"A true friend stabs you in the front." -Oscar Wilde
You may be aware of the broad overview of how the 2006 Senate situation looks right now. Rick Santorum is probably the underdog in Pennsylvania, Lincoln Chafee will probably have a tougher fight here in Rhode Island than he did last time, Mike DeWine looks like a chump out in Ohio (even if Sherrod Brown announced today he's not running) and it looks like we may be able to get something going in Montana to take out Conrad Burns (whose middle name is Montgomery in style if not in name). As for Democratic seats, we may have trouble holding onto our open seat in Minnesota, the COO of Ameritrade is going back to Nebraska to take on Ben Nelson, and everyone says that Florida's Bill Nelson is the last holdout in a state that's trending Republican.
The Florida race seems the most interesting. First off, the incumbent Bill Nelson, a fine upstanding Democrat, actually went into space for a while as a sitting U.S. Representative. As a result, he's a much better person than me or you, and in a halfway decent country his Senate reelection would go uncontested. Fortunately, though, in this reality we've got Katherine Harris. Yes, the 2000 Florida secretary of state who, as Bush's Florida chairwoman, did everything she could to make sure Bush would "carry" the state so he could "win" the presidency, is making a run for the Senate.
Now, the idea of Katherine Harris as their party's Senate nominee has made a lot of Republicans in Florida and DC pretty nervous. First, there's the ongoing hilarity of her appearance, which you can see in two alluring Wonkette links as she explains her campaign assets (what a great look on her face, too) and, well, stops looking like a clown. So Katherine Harris is never a dull candidate. The second reason she has Team Republican antsy, of course, is the fact that every Democrat in the country hates her, so all astronaut Bill Nelson has to do is tell Democratic donors that he's the only thing blocking Katherine Harris from the Senate, and he can basically print money.
So, apparently casting aside Team Bush's legendary loyalty to those who have stuck with them, national Republicans (i.e. Karl Rove) are looking for a new candidate. The speaker of the state House decided not to run, so it looks like now Republicans have come up with Plan C: turn this whole land into Scarborough Country. So if you're anything like me and you've spent many a 10 o'clock hour watching MSNBC, you know the awesome punditry skills of talk show host and former congressman Joe Scarborough. I kind of hope he runs, actually; the attack ads on him will be like shooting fish in a barrel, and Ms. Harris's continued presence means Nelson can still raise a shitload of money. So this should be a fun one. Why is everything in Florida always weird?
