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| Mickey Kaus is running for the Senate |
| 2010-03-03 |
| Slate blogger Mickey Kaus makes it official: he's taken out papers to run in the Democratic primary against California Senator Barbara Boxer. I've known Mickey since he wrote for The Washington Monthly and The New Republic in the 1980s and have always enjoyed his idiosyncratic take on issues and candidates. In his Kausfiles blog he writes the way he talks when he's making an argument: a prime example of how a blogging format can communicate almost like conversation (ed: though it's a pretty one-sided conversation, no? No, he presents alternative views). Mickey insists he is a strong Democrat, but he's an idiosyncratic one: he supports current Democratic health care legislation, but opposes comprehensive immigration legislation that includes legalization of illegal immigrants, and he strongly supported welfare reform in the 1990s. The Boxer campaign oppo research folks, after they've finished perusing Kausfiles for material that will strike Democratic primary voters as damning (they will have an embarrassment of riches) might want to check out his book The End of Equality. I knew that Mickey was the son of the late California Supreme Court Justice Otto Kaus, but I didn't know till I started googling that he is of Viennese origin: his father was born in Vienna and his paternal grandmother novelist and screenwriter Gina Kaus was well connected in Viennesse literary and intellectual circles and fortunately moved to Paris in 1938 and the United States in 1939 and settled in Los Angeles. I think it's likely that she knew some of the Viennese natives who became Hollywood greats, like Otto Preminger and Billy Wilder. Did Mickey mingle with some of these people when we was growing up? I'd love to know. I don't suppose the Boxer campaign is too worried about Mickey's candidacy. But there's a precedent that suggests that a decent showing for an unlikely candidate could cause trouble for the Democratic nominee for Senate in California. In 1982 the novelist Gore Vidal ran for the open Senate seat being vacated by Republican S. I. Hayakawa. The overwhelming favorite in the primary was incumbent Governor Jerry Brown (then 44; now at 72 running for governor again). Two relatively conventional politicians were also running: Orange County state Senator Paul Carpenter and Fresno Mayor Daniel Whitehurst. Brown won the primary by a wide margin, but with only 51% of the vote. Vidal finished second with 15.11%, just ahead of Carpenter (15.10%) and well ahead of Whitehurst (6%). Brown's percentage, relatively low for an eight-year governor with universal name and substantive recognition, and Vidal's second place finish suggested that Brown was not a strong general election candidate, and in November he lost to San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson by a 52%-45% margin. Vidal got 415,366 votes. A similar showing for Mickey in the June primary might be a sign of weakness for Boxer. |
| Posted by:Fred |