Yesterday’s surprise announcement that Indiana Senator Evan Bayh was dropping his re-election bid on the eve of the filing deadline continues to play out in surprising ways. Josh Marshall notes that longshot Tamyra d’Ippolito claims to have collected enough signatures to get her on the ballot, which “would leave her as the only name on the ballot in the Democratic primary, effectively making her the Democratic nominee.” Says Josh,
Holding this seat this year is going to be a serious challenge regardless of who they field. But observers don’t seem to think d’Ippolito would have a shot even in the best of years.
The logical fallback for Dems is to consolidate around an alternative candidate and mount a write-in campaign. That’s doable but not an easy road.
Truly a bizarre position, considering Bayh seemed a shoo-in for holding the seat a mere 24 hours ago.
It could be worse. Nick Gillespie riffs on Katrina vanden Heuvel’s suggestion that the Dems recruit John Cougar Mellencamp and finds that a certain family which lives in a small town has been the beneficiary of quite a tidy sum in farm aid from you and me.
UPDATE: d’Ippolito’s claims appear to be a might premature. Indeed, Steve Benen passes on this Politico report:
No Democrats qualified to run for the seat of retiring Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) by the Tuesday noon deadline, a huge relief for party leaders who feared that an obscure candidate could make it onto the ballot and seriously complicate Democratic prospects for holding onto the seat. State party officials will now select the party’s Senate nominee for November.
According to the state elections division, no Democratic candidate other than Bayh had collected the required 4,500 certified petition signatures, including the requisite 500 from each of the state’s nine congressional districts, to make the ballot.
Tamyra D’Ippolito, a Bloomington cafe owner who had been challenging Bayh for the nomination, appeared to fall far short of the mark. According to state Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker, she gathered just 22 valid signatures across the state.
Hmm.
