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Monday, February 08, 2010

Timing Is Off Again

If he wants to be seen as bold and on the edge. Once again Harold Ford Jr. is too late with his groundbreaking revelation of feeling the need for complete disclosure. He drags his feet when it comes to telling the whole story. He let another famous politician reveal his mixed heritage before he came out with the news about his grandmother being white. That politician went on to be elected POTUS. Now he wants to see how the public feels about his interracial marriage. Since he didn't get married until after he left office in Tennessee. He should have kept his feelings about the south and it's acceptance of interracial marriage to himself. I was one of the few in his former district who had even noticed that he was married to a white woman. Who is he trying to impress? His timing is off again.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:44 PM

    Harold Ford Jr. won't run for Senate seat in New York

    Harold E. Ford Jr., the former Memphis congressman who has sought to parlay his star power and Wall Street connections into a political career in New York, has decided not to challenge Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in the Democratic primary this September, according to friends and advisers.

    After traveling the state on a closely watched tour, he told friends that he could prevail but feared that an ugly campaign would leave the winner drained of cash and vulnerable to a Republican challenger at a time when the Democratic Party controls the U.S. Senate by a slender majority.


    Former Memphis congressman Harold Ford Jr. announced in today's New York Times that he won't run for Senate.
    "I've examined this race in every possible way, and I keep returning to the same fundamental conclusion: If I run, the likely result would be a brutal and highly negative Democratic primary — a primary where the winner emerges weakened and the Republican strengthened," Ford wrote in a New York Times op-ed that was posted online Monday ahead of today's publication.

    The possibility of a Senate campaign in New York by Ford, who has been working as a vice chairman of Merrill Lynch and a political commentator on NBC since moving to New York in 2006, had riveted New York's political world and touched off a furious behind-the-scenes effort to keep him out of the race.

    After Ford acknowledged his interest in the Senate seat in January, Democratic leaders expressed fear that a tough primary battle with Gillibrand would endanger what is considered a safe Democratic seat at a time when Republicans are mounting challenges across the country.

    That anxiety has escalated as New York Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman began weighing the possibility of entering the campaign as a Republican, raising the prospect that a billionaire opponent will await the winner of the Democratic primary.

    "I refuse to do anything that would help Republicans win a Senate seat in New York, and give the Senate majority to the Republicans," Ford wrote in The Times.

    But he faced practical — and mundane — obstacles as well, including a big fundraising gap with Gillibrand and little time to close it. His advisers estimated that he needed $15 million over the next six months.

    From the start, Ford's potential candidacy angered national Democratic Party leaders by disrupting plans for what was planned as a seamless Gillibrand nomination. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada called Mayor Michael Bloomberg to discourage him from supporting Ford, and Sen. Charles Schumer of New York met personally with Ford to argue against his candidacy.

    At first, the organized campaign seemed to embolden Ford. He branded those who asked him to stay out as "bullying party bosses" and sought to portray himself as a political outsider taking on an out-of-touch establishment.

    When his aides commissioned a poll of New York voters to test the viability of his candidacy, they described him as bringing "needed change to Washington" and "independent of Albany."

    Despite his relative newness to the state — he did not become an official resident until 2009 — dozens of influential Democratic donors urged him to run, saying they were underwhelmed by Gillibrand, a former upstate congresswoman who was appointed to the Senate by Gov. David Paterson last year after a muddled search to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton.

    Gillibrand long ago locked up most of the state's Democratic county chairman, but Ford doubted the depth of her support: several upstate mayors privately encouraged him to run, arguing that an appointed senator should be tested in a primary.

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