Posted on 01/11/2013 4:19:43 PM PST by SMGFan
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) announced Friday that he will not run for reelection in 2014, giving Republicans a prime pickup opportunity in a state that's grown increasingly red in recent years. “As I approach 50 years of public service in West Virginia, I’ve decided that 2014 will be the right moment for me to find new ways to fight for the causes I believe in and to spend more time with my incredible family," Rockefeller said in a statement. Republicans already have their top recruit in place for the race. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) threw her hat in the ring late last year, and is considered the front-runner for the seat, should she survive what could be a tough GOP primary. National Republican Senatorial Committee Executive Director Rob Collins said West Virginia is an "even stronger pickup opportunity" now that Rockefeller has stepped aside.
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/276667-rockefeller-to-resign-from-senate#ixzz2HiQP0sLr
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
The West Virginia GOP gave Mancin a pass in 2012, perhaps hoping he would switch to our side if we got to at least fifty seats. The Rockefeller West Virginia seat will flip to the Republican column in 2014. Congresswomen Mary Capito is already announced.
South Dakota is also looking good, with former Governor Mike Rounds having formed an exploratory committee.
Mark Begich (Alaska), Mary Landrieu (La.) and Kay Hagan (N.C.) are all very vulnerable.
After these five, Mark Pryor (Ark.) would be the next most vulnerable.
Finally, Max Baucus (Mont.), Mark Udall (Colo.), Al Franken (Minn.) and Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) represent possibilities.
Susan Collins (Me.) would be the most vulnerable on our side.
The Republican nominee is certain to be Rep. Shelly Moore Capito who annouced several weeks ago. She is no perfect conservative but is likely to win in my opinon
Touche’
On the plus side, at least they're not prepping John Raese for another run.
If I could pick only one RAT on that list to purge, I'd go with freaky Al Franken in a heartbeat. Shame he's not higher up on the "vulnerable" list.
There are still some younger Rockefeller leftists around, mainly in the Rockefeller Foundation where they fund marxists and anti-American groups with millions of dollars.
Jay Rockefeller is the worst of all living Rockefellers. I wish he had died 20 years ago. Instead, as our luck would have it, he bought himself a state and wrecked it (the union miners bad luck).
Time for him to do a little deep mining himself. Not 6 feet deep, Hell deep. Now that would be a “good deep”.
When Rockefeller started supporting anti-coal policies, I knew he would retire. As I posted when the pro-choice Capito announced her run (or was it right before that, when it was merely speculation?), the GOP candidate won’t be facing the pro-abortion Rockefeller, he or she will be facing some good ol’ boy Democrat who will claim to be pro-life, pro-gun and drink coffee made from powdered coal. He (and it will be a he) will appear in commercials cradlind a baby in his right arm (with the Bible in his left hand and a hunting rifle strapped to his back) and say “Shelley Capito won’t protect babies from abortion, but I will” and “the only people whom Capito will do even less for than the working men and women of this state are innocent babies.” And the odds are at least 50/50 that dumb voters will fall for it, just as they did with Manchin.
If Capito were pro-life, she’d be a sure winner. But she isn’t pro-life (and if she was going to claim a pro-life conversion, she would have done it some time over the past 15 years), so we’re at the mercy of who the Democrats run. And since the GOP virtually has no bench in WV, I don’t think there’s an obvious alternative to Capito as our nominee, much less one who could beat her in a primary. This will not be an easy pickup.
I think she’d probably win regardless but what do you figure the odds are that they’ll run a pro-life rat? I doubt the majority of rat primary voters are pro-life.
Possible candidates from Politics1
Mike Callaghan (D) - Ex-State Democratic Chair
Gaston Caperton (D) - Ex-Governor
Robin Davis (D) - Supreme Court Justice
Carte Goodwin (D) - Ex-US Senator
Nick Rahall (D) - Congressman
Natalie Tennant (D) - Sec. of State
Earl Ray Tomblin (D) - Governor
Which are pro-life? Obviously Tomblin would be their strongest candidate, he can run and still be Governor if he looses.
Rahall is pro-life ASAIK. It would be nice to pick up his House seat though.
Capito had been narrowly leading Rockefeller.
I see you think the odds are near 100%.
Most recent polling has Frankenberry with pretty good leads against possible candidates Bachmann (obviously she cannot win, it’s a shame SHE’S the joke in MN) T-Paw and Coleman.
I don’t think retread Coleman is a good idea, I think we need Pawlenty or Congressman Erik Paulsen. I doubt a lesser candidate would be competitive.
