Starboard Broadside

Oh happy day! Former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. (D-Tenn.) has decided not to run for US Senate in New York. Now I can stop attacking him in every post I write that mentions him... oh wait, nope, I still revile him and will not allow him to resuscitate his political career for a future run. I will say, to his credit (at least until we find out the real reasons, if we're cynical about it), that he made the decision ostensibly for the best reasons:

Under intense pressure from Democratic Party officials, Harold E. Ford Jr., the former Tennessee congressman, has decided not to challenge Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand in the primary this fall.

He has told friends that, while he is convinced he could prevail against Ms. Gillibrand, he feared the winner of the primary would have little money and remain highly vulnerable to a well-financed Republican challenger at a time when the Democratic party controls the Senate by a slim majority.

“I’ve examined this race in every possible way, and I keep returning to the same fundamental conclusion: If I run, the likely result would be a brutal and highly negative Democratic primary — a primary where the winner emerges weak-ened and the Republican strengthened,” Mr. Ford wrote in an opinion article to be published in Tuesday’s edition of The New York Times.

The article goes on to link mounting party pressure to the growing scandals of Gov. David Paterson (D) that make NY Democrats want to reduce negative press about Democrats, as well as to the Massachusetts Senate loss that showed Democrats can't afford to take risks with allegedly safe seats.

As you'll find in my post earlier today promoting a hard-fought Democratic primary in Arkansas for the Senate seat there, I don't oppose all primary challenges, and I actively advocate many of them... but my big conditions for supporting a big primary challenge are if the primary is early in the cycle to allow recovery time (New York primary is September, too close to November), and if the primary is between a proven and electable progressive challenger against an overly centrist incumbent (here we have a conservative-turned-liberal incumbent doing a great job so far, with a right-wing challenger).

The other big problem in this case was that Ford is a failed US Senate candidate from out-of-state with an extremely conservative and reactionary record that matched his old constituency better, and that he was a big proponent of trying to push the party rightward. A primary should be between an incumbent and somebody who can better represent the state/district than the incumbent, for me to want to support a primary fight. An anti-gay, anti-choice Democrat from Tennessee is not a better fit for New York in the US Senate than an upstate conservative woman who's demonstrated a change of record since assuming her new role. Ford's also so sleazy and opportunistic, to a sickening degree, even compared to other career politicians.

For more details and citations for my attacks, please reference my previous posts on Harold Ford and the New York Senate race:
-"For the record, I oppose Harold Ford" 1/8/10, my big post on the subject
-"Harold Ford hires campaign staff" 1/11/10
-"Dear New York" 1/17/10, an open letter to NY Dems about his carpetbagging and banking ties (though not his tax cheating)
-"Running in New York" 1/31/10, Helicopter Ford visits NYC
-"Colbert blasts Harold Ford" 2/2/10, Stephen Colbert's interview with Ford goes badly for the latter

As you can tell, I was vehemently opposed to his candidacy. Therefore, I'm glad to see him gone. I think the primary's risks would have outweighed the benefits, so I'm not one to mourn the loss of an opportunity for a dragged out brutal fight.