Posted on 09/04/2013 5:30:06 AM PDT by cotton1706
NASHVILLE — Republican Kevin Kookogey said today that after spending months preparing to become the Tea Party activists’ choice to oppose U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., he is suspending plans to enter the race.
The former Williams County Republican Party chairman said his plans went awry when state Rep. Joe Carr, R-Lascassas, entered the race nearly two weeks ago.
Kookogey, who was preparing to formally announce his candidacy Wednesday, said he decided to withdraw over the weekend out of concerns tea party and other staunch conservative groups would be divided.
“I spent most of my summer preparing to run against Lamar Alexander and was putting together the pieces that prudence would dictate are necessary to take on the monumental task of unseating a giant of Tennessee politics like Lamar Alexander,” the former Williamson County GOP chairman said in an email to a Times Free Press reporter.
But, the attorney said, when Carr “entered the race a few weeks before our announcement” it “complicated matters.”
Carr on Aug. 19 announced he was shifting from running for the GOP’s 4th Congressional District primary next year to challenging Alexander, whom Tea Party activists want to defeat in his quest for a third term.
Carr has attracted support from a number of tea party activists and drew endorsements from two Middle Tennessee-based conservative talk radio show hosts, Ralph Bristol and Michael DelGiorno.
“Initially, we determined to stay on course and announce as planned after Labor Day, but we became concerned that the tea party coalition would be divided if I continued with my plans,” Kookogey said in an email to a reporter. “As such, we have suspended our plans to announce.”
In an earlier email sent Monday, Michael Patrick Leahy, co-founder of Beat Lamar, said Kookogey had written him an email following a Tea Party-sponsored forum on Saturday featuring Kookogey and Carr. The forums are aimed to “vetting” would-be candidates and settling on one that tea party groups can coalesce around.
Kookogey said in his email to Leahy that as an “unannounced candidate” he had “decided to withdraw from remainder of the scheduled events, let my attendance confuse your process.”
Unfortunate name.
Shoulda changed it first.
I was thinking the same.
I knew a family named “Fink”.
Hats off to Mr K. Tenn is winner take all primary. We have to put up one and only one challenger.
What a great guy, and a real patriot too. More of our guys should do this. Figure out who is the strongest and then the others support. We might actually win then
Remind me again why we’re against Lamar Alexander.
In other states where they have a runoff, like SC. having several candidates in the primary is a good idea..the incumbent can't target all of them...the race then becomes about the incumbent's record. That's how Cruz won, and that's how we'll beat Graham
Good for Kevin Kookogey and the Tea Party groups going through the vetting process so as not to repeat the disasters of splitting the conservative vote among a number of candidates and ending up with the likes of Bob Corker and Bill Haslam.
Carr may well be the man that takes Alexander down.
good point
“Remind me again why we’re against Lamar Alexander.”
1. His vote on immigration reform
2. An excessively low conservative vote record:
Alexander (TN) 2014 53% (Average) 41% (Heritage) 53% (CFG) 68% (ACU) 50% (FreedomWorks)
Yes but we’re not talking about South Carolina, we’re talking about Tenn. Not all states are runoff states, as a matter of fact few are. It’s the same with the national primaries. So many states have open primaries (which is why McCain gets constantly re-elected). We need to decide on a few candidates and make up our minds early so they don’t spend all their time destroying each other and let the other side coast to victory.
One, if not both of us needs to switch to decaf
I’ve known people named Fink. Comes from Finkelstein, IIRC. Have to be a certain age to see the joke in the name.
Al Capp once had a character in “Li’l Abner” called Deborah Fink, the star of “Rebecca of Finklebrook Farm”.
Anyway, if your name was Kookogey, how would you want it pronounced? He must have figured that being called a `kook’ would be unavoidable in any campaign.
LOL!
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