Republican Senate

Within the last few days filing closed in a couple of mountain west states.  Idaho probably featured the most bizarre sequence of events surrounding a filing deadline of any state so far.  Hal Styles, Jr., who has never lived in the state, filed in the Republican primary.  Both Kent Marmon and rancher Rex Rammell quit the Republican race, with Marmon out altogether filing as a Libertarian and Rammell filing as an independent.  Pro-Life (yes, that’s his legal name) also filed as an independent.  Neither major party candidate faces serious opposition, so Lt. Gov. Jim Risch will face off against former Rep. Larry LaRocco.  Risch handily defeated LaRocco in the race for Lt. Gov. in 2006, and there is little reason to think that LaRocco will fare any better this November.  The wildcard will be the two independent candidates, but they would both have to run exceptionally strong spoiler campaigns to make that much of a difference.

In Montana, Sen. Max Baucus caught a break when former state Senate President Bob Keenan did not file.  While the Republican primary field is crowded, ousted state House Speaker Mike Lange is our best candidate, and he’d need an absolute meltdown from Baucus to stand a chance.  With his standing among his colleagues, even that might not do it.  Had this been a better year, Rehberg may well have taken a shot at Baucus, but such is politics.  Both will remain in office for the next six years and he may well make the run in 2014.

With only one strong candidate in each state, this could be the last post on either this year.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 12:25 am and is filed under Non-Competitive Races, Idaho 08, Montana 08. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.