Another bullet dodged for Evan Bayh:
Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita (R) will run to succeed retiring Rep. Steve Buyer (R) in the state’s 4th district.
“He is grateful for the strong encouragement from Hoosiers throughout the 4th CD, and has decided to campaign for the opportunity to serve in Congress on their behalf,” Kevin Kellems, a strategist for Rokita’s campaign, said in a statement Monday.
“Todd will post a statement today to his Facebook page,” Kellems said. “He wants to work at the federal level on the economic and security issues that directly affect the workers, families and small businesses of the 4th District.”
After Mike Pence decided not to challenge Bayh, Rokita was seen as the GOP’s next best option for the race. The GOP seems to realize, belatedly, that they should put up a stronger-than-usual challenger to Bayh (I don’t think that ex-Rep. John Hostettler qualifies as particularly “strong”, although he’s better than nothing), in case the environment is so favorable to them that they have a shot at knocking off the entrenched Democratic incumbent. But time is running out — the state’s filing deadline passes on February 16th.
better than hostletter b/c at least he’s run difficult campaigns.
since we will probably never get a Democrat in IN-04, I’m curious; is Rokita at least slightly less crazy than Buyer? Even an upgrade from 100% crazy to 99% crazy would be great.
Hopefully the IN GOP can find another guy to run against Bayh. I have no idea who else it can be.