Tag: Jim Bunning

Is the stubborn sumbitch teetering? Check out this teaser from Roll Call:

But after stressing repeatedly that he will run again in 2010, Bunning seemed to leave the door open to not seeking re-election on Tuesday, saying that he will make a decision on whether to stay in the Senate race within the next few months.

What’s more, the Junior Senator from Kentucky seems to be getting slightly more… self-aware. From the AP:

“When they recruit someone to run against you in a primary it puts doubt in people’s minds that you are going to finish the race,” Bunning told reporters. “Therefore they’re waiting and waiting and waiting, and that makes it, it’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Meanwhile, Bunning is lapping up the profuse support of his colleagues:

“I’ll support the nominee of our party,” Rep. Hal Rogers said Tuesday when asked about whether he was supporting Bunning.

Rep. Ed Whitfield likewise said that Bunning “is the only [Republican] candidate for U.S. Senate who has announced. So, at this point, I’m supporting him.”

Can’t you just feel the love?

With Bunning momentarily backing off from his staunch statements that he is without question running for another term followed by melancholic ruminations about “self-fulfilling prophecies”, perhaps Cornyn and McConnell are having some success in forcing the 77 year-old Senator to re-evaluate his options.

Come on, you old bastard: you can’t let them win!

From the AP:

Bunning said during a conference call Tuesday that McConnell and Texas Sen. John Cornyn have put doubts about his 2010 candidacy into the minds of possible donors. Bunning claimed McConnell and Cornyn, who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have tried to recruit someone to challenge him in the GOP primary.

This race is the gift that keeps on giving. McConnell and Cornyn are clearly trying to starve Bunning into retirement, but it’s becoming an increasingly plausible scenario that a stubborn but cash-strapped Bunning may emerge as the Republican nominee for this seat in 2010 — at which point Cornyn and McConnell may find themselves falling over ass-backwards in order to refill the old coot’s coffers. It doesn’t get much better than this.

(H/T: P’co)

After nary a peep in months from the office of Dem Rep. Ben Chandler on the subject of a potential challenge to GOP crumb-bum extraordinaire Jim Bunning, Chandler tells the AP that he’s considering making a bid after receiving encouragement from the DSCC. He’s even gone so far as to meet with Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear on Friday to discuss his potential run. (Hat-tip: Senate Guru)

If Chandler were to jump in, this would set up a primary battle with Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo. Attorney General Jack Conway and state Auditor Crit Luallen are also considering the race, with Conway seemingly being the most eager of the pair to run. However, in a recent interview with Page One, Conway said he was “regularly speaking” with both Luallen and Chandler about a bid, and I would expect both of them to back off if Chandler pulls the trigger.

Meanwhile, Jim Bunning is already casting aspersions on wide swaths of his home state:

At a Fourth District Lincoln/Reagan Day Dinner in Boone County, Bunning said, “I need your support to offset Lexington, Louisville and some other people who don’t think like we do in Northern Kentucky.”

True, Bunning didn’t go so far as to call these folks “fake Kentuckians”, but I still don’t think a strategy of polarizing the vote around the Cinci ‘burbs is going to cut it for him.

• NJ-Gov: Another day, another ugly poll for Jon Corzine. This time, it’s this month’s installment of the Quinnipiac poll. Not much change from last month: Chris Christie leads Corzine 46-37, up a bit from 44-38. This despite 61% of voters not knowing enough about Christie to form an opinion of him!

• KY-Sen: Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson may be the guy on the GOP’s wish list for the Kentucky Senate seat, but he said yesterday that he’s running for Senate only if Jim Bunning retires. (What are the odds on that?) Meanwhile, state senate president David Williams is accusing Grayson and Bunning of being in cahoots to shut him out of the race. Good times.

• CT-Sen: You gotta love Joe Lieberman, always there to lend a helping hand. Lieberman announced that he’s supporting Chris Dodd for re-election, even though Dodd supported, y’know, the Democrat in the 2006 general. As Lanny Davis puts it, “Being a mensch and a friend is more important than carrying a grudge.”

