A Primary to Show us the Future of the State GOP?
I will give Urquhart credit, he is no Christine O’Donnell. He lost badly in his race for Congress, so instead of doubling down on another race, or instead of running for even higher office (i.e. Senator or Governor), he is pulling back on his ambitions and running for an office he thinks he can win: a State Senate race in normally friendly Sussex County. Or so we thought…
The problem is he is emailed various media and politicos downstate saying he is running for the 8th Senate seat. The 8th is up in Newark, where Dave Sokola and Liane Sorenson are expected to face off in a battle royale. Perhaps Urqy feels Liane is a RINO and not conservative enough for his liking, and thus will move to Newark to challenge her in a primary.
Go right ahead Urqy!
More likely, Mr. Urquhart is confused and meant that he is running for the 6th Senate District, against Ernesto Lopez in the Republican primary. Lopez is a former associate director of undergraduate admissions for UD, and currently works for the University as an agricultural extension specialist. Thirty-five years old, Lopez wants to bring “a fresh vision of leadership and accountability” to Legislative Hall. Lopez’s wife, Janis, is the granddaughter of the late state Senator Charles Evans Hughes. It sounds like Lopez is the type of young Republican the party needs to be recruiting to rebuild itself after 20 years of decline.
But no!!! The old radical conservative Glenn Urquhart will not have it, and will not allow new ideas and new leadership to take the party in any other direction but far right. Indeed, I think this primary race might show us the future of the state GOP, or rather, whether the party has a future.
Ernie Lopez ran for NCCo President back in 2004 against Paul Clark. I saw him in a debate or two and he came across as a nice guy — largely armed with a bunch of GOP candidate training talking points, but not much in the way of real knowledge or ideas about NCCo government. If Lopez can ditch the GOP talking points and get to some substance he might indeed be part of the GOP’s future. Unfortunately, the current GOP is largely about demanding allegiance to their wingnuttiest players and conspiracy theories and whatever else counts as their circus, so Lopez has an interesting path ahead of him.
Celia Cohen waxed rhapsodic about Lopez’ ties to the old school Delaware GOP when he was running for NCCo President.
And no one down here outside of his neighbors, have ever heard of Lopez. This could be interesting, especially if Lynn Rogers throws his hat in the ring on the Democratic side.