Earlier this afternoon Wall Street Journal Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito announced she will NOT challenge Robert Byrd for his Senate seat in 2006. Instead, she will defend the traditionally Democratic Second District seat she currently holds against former AUSA, Director of the WV Department of Environmental Protection, and state Democratic chair Mike Callaghan.
Callaghan's winnable race against the damaged Capito offers Democrats and progressives a rare chance to shatter the myth that Republicans can't be beat in rural districts.
"mikecallaghan"
Read on and check other diaries on this race.
The most intriguing factor to consider in Capito's much-delayed decison not to challenge Byrd is the timing, coming so soon after the Bushies' last-ditch efforts to lean her into a Byrd challenge last week.
As part of the PR effort to persuade Capito to enter the Senate race, The Washington Times used its lead unsigned editorial to take shots at Byrd and plead for Capito to enter the Senate race. Meanwhile, Rush and Sean each devoted an hour to bashing Byrd on the same day. It's interesting each used the same audio clips Bush's media people were peddling earlier in the week with some success lower in the radio food chain.
Additonally, the Bushies were adding promises of massive deployment of their activists in GOTV. Prior to this last ditch offer, the GOP was widely rumored to be promising Capito a guarantee of $14 million in funding, plenty of appearances by GOP leading lights, and a top-tier sub-cabinet post as a fallback job should her challenge fall short. In last week's effort the fundraisng total was said to be have raised to $20 million.
So, why did she not run? Simply put, she couldn't win. And a blow-out loss in a statewide would damage her future prospects for a run for governor.
Why did she announce her bail-out today? The Byrd float has become a negative for her.
Capito ably used her raised profile to build a statewide organization for her future gubernatorial or Senate run while sidelining speculation on her most probable future rival for leadership of the WV GOP, Secretary of State Betty Ireland, no governor's daughter but a far better retail campaigner than the staid Capito.
Howver, as the rumor kept circulating and Capito pointedly kept her options open, she began to be viewed as cynically opportunistic at best, ghoulish at worst. It seemed obvious to most observors in the state that the only way Capito would eneter the race would be if Byrd's health forced him to retire. Capito's keeping her options open began to appear more like a circling vulture waiting an easy meal.
Since Labor Day, Capito's Q rating has dropped 10 points. In the RMS (random sampling) polls, she's dropped from a near dead-heat to a double-digit deficit in a match-up agianst Byrd. The Byrd challenge has eroded her once-broad support. She has tarnished her carefully cultivated image. Once seen as a clean pol and gentle lady, she now appears as cynical, calculating and as open to backdoor dealings as her father. Her biggest asset is morphing into a liability as there's only so much folks can recall about Arch Moore before one starts remembering the corruption.
Why today? One can reasonably conclude she may have got a heads-up from the Bushies wooing her for the Senate bid and logically decided to disnegage from the Byrd race on a day when most political coverage would be focused on the SCOTUS. If you're going to run away from a fight, it's wise to do it when folks will not notice your cowardice as much as they would on another day.
Sadly for Shelley, she let this Byrd float hang in the air too long. She's taken some self-inflicted damage. Flirting with taking another job is not the most effective strategy to keep the one she has. Meanwhile, the wind has shifted.
In her first three races for WV-02 she faced flawed or underfunded token Democratic opposition in election years during which she had the wind at her back. When one compares her county-by-county vote totals, Capito and Bush track almost precisley.
Now the worm has turned for Capito. Being tied at the hip to Bush now has started cutting against her. As an aspirant to a GOP Hill leadership post or statewide office, she has cast some votes that do not set well back home, especially on veterans benefits and the Medicaid funding formula. As a Delay ally and recipient of Delay contributions, she is exposed to being rightly portrayed as an out-of-touch Washington insider beholden to out-of-state interests at the expense of the residents of her district.
In this untenable position, Capito finds herself facing a strong, energetic challenge from a credible candidate with the bio, issue positions, and credibility to mount a winning campaign against her.
I will avoid touting Callaghan's virtues as I've covered them in earlier diaries. Check out his sites. Google him.
Once you realize that we have a viable candidate with a better-than-even shot, I have to believe you'll jump on board this train. Callaghan is going to file this week, moving him from exploratory to official. His formal announcement looks to be set for Oct 18th (but may be moved up in reaction to Capito's move).
We can win this one. We can gain a seat, shatter the myth of Republican invincibility in rural districts, undermine the GOP position in a swing state we need back in 2008, and give karma a little help in punishing Capito for the unseemly nature of her Byrd float.