• CO-04: Nice to see that someone can get a job in this economy: Marilyn Musgrave has emerged from months of post-defeat seclusion to take a leadership position with something called the Susan B. Anthony List, apparently a bizarro-world EMILY’s List that supports anti-abortion female candidates for office. (No word on whether Anthony plans to sue to get her name back.) It’s unclear whether this is permanent or Musgrave is staying close to donors until a rematch in CO-04.

• KS-01, KS-04: Mike Huckabee (who overwhelmingly won the Kansas caucuses) is wading into the primaries to fill the two safe GOP seats left vacant by the Jerry Moran/Todd Tiahrt scrum for the open senate seat. He’s endorsing state senator Tim Huelskamp in KS-01 and state senator Dick Kelsey in KS-04. RNC member Mike Pompeo is also expected to run in KS-04, while ex-aide to Sam Brownback Rob Wasinger and businessman Tim Barker are already running in KS-01.

• Maps: Here’s a nice resource to bookmark, from Ruy Teixeira and the Center for American Progress: it’s a collection of interactive maps showing state-by-state 04-08 and 88-08 shifts, along with piles of 08 exit poll data.

• MN-Sen: As if you needed one more reason not to donate to Republicans, the Norm Coleman campaign accidentally made public 4.3 GB of donors’ personal data, including credit card numbers and security information.

Jim Bunning:

In his latest call with scribes earlier Tuesday, Bunning again didn’t disappoint. While acknowledging that he has conducted polling on his prospects for winning a third term, the irascible Kentucky Republican refused to reveal the results.

“It’s none of your goddamned business,” Bunning told reporters. “If you paid the 20 grand for the poll, you can get some information out of it.”

Uh, why?

From Politico:

A noteworthy development in the Kentucky Senate race: National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman John Cornyn said — for the first time — that the committee will be endorsing Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), if he runs for re-election.

Cornyn told the Washington Post’s Ben Pershing yesterday that Bunning has the full support of the committee.

“As long as he is running, I will be supportive of him,” Cornyn told the Post.

Full story: http://www.politico.com/blogs/…

The question in my mind is, how much pull does the NRSC have anymore – especially in relation to a whole lot of exasperated Kentuckians? I guess we can only hope and pray that its enough to drag his sorry butt across the finish line in the primary.

Vile:

U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning predicted over the weekend that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would likely be dead from pancreatic cancer within nine months.

During a wide-ranging 30-minute speech on Saturday at the Hardin County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner, Bunning said he supports conservative judges “and that’s going to be in place very shortly because Ruth Bader Ginsburg … has cancer.”

“Bad cancer. The kind that you don’t get better from,” he told a crowd of about 100 at the old State Theater.

It’s pretty easy to see why national Republicans want nothing to do with this mess of a man.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (1/29-2/2, registered voters):

Ben Chandler (D): 42

Jim Bunning (R-inc): 45

Jack Conway (D): 42

Jim Bunning (R-inc): 46

Crit Luallen (D): 41

Jim Bunning (R-inc): 45

Dan Mongiardo (D): 42

Jim Bunning (R-inc): 46

Ben Chandler (D): 42

Trey Grayson (R): 42

Jack Conway (D): 41

Trey Grayson (R): 42

Crit Luallen (D): 42

Trey Grayson (R): 42

Dan Mongiardo (D): 42

Trey Grayson (R): 43

(MoE: ±4%)

R2K polls the Bluegrass State on behalf of the Orangehate Site, and we are looking at a very tight Senate race. Jim Bunning, who has been the subject of some very public pressure from Republican leadership to get out of the way, is leading his likely Democratic opposition by 3 or 4 points. The four likeliest Democratic challengers (Rep. Ben Chandler, Attorney General Jack Conway, Auditor Crit Luallen, and Bunning’s 2004 opponent, Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo; of these four, only Mongiardo has declared) all put up virtually the same numbers, indicating, as with most polls we’ve been seeing in the last few months, that they’re all basically running as “generic D” right now. (Hard to believe, I know, but those creatures known as “voters” apparently aren’t in round-the-clock campaign mode like we are.)

