“Believe They Have A Shot In Arizona… But Only If They Get The Right Candidate”
Barely had former two-time Arizona Democrat Party Chairman Don Bivens announced his candidacy for the United States Senate, when his party’s professional political class in Washington – including no less than President Barack Obama himself – dismissed him off-hand.
On October 6th, barely a week after Bivens’ announcement, Politico lifted the curtain on the backroom deal-making taking place among Washington Democrats, and reported that President Obama had personally phoned former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona, who was appointed to that office by President George W. Bush, urging him to run for the U.S. Senate in Arizona.
And now, just a few weeks later, National Journal’s Reid Wilson reports today that “Democrats believe they have a shot in Arizona, too, but only if they get the right candidate.” In other words, in a state where they had previously vowed to be competitive, President Obama and the national Democrats are continuing to dismiss the Senate candidacy of their former two-time party Chairman Don Bivens, and instead are hoping to convince a George W. Bush-appointee to enter the race for their party’s nomination…
“In a state where they’d previously vowed to be competitive, it speaks volumes of the Democrats’ long odds that President Obama and the Democrat establishment in Washington continue to publicly snub their own former state party chairman in the hopes of convincing a George W. Bush-appointee to run for their party’s Senate nomination in Arizona,” National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) spokesman Brian Walsh said today.
