Betty Ireland is the West Virginia Secretary of State, and, today, she announced she would not run for reelection, stating that the deteriorating health of her aging parents did not leave her enough time to run a campaign, ( http://www.dailymail… ). She is the only elected statewide official who is a Republican, which is very indicative of the state’s Democratic lean. It’s likely that the only reason won in 2004 was because her opponent was 94 year old has ben Ken Heckler, a long time rival of Nick Rahall, who won his congressional seat in 1976 when Heckler foolishly ran for Governor and ended up coming third in the Democratic primary, losing to some nobody named Jay Rockefeller.
This is a very important matter because Ireland was one the West Virginia GOP’s only rising stars. Their only other one can now be said to be Shelley Capito, and she might be out the door in 2008 election. State Democrats now have a much easier path to retake this seat and once again hold all statewide offices, and at the same time one of the state GOP’s most prominent public members loses most of her clout. If we could take out Capito, bang, we shatter every gain the WV-GOP’s made since Bush was elected in 2000. It’s a big deal, shatter their morale, their fundraising slumps, putting them further behind Democrats. We take out a possible threat against the open WV-Gov seat in 2012, or the likely open WV-Sen seat in 2012, (this is assuming that our candidate, State Sen. Unger, will win reelection in a possible rematch in 2010).
The race isn’t over now, but at least now Democrats don’t have to mount an insurgent campaign against a prominent, fairly popular State Republican and an incumbent. Now Democrats start off with the advantage, and if we nominate a strong candidate, the position should go back into Democratic hands, and, if we hold all our other statewide positions, we maintain our upper hand in 2012, and stunt the State GOP’s recent growth.
P.S. Please vote in the poll, it’s the only indicator I have of how many read this, and I really like knowing that, for curiosties sake.
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