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The local Courier Press-News in Evansville reports that Rep. Brad Ellsworth will be tapped to run for the US Senate by the Indiana Democratic Party, with a state Representative then taking his place on the House ballot in IN-08.
U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth will run for Senate, and state Rep. Trent Van Haaften will seek his seat in Congress, multiple Democratic sources said Thursday morning.
As Democrats have searched for someone to replace retiring Sen. Evan Bayh on the ballot this November, Ellsworth, the former Vanderburgh County sheriff, has been a focal point, along with U.S. Rep. Baron Hill of Seymour.
The Indiana Democratic Party’s 32-member central committee will determine Bayh’s replacement. Anthony Long, the party’s 8th Congressional District chairman, said he expected a Ellsworth’s decision this morning. No official announcement has been made.
Ellsworth, a former sheriff, is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition with a conservative voting record, who has been endorsed in past Congressional campaigns by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Rifle Association.
Meanwhile, if Rasmussen can be believed (and at this stage of the election cycle, I actually don’t think they can), any Democrat would poll well behind the Republican candidates in Indiana.
A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely Indiana voters shows former GOP Congressman John Hostettler leading Baron Hill 49% to 31% and Brad Ellsworth 46% to 27%.
Former Senator Dan Coats, whose entry in the race has the blessing of the GOP establishment but has angered some Indiana Republicans, runs ahead of Hill 48% to 32% and ahead of Ellsworth 46% to 32%.
Another announced Republican hopeful, freshman state Senator Marlin Stutzman, leads Hill 41% to 33% and Ellsworth by a 40% to 30% margin.
Best to see some more independent polling before confirming this.
Speaking on CNN last night, Evan Bayh promised to use some of his $13 million dollar war chest to “help our nominee” in Indiana, so despite the late entry, whoever on the Democratic side will have some resources to work with.
As an editorial aside, if it’s Ellsworth, let Bayh fund him.
UPDATE: As Aaron Blake reports, Ellsworth’s advantage over Hill is that nobody is currently running in the Democratic primary for his seat, making it easier for the state party to replace him with their own candidate. Hill, by contrast, has a few opponents in the primary, and one of them would become the nominee if he moved to the Senate race. Presumably the state party doesn’t want that.
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just great.
Dude crashed a plane into a building in Austin that houses the IRS!
Same shit, different last name.
Another anti choice, anti stem cell research D Senator?
I thought I was a Democrat, not a Rahmunist.
I hate to admit it now, but progressives should have been helping someone — like Tamyra D’Ippolito — gather signatures to get on the ballot to oppose Bayh in the first place. Now the party bosses get their way without a whimper of a fight yet again. We gripe while they act.
But what about other rotten Dems who deserve a challenge? Are we going to just keep bemoaning each day’s new atrocities from them until it’s too late to act again and again?
I’m also embarrassed to admit that I and a lot of others need some leadership on this from the best and brightest among us.
check out this manifesto (alleged) from the pilot
http://embeddedart.com/
Good of you to admit, sir. I thought so at the time, not because of the candidate, but because of the way a regular citizen was cut out to the quick.
Still looking into this (comment #19), but I think it’s worth considering.
This is just another rotten corporatist the Democrats have chosen showing that they deserve everything that is going to happen to them come November. Progressives need to break with the Democrats once and for all. They are incapable of change or reforming themselves.
See. Voting was too important to be left to the voters.
absolutely galling.
If you look a little closer,one can actually see the Democratic Party being destroyed by its own members.When it came time to vote for anything Progressive,this demoRAT party skowered and cowered.
LET THE SEAT GO
Quite a document.
not one red cent
dare we say terrorist
poor mans World Trade Center
No doubt we will have extensive conversation about it soon enough.
No doubt. I haven’t got my thoughts together about it yet. Going every which way.
Not terrorism. Revenge.
Lota “teabaggish” shit in there but they’ll spin it left if they can.
wast OBL,into revengee,etc……still think it was junior and his minions
Draft John Mellencamp… He’d be sure to win the youth vote, the music lover’s vote, AND the vote of every social activist in Indiana.
FauxNews
Watch Future Senator Mellencamp
Almost worth moving to Indiana just to vote for him.
10-4
Poor man. There may be lots of this in the coming years. Even if “teabaggish”, no one should be driven to this.
