IN-Sen: Mourdock to Enter Primary Against Lugar

Richard Lugar, to his credit, has basically spent the last few months dressed up in rodeo-clown garb, prancing around and daring the tea partiers to charge him. Looks like he’s got the match he’s been hankering for (or at least resigned to):

Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock is taking the steps to formally launch a primary challenge against six-term Sen. Richard Lugar in the coming weeks, according to multiple Republicans familiar with his thinking….

“Mourdock is meeting folks around town. He was here yesterday. I’m expecting a public announcement very soon,” one conservative operative told POLITICO.

Offered another GOP player, “I understand Mourdock is planning to jump into the race soon. Sounded like weeks, not days.”

There’s at least one obstacle to Mourdock, though, beyond Lugar’s decades of goodwill (and considering that all we have here are anonymous sources, maybe we shouldn’t consider Mourdock’s run a done deal yet): state Sen. Mike Delph, who’s also been talking himself up for the teabagger challenge but hasn’t announced yet or even formed an exploratory committee. Indiana doesn’t have runoffs, so a three-way race has a major chance of playing out the way the 2010 Dan Coats/John Hostettler/Marlin Stutzman race did: with the right-wing vote split and the establishment guy winning. Local tea partiers, as we mentioned a few days ago, have been trying to coordinate to unite behind one contender, but in terms of finding that one person, Politico finds one person close to that effort saying “we just aren’t there yet.”

32 thoughts on “IN-Sen: Mourdock to Enter Primary Against Lugar”

  1. that “DeMint has publicly promised not to oppose any sitting Republican incumbents this cycle” making peace with the NRSC.

    I hadn’t heard that.

    Maybe going after Murkowski last year was one bridge too far.

  2. But if the anti-establishment vote isn’t split too badly that won’t matter.

    If the Dems want a shot at exploiting another Alaska/Delaware situation, they need a candidate here quick. Hell, get two, that way we can have a somewhat exciting primary that would keep the attention moderate Dems and indies who’d vote for Lugar in his primary instead.  

  3. Not just in the primary but also in the general.  I know the point of this site and all, but I must say i appreciate having Lugar on the other side of the aisle but with his brain still in this universe.  If the world becomes Dem’s vs Tea Party it worries me far more than the Dem vs Repub thing that has been going on fro a while.

    I rarely vote Republican, but I’ll be pulling hard for Lugar and Hatch this cycle.

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