Karl-T has it on good authority that John Sharp is finally ready to officially announce his intention to run for Governor. With all due respect, we’ve been seeing these straws in the wind for awhile now, so until I hear if from the man himself, I’m not going to get too excited one way or the other. Having a contested Democratic primary will have good and bad aspects to it, but if the candidates who would be involved focus on the issues (in particular, the utter failure of the current Governor), then I think it’ll be a net positive.
And speaking of other not-yet-officially-announced candidates, if you want to be the first kid on your block to know when Chris Bell steps up and throws his hat in, just let him know that you want to know.
Given the weak state of the Democratic Party in this state, a contested primary will be nothing but good, in my opinion.
Especially since it looks like we’ll have far better choices this time around than last time.
The “weakness” of the Democratic Party machinery is a chicken-egg issue. Organization is vital, but we also need good candidates to help us build. As I wrote today at http://panhandletruthsquad.blogspot.com/2005/07/regressives-in-trouble.html, the current environment provides us with opportunity, and that’s the reason we’re hearing all this talk about candidates. For this cycle, we’ll have to hope that R weakness and a strong message from a good candidate at the top of the ticket can overcome the R organizational advantage. But regardless, in the long term, having strong candidates will do a lot to help build our infrastructure and make us truly competitive.