Senate Guru offers four clues as to his decision. The first three we knew already.
The evidence:
First, in late June, Castle made his general direction known to the public:
“They’ve asked me to run for the Senate as a Republican. I don’t know if I’m going to do that,” business-friendly Castle told a crowd of financial planners at Cira Centre in Philadelphia yesterday. …
Meanwhile, says Castle, “my wife talks about beaches in Florida. I don’t know if I want to run for the House again, let alone for the four years of Biden’s term.” …
But Castle’s been in the minority long enough to know “the administration usually gets what it wants.”
He told me he’ll decide about a Senate run – or retirement – by the end of summer.
Not only does Castle reveal that he’s far from sold on a Senate bid, but he also mentions that his wife wants him to retire; and, to top it off, he recognizes that his adding one single vote to a shrinking House minority won’t make a substantive difference.
Second, the fundraising after the second quarter. We all know about his horrible fundraising, where he only raised $15,761 from actual citizens, which, as Senate Guru points out, is basically nothing when you consider that a campaign’s operating expenses are six times that at minimum. Third, Senate Guru thinks, and I agree, that the insanity thrown at him from Crazy Eileen back on June 30 may have hastened his retirement. Why deal with conservative thugs like Burris and Anderson and insane conspiracy theorists like Crazy Eileen when you have a beach in Florida to retire to? Finally, the fourth clue was Castle’s interview with Loudell on WDEL on Monday:
Speaking to WDEL radio interviewer Allan Loudell on Monday about his upcoming decision, Castle said: “I have a responsibility, primarily to the Republican Party of Delaware, to make it relatively soon. And relatively means in the next month or so.” …
Castle, who turned 70 last month, might also retire from political life. …
“Obviously, if I don’t run for the House or the Senate, they have to get two candidates. If I run for the Senate and not the House, they have to get a candidate for the House, or the other way around,” Castle told WDEL. “So it gives everybody else who is interested in running the opening that they would need, and I would want to help those people.”
In the event he does not seek any office in 2010, Castle said that there are some “good young elected officials in the state who possibly could run on a statewide basis and should be looked at.”
Castle in particular identified former state Sen. Charlie Copeland, who was the party’s 2008 nominee for lieutenant governor, and state Reps. Tom Kovach and Greg Lavelle.
Mike Castle is passing the torch here. He has probably already told the National and state GOP that they have plenty of candidates who could make the run, and now he is telling the public. If he was planning on running himself, he would not offer alternatives to his candidacy. This reminds me of a question President Kennedy got at a press conference:
REPORTER: If you had it to over again would you run for the Presidency and would you recommend it to others?
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: The answer to the first is yes, I would run again, and the answer to the second is no, I don’t recommend it to others, at least for a while.”
Castle is already on the beach in his mind.