever wins the GOP nomination.
OK, yeah, you were the one who told me he had left the state (and Pete Fitzgerald in IL, too, who ought to be one of our bright shining stars).
Good luck keeps coming to MI rodents. In 2002, Levin did consider retirement. The Jeffords persuaded him to stay. In 2006, Levin again considered retirement. The 2006 GOP meltdown convinced him to stay. Each election cycle affects the next one. If the GOP maintained a position of strength throughout the decade, then perhaps Levin, Baucus, and the Congressional delegation of ND would have reitred by now.
As for Engler, he was a good Governor at the beginning. The GOP controlled the MI legislature despite the state being friendly to Clinton. In the end he did overstay his welcome by running for a 3rd term.
And just about any Republican with a pulse could’ve beaten the psychotic anti-Semite/anti-Christian Geoffrey Fieger in 1998 (either Candice Miller or Connie Binsfeld — although Binsfeld was 74 that year).
I am surprised Geoffrey Fieger ran as a 3rd party candidate for AG last year. With Fieger’s moonbatness, he would be welcomed at Moveon.
I don’t see anywhere that he ran for AG last year. He’s not listed as having been a primary or general candidate on OurCampaigns.com.
I could have sworn that he ran as a 3rd party candidate for AG. He accused Michael Cox of infidelity.
I was a bit worried about Cox’s reelection, but he prevailed by over 10%, far better than his narrow win in ‘02. Cox was the first Republican AG in Michigan elected since 1952.
This was the blurb about Cox and Fieger on Wiki:
“In November 2005, Cox himself admitted to committing adultery while accusing Oakland County lawyer Geoffrey Fieger of blackmail, claiming that he threatened to reveal the affair if Cox did not drop an investigation into Fieger’s alleged campaign finance violations. Cox said his personal conduct was “inexcusable” and had reconciled with his wife.”
longtime Democratic incumbent Carl Levin...is yet another exhibit in the case for term limits. But, I see this topic is being used as just another way to keep a member of the Party of Treason in office by painting his opponent as a so-called RINO.
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