PA-12: Carpet-bagger challenges Murtha

I try not to put “breaking” in subject titles, because it looks so silly a few hours after you post one…

Diana Irey, the corrupt harpy who tried it last time, is busy keeping her snout in the smaller trough of her local office, so she’s not going to run against Congressman John Murtha again in 2008.

John Russell, 45, a hawk on the war, is moving into the district to run on the Republican ticket. Of course that’s legal, but local voters seldom like it.

http://www.centredai…

Doesn’t appear to be a very dangerous threat, at first blush. And it appears to me that the only constituency that he would appeal to (rabid fans of the war) are already going to vote against the incumbent, so he adds nothing, absolutely nothing, to GOP chances in a district that has returned John Murtha to Congress fifteen times. If Giuliani is the Republican candidate, he might lend teeny-tiny coattails to this guy, but not enough to imperil the seat.

It’s perfectly legal to run for US House in a district where you don’t have deep roots or local connections, but the voters seldom like it.