Posted on 05/17/2011 5:47:00 AM PDT by AuH2ORepublican
From Mike Allen’s morning newsletter today:
Tommy Thompson, the Republican former Wisconsin governor and George W. Bush’s first HHS secretary, has told friends he plans to run for the open Senate seat in Wisconsin. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) said Friday that he won’t seek a fifth term in 2012. Thompson’s announcement gives Republicans a popular former two-term governor of state to seriously challenge for this toss-up seat. There’s no chance Thompson would run against Paul Ryan, so the former Wisconsin Governor will await the Budget Chairman’s official announcement on the race before jumping in. Ryan has suggested in private conversations with GOP officials in recent days that he will take a pass on the race and focus on his House chairmanship.
Thompson has been meeting with political associates and telling them he wants back in the game. He is working behind the scenes on campaign, fund-raising and staffing plans — and would enter as a very strong front-runner for the GOP nomination and the seat. There is one reason to think this isn’t an absolute done deal, regardless of what Thompson’s telling friends this week: He has flirted with political runs in the past, including the Senate in 2010, only to bail.
Thompson’s presidential bid in 2008 was short-lived and unfocused, but he would immediately be a top-tier Senate challenger who knows the state well and who is well-versed in health care policy. But will Bush’s HHS guy – running health policy when the Bush administration and a GOP Congress enacted the unfunded entitlement of the Medicare prescription drug benefit – be acceptable to the Tea Parties in Wisconsin?
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
I’m with you. I was a little excited at first, but then I sobered up, LOL!
I’ll back JB if he runs...
Quinn wasn’t as clean as we was made out to be. He was involved with some crap (I forget the details) back when was an aide to Walker.
I loved Dan Hynes commercial where Mayor Harold Washington said the worst decision of his life was to hire Pat Quinn. Too bad elections in Crook County are fixed.
Hynes was more the machine guy. But Quinn won Cook and Hynes won almost everywhere else (in the rat primary the machine actually has more control downstate than in Cook, Look at Blago’s primary in 2002, he ran third in the City). Very interesting.
Quinn makes me miss Blago. I never thought I’d say that. But he’s a liberal ideologue and that’s worse.
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