wa-03 – Moe Lane

#rsrh My OTR statement re Brian Baird.

I don’t give a tinker’s dam what a man who voted for the stimulus, cap-and-trade, & Obamacare does or does not think about good governance, and neither should you. And neither should the incoming bumper crop of freshman Republican Members of Congress, particularly since many of them are getting into office in large part because of the moral cowardice of people like Brian Baird.

Go home, Baird: raise your kids, have a good life, stay out of politics from now on. Can you do that for the Republic? Great, thanks, don’t let the door hit you in the rear on the way out.

Moe Lane

PS: Jaime Herrera for WA-03. Grown-up.

Meet David Castillo (R CAND, WA-03).

David’s one of the candidates running for the open seat at WA-03 (as you remember, current incumbent Brian Baird cut and run last year). The primary hasn’t happened yet, and as Washington state has the top two primary candidates advance to the general election regardless of party affiliation, the race is not yet really settled. We talked about that – and phosphates – today:

David’s site is here.

Crossposted to RedState.

Jaime Herrera (R CAND, WA-03): Stealth SEIU Supporter?

Come, I will conceal nothing from you: I am growing quickly disinclined to get dragged into primary political battles for the 2010 election. This is partially because I’m getting to a position where I know some of the folks involved in the campaigns (which is why I’m counting the days until the California primaries are over), and partially because it’s going to be a free-for-all for some of these seats (part of the problem with having so many Democratic seats up for grabs). So, it’ll take a bit to get me to note something in particular about a GOP primary candidate.

A 2008 SEIU endorsement will do. I’m not as ready as that poster is to tie WA-03 Republican candidate Jaime Herrera to ACORN, but taking money from the Purple People Beaters is quite bad enough (see here and here for corroboration that State Rep. Herrera did in fact get endorsed by SEIU). Mind you, I’m perfectly ready to believe that she regrets that endorsement now, too – but now would also be a good time for her to indicate said regrets. Put another way: at the moment Herrera is talking about Big Labor, which is great… but as a state legislator she courted Big Labor, which makes at least an explanation germane. And when you have an unexplained disconnect between current rhetoric and past rhetoric, it looks bad if it gets out.

And it will get out. Somebody will always be happy to pass someone else a quiet word.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Brian Baird (D, WA-03) Bails out.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers. And Big Government ones.

He’s retiring (third Democrat from a at-risk district). It’s a D+0 seat: contra the New York Times, Cook had it as being competitive (Likely Democratic), and that will be almost certainly be upgraded rather quickly. Baird’s reasoning? He wants to spend more time with his family. Judging from the reactions of his colleagues, this sudden desire comes as a bit of a surprise.

Interestingly, the six-term, 53 year old Congressman was not on the NRCC’s target-for-retirement list. He had three GOP challengers:

David B. Castillo
David William Hedrick (This guy)
Jon David Russell

…and that’s all I know about them. Well, that and that one of them just got a much improved chance to be the next Congressman from WA-03.

Moe Lane