Is it retirement time for GOP Rep. Barbara Cubin? In a lengthy article dealing with her personal troubles and recent tragedies (and they are significant), Cubin says that she’ll make a re-election decision and announcement very soon:
Cubin, who turns 61 in November, told the Associated Press recently that she plans to run for re-election. But on Thursday she said only that she will make a decision and announcement in the next few weeks.“I just need to make the announcement at a time that is right,” she said. “Certainly whatever I decide to do there are people I need to notify first before it is in the media – staff, family, all those kind of things.”
I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine Cubin deciding to give 2008 another go. That’s going to be bad news for Democrat Gary Trauner, but I suppose you never know what kind of Bill Sali-esque goon might emerge from the bowels of the Wyoming Republican Party, leaving a ray of hope in one of the reddest states in the nation.
Isn’t Simpson’s son going to run for the seat. If so, would it be better for Trauner to just go ahead and challenge Barrasso, considering both are statewide offices.
…stop just thinking of Trauner polling against Cubin, but start thinking of Trauner polling on his own merits, Cubin or no Cubin.
Granted, it’ll probably easier for him to defeat Cubin than to defeat an untainted newbie from elsewhere, but I haven’t yet done my research on Simpson, so I don’t know about him. But the important part is that regardless of whether Cubin retires, Trauner should be running on the strength of his own reputation and campaign, with the faltering of an incumbent as icing-on-the-cake on an already strong campaign. He ran an excellent campaign for the 2006 election, and the important thing for him is to maintain and expand this positive name-i.d. in the state.
The fact that Republicans aren’t very popular there or elsewhere–even among Republicans–provides an awesome opportunity for us Democrats to expand the electoral playing field by raising intrinsically strong, viable candidates in deep red areas such as Wyoming and Idaho. And by intrinsically strong I mean that they’d likely garner a significant(ly higher than expected) portion of the vote even against a decent, non-problem-plagued opponent, because such candidates would have their own strength to run on. This is–at least for me personally–what I think would be most gratifying result of the 2006 and 2008 election cycles.
Hey, isn’t that a colony on Mars?
Hell, the chances of taking WY are like the GOPs chances of winning DC in the GE. Save the money and fight elsewhere,like NM and AZ.
Wyoming is a fairly inexpensive state to fight in, as opposed some of the districts in IL and PA where Democrats poured MILLIONS of dollars into losing causes. Perhaps a million or two here would have won this seat.