Last month it was great to see a lunatic fringe Florida teabagger, Peg Dunmire, a lifelong Republican, bolt from her partry and qualify for the ballot as a Tea Party candidate. Even if all the Republicans battling for the dubious honor of being routed in the general election by Alan Grayson are laughable lightweights, it's still extra insurance to have a caterwauling extremist like Dunmire drawing votes away from whichever loser wins the GOP primary. (A good bet is Hate Talk Radio host, Todd Long, but the latest rage among the Rubio crowd is drooling psychopath Dan Fanelli. Also running are a motley collection of Fox News audience members, Kurt Kelly, Daniel Webster, Ken Miller, Bruce O'Donoghue, and Patricia Sullivan. Is it any wonder that the Orlando Sentinel reported that Grayson could win... the Republican primary!?!
And there's even more good news from Florida's fractured Republican Party after the jump...
Grayson isn't the only Florida Democrat blessed with a third-party teabagger in his race. As we reported at DWT this morning, the race to replace Republican Adam Putnam in the Polk/Hillsborough County district east of St Petersburg has to now be counted as favoring progressive Democrat Doug Tudor. That's because one of the two most popular Republicans in the primary withdrew at the last minute, resigned from the corruption-scarred Florida GOP and is running as an independent teabagger. Although Tudor will first have to beat a DCCC-backed Blue Dog, Lori Edwards, in the primary, his solid grassroots support in the party he helped build is likely to be insurmountable for the lobbyist backed conservative Edwards.
Yesterday's stunt by Polk County Commissioner Randy Wilkinson, a religious fanatic, was music to Tudor's ears. Republicans in the district love Wilkinson's praise-the-Lord-and-damn-the-torpedos politics and have elected and re-elected him in the largest part of the district. There's no question that he could take as much as a third of the GOP vote away from Republican primary frontrunner, shady corporate shyster and ex-State Rep. Dennis Ross. In fact, poor Ross, who is also an extreme right kook will still have to contend with a teabagger inside the GOP primary since another fringe right sociopath, John W. Lindsey Jr., also qualified. I called Doug yesterday and he felt the same way I did about it. He told us, in pretty excited terms, that he couldn't have hoped for a better Filing Day outcome:
“With today’s federal filing deadline, the field is set in Florida’s 12th Congressional district. It is one progressive-- me-- running against four conservatives. Randy Wilkinson’s surprise filing as a TEA Party candidate ensuring a three-way general election, TeamTudor has never had a more clear path to victory in November. We know we can beat Blue Dog Lori Edwards, due to our superior grassroots and activist organization. Once Randy splits the radical right vote with big-insurance lawyer Dennis Ross in November, we will elect a Progressive and representative democracy will be returned to FL-12.”
FL-12 now moves up the rank to one of the best opportunities for a red seat turning blue. Again, please help make sure it's actually BLUE by helping Doug win his primary against a corporately-owned Blue Dog who has the same positions as the Republicans... though just on the important things. You can contribute to Doug's campaign here at the Blue America '10 page. And, in fact, every person who donates at least $25 in the next 24 hours will have his or her name put into a hat, from which one winner will be drawn. Winner? Winner? What's the prize? Ah... glad you asked. Remember, before I became a blogger I was the president of Reprise Records and one of our awesomest artists was Neil Young. The "winner" gets a rare, numbered VERY limited edition full color Neil Young print that has never been offered for sale. If you know a Neil Young fan, this is the ultimate gift.