I know Lucas pretty well, and he really does not want to switch, but I think the election of Pelosi as minority leader just might send him over the edge. He can't stand the East Coast/West Coast liberal faction. He is a charter member of the Blue Dogs. He has term-limited himself and this is his last term, so he might not think it's worth it to switch at this point. But on the other hand, he has nothing to lose and he might do it to try to send a message to the Democrats. His district is very Republican and a Republican will surely win the seat in 2004. I just got an email saying that Sen. McConnell is already pushing his chief of staff to run. So Lucas might as well switch. I am certainly going to encourage him!
I think a few of the other Blue Dogs might switch as well.
I'm in Lucas' district and the 3 counties up here (Boone, Kenton and Campbell) went for Davis (largest percentage was 58 but the other two were around 52-53%), but we crashed and burned in the rest of the counties.
I volunteered a little for Davis and am frankly mystified as to why he lost. He was a good conservative candidate as far as I am concerned. I have been despairing of finding a better candidate to go against Lucas.
If he doesn't run again, then we can probably get a republican in there. But if he still wants the seat, I'm not sure we can take it away from him. How likely is he going to go wishy-washy like many of the others and run again?
He doesn't really have to switch. He could stay a Democrat and caucus with the Republicans (vote for Hastert instead of Pelosi).