As a publisher and editor, I have to confess that entertainment value is an important consideration for me as I think who I’d like to see get into a campaign this fall. We took a big hit yesterday when Ralph Reed announced he’s not running for Congress. On the other hand, there’s increasing evidence that Dan Senor, chief spokesman for Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq during the early glory days, is seriously looking at running against Kirsten Gillibrand in New York. So all hope is not lost.
I first wrote about Senor back in 2003 in the Washington Monthly, in a piece about GOP operatives running the occupation of Iraq …
A typical example is Dan Senor. Before attending Harvard Business School from 1999 to 2001, Senor was a staffer for then-Sen. Spencer Abraham of Michigan. After receiving his MBA, he went to the Carlyle Group, where he was a venture capitalist from 2001 to 2003. Senor left Carlyle in 2003 for a brief stint as White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan’s deputy before shipping off to Iraq. Though he showed up in Iraq as a junior press handler, Senor is now Bremer’s senior advisor and for most of last summer he was in charge of organizing Iraq’s post-Saddam media, an effort which most have rated as little short of a disaster.
Speaking more generally, even though the New York state Democratic party is in a bizarre state of scandal-induced free fall, the GOP can’t seem to nominate any remotely serious candidates to run at the state level.
With Gov. Paterson now definitively out of the running, Andrew Cuomo is actually destroying the only name Republican in the governor’s race, former Rep. Rick Lazio. The current TPM Poll Average has this race at 60.2% to 27%.
Meanwhile the most recent poll suggests that Gillibrand herself is on the rebound. Which may become relevant if the Republicans come up with someone to run against her.