On the one hand, these poll numbers may come as a bit of a surprise to people looking at the Kentucky senate race as one where the Democrats have a clear edge. Bunning has a few advantages here, though: one, the power of incumbency, and the name recognition and general staying-power that come with it. And two: the overall Republican strength in Kentucky, one of the few states that seems to keep on moving away from us at the presidential level, although it’s still quite amenable to statewide Dems.

On the other hand, Bunning clearly is in bad shape here, falling far short of the relative safety of the 50% mark, based on pretty wide name recognition (41 favorable/47 unfavorable), leaving him little room to go up. And that’s before he’s exposed to the rigors of a two-year campaign, which didn’t go so well last time back when he was five younger.

R2K also polls GOP Secretary of State Trey Grayson, a young up-and-comer who would assumedly be the party’s preferred candidate. He doesn’t fare as well as Bunning, but unlike Bunning, he’s not well-known and yet liked by those who know him (39 favorable/18 unfavorable), giving him a lot more room for expansion. This is why Grayson is, by most people, considered the more dangerous GOP option.

The time is here. The time is now. Just go. Go. GO! Mitch McConnell doesn’t care how.

For several days now, there has been a drip-drip of (probably well-orchestrated) leaks about how GOP powers, starting at the top with McConnell and NRSC chair John Cornyn, want Jim Bunning to get out of the way to let them run a more vigorous, coherent candidate in the 2010 Kentucky Senate race. This reached a head with Bunning’s unexplained absence last week and then Cornyn’s recent comments, when asked if Bunning or someone else would be the best candidate to run: “I don’t know. I think it’s really up to Senator Bunning.”

Today Bunning fought back against leadership’s “I don’t know” act, in a conference call with Kentucky media. Roll Call reports:

“I had an hourlong meeting with Sen. McConnell in the first week of December in 2008, and we thoroughly discussed my candidacy for the Senate in that hour meeting in my office in Northern Kentucky – and gave him every indication that I was going to run again,” Bunning told reporters on a conference call Tuesday, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal. “So he either had a lapse of memory or something when speaking to the Press Club last week when he said that he didn’t know what my intentions were. He knew very well what my intentions were.”

With Bunning only sitting on $175,000 right now, and now seemingly entering into a war of words with the guys charged with saving his butt next year, this race is starting to look pretty promising (as long as Bunning stays in).

Associated Press:

Democratic Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo believes he would have the upper hand if he decides to run for the Senate seat now held by the Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning.

Mongiardo told The Associated Press on Friday that if he enters the race he expects the 77-year-old Republican to bow out. Bunning eked out a win in 2004 when Mongiardo, then a littleknown state senator from Hazard, ran for the post.

Mongiardo said he believes Bunning would rather not run than to face him again.

Mongiardo said: “I don’t think Sen. Bunning has the fight left in him to run.”

Meanwhile, where is Jim Bunning?

Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning’s absence during the busy first week of the 111th Congress has raised questions about the 77-year-old junior senator’s viability as a candidate for re-election in 2010.

So far this month, Bunning, who sits on the Senate’s Finance, Energy and Natural Resources and Banking committees, missed three cabinet confirmation hearings and a GOP strategy session on President-elect Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package. He’s also missed critical votes on releasing the second portion of the $700 billion federal bailout on the nation’s troubled financial sector – a measure Bunning has staunchly opposed.

Bunning’s congressional staffers attribute his absences to family commitments and declined to discuss where the senator has been for the better part of a month. He did not return a call for comment, but his office issued a statement saying Bunning is ready to take on whomever the Democratic Party fields as a candidate next year.

I like Dr. Dan for this race, and I like seeing a candidate with some fire in his belly. But is he really trying to goad Bunning into retirement? The CW – which I agree with – is that Dems would much rather take on the Hall of Fame pitcher than a generic R replacement. Then again, if Jimbo is pulling a Pajama Pete maneuver (Jammy Jimmy?), Mongiardo may just be embracing the inevitable.

(Hat-tip: P)