There’s an interesting discussion ongoing at Under the Golden Dome (be sure to read the comments too) regarding the announcement by Virginia Coppola, who as you may recall won a special election for the 1st Bristol House seat a little while back, saying that she’s not running for reelection in November. Claire Naughton, Coppola’s Democratic challenger, seems likely to run again, as will some other area Democrats.
Coppola’s announcement again puts this seat in play for the Democrats. Anyone got more info? Cos?
Please share widely!
Claire Naughton decided a couple of weeks ago to run again, and is putting together a campaign. I’m going to do her web site again, and if you look there, we already have a statement up that says she’s running. She made this decision with the expectation that it would be a re-match against Coppola, not because she heard Coppola wasn’t running. The truth may be the other way around – Coppola may not feel like running another hard campaign so soon, and may have been hoping for an easy re-election.
<
p>
There seem to be a couple of other Democratic candidates running for this seat as well. I intend to blog about it.
Yup – Bill at UGD is backing Paul Feeney for the seat.
Claire called me a few weeks ago to tell me that she was running again. That was well before Ginny Coppola’s decision not to run again.
<
p>
I’m going to contribute another $500 to her campaign. At her special election day party, I promised that I’d donate if she ran again. Fortunately, I gave her my last donation last year so I can give again this year.
<
p>
I’ll probably also raise some additional money for her again from my friends and collegues. In the special election, I raised a few thousand for her and brought a few people with me to the district for election day field work.
<
p>
She is an excellent candidate and would make a great state representative. She ran a strong race against Coppola despite virtually no support from the Democratic state party. I appreciate her guts in taking on a race against the previous state rep’s widow. No other Democratic candidate deserves the nomination in this race.
Correct me if I am wrong…
<
p>
Did Sen. Timilty NOT endorse or support Naughton in her bid last time?
<
p>
If that is the case – I think pressure needs to be put on him to do the right thing this time.
<
p>
I know I certainly would NOT be helping him in the future if he can’t even stand up and back the Dem against the Republican for this seat. And with a name like Timilty – HE is looking at bigger things down the road. IMHO
<
p>
Anyone know the story there?
Remember when I first blogged about the special election there, before Claire Naughton entered the race, the speculation was that Paul Feeney, aide to Timilty, would run. He didn’t run (possibly he thought going up against Coppola’s widow would be too hard?), and Timilty didn’t endorse. That led to speculation that Timilty wanted Feeney to have another chance at the seat, which he wouldn’t if there were a Democratic incumbent. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I do know Feeney announced just within the past week that he is running this time (hmm, now that it’s going to be an open seat with no widow…), so we have to assume Timilty is more likely to endorse him than to do anything else. Now, if Timilty doesn’t endorse Feeney, that would be news. Especially if he picks someone else.
Timilty has little excuse not to endorse Claire. Let’s keep up the ‘friendly encouragement’ for him to do so.