From the Allentown Morning Call:
Former Bucks County Republican Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick plans to announce before the end of the month his intention to reclaim the 8th district seat that he narrowly lost in 2006 to Democrat Patrick Murphy, a source close to the local Republican party confirmed.
Fitzpatrick, who was diagnosed with colon cancer in June 2008, has reportedly been consulting with doctors about running for re-election this year.
“His health is good and his passion is high and he’s ready to reclaim his seat,” the source said Friday.
Murphy had managed to escape a serious challenge so far — one of the rare Democrats in a competitive district to do so — but Fitzpatrick is probably about as strong a candidate as Republicans can hope to run here. Despite the district’s small Democratic lean (Obama won this district by nine points, up from John Kerry’s 3% win in 2004), this will be a non-trivial race.
RaceTracker Wiki: PA-08
If so, Republicans probably see this as a good chance to take a sledgehammer to his career.
I can say that he most certainly isn’t one of our many “lame incumbents”. He is a hardworking, incredibly personable man with a loyal base of support. It’ll be a tight race, no doubt, but if any one of our sitting members can survive a tough year in a marginal district, its him. I would rank this as the third most competitive Philly-area race following PA-07 and PA-06. I also think he’ll benefit from having either Arlen Specter or Joe Sestak upticket.
Holy fucking shit scott brown leading 48/47 ppp
I am a Republican but I think this peak is happening a week too early for Brown.
DSCC and Coakley should go on negative ad saturation until the 19th. Coakley brought this on herself also thinking she could simply coast to an easy general election victory. Sadly now that the sharks at the NRSC and teabagger hq smell blood, Coakley is going to be bombarded with negative ads. I wouldn’t be surprised if they start saying Coakley is soft on crime and try to pull of a Willie Horton.
Anyone else wonder if not having Lois Murphy against Jim Gerlach might actually help Patrick Murphy in his race. They aren’t related but the same last name (duh) and I always wondered how much people really paid attention to the Philly-area congressional ads having 2 Murphy’s and whether people attributed negatives from one to the other.
The ads in the Gerlach-Murphy (Lois) races in 2006/2008 were so awful I wonder if the last name Murphy drove down his favorables in his race. And Gerlach/Murphy spent so much on so many frigging ads I wonder if maybe that might have hurt him in the past and not having to deal with that this time might help a little bit.
If you live in Philly you know what I’m talking about, those ads were like nothing I’ve seen before, and they aired every 4 minutes.
Yeah…..this was the guy that was supposedly tasked with overturning Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. How’s that goin’ there for ya, Patrick?
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo…
Honestly, he seems like a nice guy, but it seems as if he’s failed miserably thus far on this count. And it’s too bad: his campaign coffers would’ve been flooded with pink cash if he’d actually managed to find enough co-sponsors for a bill supported by like 70%+ of the American population, including a MAJORITY OF REPUBLICANS!!
…Sorry. Apparently, being a second-class citizen is starting to get to me.