Saturday, February 09, 2008

Oregonian - Wyden aide talks up Novick for 5th District run

This blurb in the Oregonian by Jeff Mapes quotes an aide to Ron Wyden as indicating they'd love Steve Novick to run for Darlene Hooley's 5th District Congressional seat. Here's what he has to say about it:
My favorite comes from Josh Kardon, chief of staff to Sen. Ron Wyden,D-Ore.
He talked up the idea of U.S. Senate candidate Steve Novick moving overto the
5th CD race."This is probably the only race where their bench comes close to
ours,"said Kardon. The only potential candidate we could run with high
namerecognition across the district is Steve Novick and I have no idea if he has
anyinterest."

The article goes on to say Novick has no stated interest in giving up his Senate run. Of course, things can change. He could use the money he's already raised. He's also likely the highest-profile person the party could get at this late notice.

Right now, it sounds like Vance Day is supporting Mike Erickson on the GOP side, even though there are some potentials (like Kevin Mannix) who are perceived to possibly be stronger candidates. Time will tell...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

don't hold your breath.

Anonymous said...

I don't think Novick could win in the 5th. I'm not even sure he could be competitive. Ditto for his current race, though. It's pretty hard for a never-elected politician to win a major office even without any ethical baggage.

Jim Knowlton said...

I agree that it would be tough for him. Darlene Hooley was more of a middle-of-the-road Democrat than Novick, by far. This is not an extremely liberal area...I think a better candidate would be more of a "DLC Democrat".

Anonymous said...

Anon2--you're wrong about his current race; he does better than Merkley and was just outside the margin against Smith in October.

The "ethical baggage" thing sounds like a smear, trying to avoid the fact that the Merkley campaign seems to be trying to make up a scandal without any evidence. Now this--they must really be scared of losing to Novick. I can understand why; the guy's a decent legislator but has no spark whatsoever.

Anonymous said...

Jim, you're right about Hooley v. Novick. That's the biggest reason why he couldn't win in the 5th.

Anon3, both the Riley survey and the SurveyUSA poll results were within the margin of error - meaning that in both of them Merkley may well have actually performed better than Novick. And that doesn't even get into the methodology of the Riley survey which renders it meaningless. Nor does it get into the SurveyUSA results showing Dems favoring Merkley and Repugs favoring Novick.