Poor man my ass, he’s a flyin Timothy McVeigh.
It’s sad. He’s dead and that can’t be undone. Maybe he had a mental problem or whatever and I feel sorry.
and the people he burned up?
Democracy is great in theory as long as no one takes it seriously. I was just thinking today about how since I first came to the internet 6 or so years ago how far we have proceeded along a downward arc. An optimist would say I think that every age sees the pessimists in it bemoaning the disintegration of their world. I like to think of myself as someone who runs the numbers and assesses the realities, not a pessimist, more of a skeptic, but I keep coming up with the same answers, that unsustainable has a meaning, and that we are on an unsustainable course. There is no reform, only kabuki. Anger and frustration are building in the country. Replacing Democrats with Republicans, or Republicans with Democrats is not going to bring the change that is needed. So pressure against the current system can only grow. At some point something is going to have to give. And it is likely to result in a massive explosion when it does.
I feel so much of what we do here is chronicle the slow motion train wreck of our country. Sometimes, just because you’re being pessimistic doesn’t mean you’re wrong. I think we are in such a time. I have seen in my time on the internet, the Democrats move from the excuse that they couldn’t act, to they didn’t act, to finally they never had any intention of acting. Yet despite the open disdain Democrats now show toward us, I still see progressives unable to think past the Democrats. I still see post after post here worrying about Democratic losses in November. We are supposed to be the fact-based side of the blogosphere. That is what we keep telling ourselves, not like the wingnut right. But the truth is that the Democrats ditched progressives decades ago. You could put it back with the advent of Reagan, certainly by the time of Clinton. The Bush years obscured this. And this is also when the blogosphere was really coming into its own. But with Obama, the Democratic rejection of progressivism is there for all to see. Ditching a primary in Indiana is just one small piece of what is a thoroughly consistent pattern. Helping Democrats is not just masochistic. It fulfills Einstein’s criterion for insanity. We need to drop. Democrats. now.
Of course I feel sorry about them. He had no right to do this but when someone wants to commit suicide, there’s not much reasoning going on. Raven, I just hate to have anyone die like that.
This is exellent news. The Sheriff will lose, and be removed from his House seat as well. He’s one of Rahm’s “Majority Makers” — GOPs plucked from their prior party to run for Congress in 2006 in Republican districts.
The district should likely return to its GOP roots, and Indiana probably should have a GOP Senator as well. Nothing better to ignite Indiana progressives against a corrupt and stale Democratic Party machine that goes through these complicated motions only to lose both seats.
What Hugh said.
Disclosure – I went to high school with Ellsworth and thought he was a good sherrif.
@29 – re: the “Republican Roots” of Ellsworth’s districts, keep in mind that the two big poulations areas, Evansville and Bloomington, are locally (Mayor, City Council, etc.) very Democratic. The killer issues for “progressives” are guns, “support the troops” and abortion. Especially abortion. Did I mention abortion? Within IN in general, even among people who line up on almost every other point with Dems and will vote them for local office, for national office you will not get a strong abortion rights advocate elected in Evansville. If you saw the kind of email chaining and church support Hostettler has received in the past and will get, you’ll know why he was so hard for anyone to dislodge. Actually, Ellsworth was pretty hard for the Republicans to attack in the campaign, and so most of their ads were Pelosi ads – *he’s going to be a scarey Nancy Pelosi supporter*
To give Ellsworth his due on the “polling” front, though, keep in mind he is only partly in to his first term and has come from a local sherrif position. That – from So IN as well, which is an area with which the rest of the state is almost wholly unfamiliar – So. of Bloomington and you might as well be talking about Latin America to them.
His name is just not that known – but IN likes a pretty caucasian male face and with a lot of ads he could be expected to get much much better polling numbers. So I think his chances at keeping the Senate seat are better than the numbers are showing for now. But as much as I like him on a personal level and as blech as a Hostettler or (even more so) Coats would be as the alternative, I can’t get excited over Ellsworth for the Senate seat and I really don’t see much upside to any big effort to get Dems elected, just to trash the constitution more, hand off more $$ to the wealthiest while bankrupting the nation, sending more Americans to die in foreign wars of vanity, and protecting coal and nuclear interests.
They have sure managed to put the pee in Yippee.