This one was rumored for awhile, and whispers first started appearing when a Kossack diaried that he been polled about a prospective Ford vs. Gillibrand Senate primary.
Encouraged by a group of influential New York Democrats, Harold Ford Jr., the former congressman from Tennessee, is weighing a bid to unseat Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand in this fall’s Democratic primary, according to three people who have spoken with him.
Mr. Ford, 39, who moved to New York three years ago, has told friends that he will decide whether to run in the next 45 days. The discussions between Mr. Ford and top Democratic donors reflect the dissatisfaction of some prominent party members with Ms. Gillibrand, who has yet to win over key constituencies, especially in New York City.
...
Some of the donors who have urged Mr. Ford to consider a run expressed alarm as Ms. Gillibrand, who as a congresswoman represented a conservative upstate district, has abandoned some of her previous positions on issues like gun control and immigration as she prepares to run statewide. Several executives interested in a Ford candidacy said that Ms. Gillibrand’s positions echoed Mr. Schumer’s and that the state needed a second independent voice in the Senate.
Mr. Ford, who lives in Manhattan, represented a conservative Southern state and, if he runs, may himself have to tweak some of his positions to appeal to New York voters.
This would certainly be unusual. More odd, I would say, than Hillary running for the New York Senate, as Hillary was a national figure, and a mainstream liberal who was popular in New York. Harold Ford is a center-right Democrat from a Southern state, who already represented that Southern state in Congress.
I find the justifications from Ford's potential donors especially odd. They want Ford to challenge Gillibrand because they think Gillibrand won't be able to hold city constituencies? But they also "express concerns" about Gillibrand moving to the left on immigration and gun control? Are they seriously arguing that Ford will win over city voters by running to Gillibrand's right in a Democratic primary?
While many downstate New Yorkers were irked by Gillibrand's earlier positions on guns and immigration, and although many still distrust her, they're not going to support an even more conservative Democrat over those issues. And given that Gillibrand IS from upstate and is the first upstate New York senator in decades, Ford can't exactly expect to win upstate.
(And besides, who do they think Gillibrand's going to lose city voters to? Peter King? Doubtful. And he probably won't even run.)
All told, I'm very skeptical about this. I don't think he'll run. And the only way I could see him winning would be if some other prominent person challenges Gillibrand from the left, potentially splitting the vote and letting Ford slip through.
Ford vs. Gillibrand? We'll see.