Lee Whitnum has forced an August 12th primary in the the 4th congressional district race. The Democratic party flunkies had endorsed Jim Himes as the candidate to challenge Congressman Chris Shays at the Democratic 4th CD nominating convention. This was after months of Himes dutifully making the rounds of DTCs and other flunkie gathering events. Whitnum too had been making the rounds, just seemingly without traction. So it comes as a surprise that she achieved the 2% threshold of signatures of Democratic registered voters to trigger a primary.
Or maybe not. The 4th CD is a challenge to any candidate. The towns that make up the district range from urban blue collar to exurban starched collar residents. Needless to say competing and conflicting needs dominate the political landscape. Shays has done well to manage his political persona as a practical moderate, accessible to all. Except when he occasionally says stupid things about how swimmingly things are going in Iraq after years of being the conscientious objector. Himes has been attempting to differentiate himself from Shays, which has led him down the path of gravitating to more social issues than the bread and butter issues that typically sway independent thinking voters. I can almost see the Himes strategy being deployed here, based on an assumption that a Barack Obama presidential candidacy drives a high Democratic voter turnout. But such a strategy doesn’t account for the reality of voting patterns in the 4th CD, with split tickets and a comfort zone of taxes and trees. Which makes the primary challenge an interesting one.
Name recognition for one, has been a problem for Himes, and more so for Whitnum. Himes has the edge here though, and he should continue to reach out to voters by leveraging his campaign staff. Whitnum’s strategy is a bit hard to figure out, but from her web site:
If you want to know the truth, please send me an email and ask me. Seriously consider whether you should support a wimpy candidate like Himes, who won’t debate me face-to-face but hires anonymous bloggers to malign a member of his own party.
Calling your opponent wimpy will surely add some spice to an otherwise boring race. Let’s see if Whitnum gets that debate. In the meanwhile, its interesting to note that there are not too many challenges going on in the 4th CD State Rep and Senate races. This makes for a lackluster summer campaign season, and presents the purely mathematical chance that Whitnum might just drive enough voters to topple Himes in a low turnout primary. Apathy is the candidate they both should really be concerned about.