Caperton, I believe, has ethics issues and he hasn’t run for office in what will be 22 years.
Carte Goodwin, the Manchin seat warmer, voted very left wing (which dispelled the notion folks had of Manchin being some Conservative).
Rahall faces the problem that Ed Markey has in MA, both having been in Congress since 1976. He’d have to abandon all those years of seniority, but he isn’t as old as one would think (as he was only 27 when he was elected to Congress) and could conceivably run for 2 terms to the Senate. The GOP would also stand a chance at getting his seat (half of which hasn’t elected a GOP member since 1956 and the other half not since 1930).
Natalie Tennant is wealthy and could self-fund, and nullify any advantages to Capito being a female candidate. However, I believe she is as liberal as Goodwin. Tennant has never faced a strong challenger, though.
Gov. Tomblin would ostensibly be the strongest, though with his being on the ballot 3 times in 3 years, might there be some candidate fatigue ? His election would also necessitate ANOTHER expensive statewide Gubernatorial special election that the GOP would be at risk for taking (with Democrat Senate President and de facto Lt Governor Jeff Kesler being the next acting Governor).
I can’t speak to Justice Robin Davis or Mike Callaghan.
I’d support Pawlenty. Coleman doesn’t seem to want to face a rematch. Frankly, he ought to run for Governor instead against the execrable Mark Dayton (whom sadly will now have an unchecked moonbat Dem majority to aid his antics over the next 2 years). Rep. Paulsen doesn’t seem to have the fire in the belly to run.
In a saner situation, Bachmann should be the one running, though we know she’d lose (though we’d keep her GOP seat). I see some mention of having Kurt Bills run again, and that’s absurd on its face. He was nothing but desultory opposition for the quieter moonbat Sen. Klobuchar.
Hopefully the rest of that twisted clan will stay out of public office at least.
Michele Bachman and Alan West are touchstones. They are capable of raising enormous amounts of money, but they also enable their opponent to do likewise. But, whether or not she is electable, she would at least “spread the field.”
Minnesota Republicans have not figured out how to appeal both to mid-western Republican types and to swing and independent voters. Their performance in 2012 in the Presidential race, the U.S. Senate race, and state legislative races was disappointing. Their counterparts in Iowa and Wisconsin are in somewhat better shape.
I’d prefer the odds of running Col. West statewide in FL over Bachmann in MN. As much as we may like certain individuals, we can’t be naive on their chances in a given state. In hindsight, I wish we had run West instead of Mack against Nelson, who turned out to be a fiasco.
West was my choice for the Senate all along. Given how Obama won the state and West ran several points behind Romney in his district, he likely would have lost to Nelson, but who knows? Maybe West would have rattled Nelson in a debate and created an opening.
I really like both Tim Pawlenty and Erik Paulsen, and would like to see T-Paw regain the governorship and Paulsen beat Franken for the Senate seat. I can’t think of two better statewide candidates in MN.
Paulsen has amassed a solid conservative record in both the state legislature and in Congress, yet he wins easily in marginal districts because he does it while being “Minnesota Nice” and without being polarizing (contra Michele Bachmann, who barely gets reelected in the most Republican district in the state). If Paulsen doesn’t run for the Senate (he hasn’t decided one way or another), then T-Paw would be our best bet, but T-Paw is making a lot of money in the private sector and may not run, either. Without those two, I don’t know who could run. Maybe Congressman Kline?
Those "loser" candidates lost only because the GOPe refused to help them get elected. The GOPe would rather lose to a Democrat than win with someone they can't count on to continue their web of corruption. I'll stand with those "loser" candidates every time. We need REAL AMERICANS in those offices, not GOPe acceptable slime.
I don’t know how many of those, other than Rahall (who’s had a pro-life voting record in Congress for decades) is pro-life, but I’m betting that whoever is nominated (who could well be someone not on your list) will at least claim to be pro-life and run to Capito’s right on abortion.
In 2010, state senator Mike Oliveiro ran for Congress in WV-01 (in northern WV) as a strongly pro-life, socially conservative Democrat. He won the primary handily against scandal-plagued incumbent Allan Mollohan, and then came within 0.80% of beating David McKinley in the best GOP year in a couple of generations in the most Republican district in the state. So it would not surprise me if a pro-life state legislator of whom we’ve never heard could win the RAT nomination and run neck-and-neck with Capito in the general.
“Minnesota Republicans have not figured out how to appeal both to mid-western Republican types and to swing and independent voters.”
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