His spokesman confirmed it to The Hill. Before you get your hopes up, there will ba a Duncan Hunter on the ballot. It will be Duncan D. Hunter, the 30 year old spawn of the man himself.
Hunter insisted that he would not think of his father’s seat as something that was automatically his. “Dad always said there’s no hand me downs in anything. This is going to be a race just like any other race and it’s going to be a hard fight.”
Duncan the original says that he is opposed to running for two offices at the same time. Oh yeah, he's running for President...possibly. Before he officially announces, he ought to straighten out the FEC complaint filed by CREW.
Rep. Hunter announced his intentions to explore a presidential bid in October 2006. Beginning in December 2006, he promoted his candidacy by running advertisements with money he both raised and spent illegally. In December 2006, PTS PAC aired thinly-veiled campaign advertisements in early primary states promoting Rep. Hunter’s support for constructing a fence along the US-Mexico border.
Although federal election law allows a candidate to “test the waters” – meaning spend funds for travel and polling – a candidate who is testing the waters cannot spend more than $5,000 on general public political advertising such as the ads run by Rep. Hunter. Once a person spends over $5,000 in support of a presidential campaign, he automatically becomes a candidate under federal election law.
It seems that Hunter the elder has tripped automatic election rules by spending too much money on advertising and thus broken rules on contribution limits.
In addition, once a person becomes a candidate, he or she may only accept individual contributions of up to $2,300 per election. While supporting Rep. Hunter’s efforts to test the waters, PTS PAC received 11 individual contributions over that limit, with the result that the PAC received $27,350 in excess contributions.
As for the son, name recognition goes a long way. In a conservative district, he has a better than even chance of taking the seat. As for the dad, falling off one's horse in the starting gate is not a good way to kick off a Presidential bid.