Arkansas Sen. Pryor Now Safe, as GOP Fails to Field Challenger

[babylonsister]

Arkansas Sen. Pryor Now Safe, as GOP Fails to Field Challenger
By Rachel Kapochunas, CQ Staff


Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor ’s bid for a second Senate term soared from highly likely to virtually certain Monday, when no Republican challenger met the state’s congressional filing deadline at noon central time.

CQ Politics has changed its rating on Pryor’s race to Safe Democratic from Democrat Favored, reflecting the fact that he is the first Senate incumbent running this year to officially draw no major-party opponent.

It was likely that this rating change would have been made even if the GOP had fielded a candidate. Republicans’ hopes for seriously competing faded after Asa Hutchinson, a former House member and former high-ranking official at the federal Department of Homeland Security, declined a Senate bid. Then former Gov. Mike Huckabee stuck to his pledge not to run for the Senate this year, even though he dropped his presidential campaign last week after Arizona Sen. John McCain won enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination.

The GOP’s chances of even fielding a candidate fell to Tom Formicola, a medical technology company manager and former city councilman, who publicly considered the race but ultimately did not file to run, according to the office of Arkansas’ Secretary of State. Formicola’s only congressional campaign experience was a failed 2006 bid to win the GOP nomination to run against 2nd District Democratic Rep. Vic Snyder .

Still, the Republicans’ inability to field any Senate candidate in a Southern state that twice favored Republican George W. Bush for president this decade is yet another blow for a party that lost six seats and its Senate majority in 2006, and is mainly playing defense against further Democratic gains this year.

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http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000002684828

[sinkingfeeling]

1. It's too bad I can't legally keep my job and run against Pryor, as a real Democrat. I also didn't

have $10,000 for the filing fee.

[MS Liberal]

2. They did not need to find a republican because Pryor votes like a Republican.

[Art_from_Ark]

3. Arkansas has two of the safest Democratic seats in the Senate

Since Reconstruction, there has been only one Republican US Senator from Arkansas-- Tim Hutchinson. And he was out after only one term. It's no surprise then that the Republicans couldn't field a candidate. But they didn't really have to-- Pryor is a DINO, and proof that sometimes the apple does, indeed, fall far from the tree.