Just a little while ago, Senator Roy Ashburn, held a press conference to announce that he is NOT running for Congress (wouldn’t it have been easier to send out a press release?).  The decision by Asburn means that the protege of the retiring incumbent Bill Thomas should pretty much waltz into the United States House of Representatives.  The Bakersfield Californian has an article up already.

The good news for everyone is that I’ve met Kevin McCarthy, and he is no Bill Thomas.  McCarthy is certainly more conservative than Thomas ideologically, as he has demonstrated as the Assembly Republican Leader.  McCarthy also has a decent personality.  As Kevin and I have joked about over the years, you fight the good fight (for us, it was GOP youth politics) and then go get a beer.  No one would ever get a beer with Thomas because he is a self-important jerk.

Anyways, it is always easy for me to digress into a Thomas-rant — let me get back to some analysis.  In his announcement that he is seeking re-election to the State Senate, Ashurn endorsed McCarthy’s bid for Congress.  I’m not from Bakersfield, but even from the 30,000 foot level, this pretty much ends any real competition for McCarthy and his Congressional bid.

You can be sure that all of the energy of "Team Abernathy" (a reference to Mark and Kathy Abernathy, political operatives who have been tied at the hip to Bill Thomas since forever ago) will be focused on McCarthy’s replacement in the State Assembly. 

Abernathy’s client (which will lead very quickly to orchestrated Thomas and McCarthy endorsements) for the Assembly seat is Bakersfield City School District Superintendent Jean Fuller.  Also announced thus-far for that seat are former State Legislator Phil Wyman, who has become a perennial candidate for years in his attempts to return to Sacramento, and a business executive named Gene Lundquist.  Fuller is clearly the front-runner already, with the backing of the Thomas-machine, and that absence of an Asburn/McCarthy matchup in the overlapping House seat.  The BakCal article on Fuller’s entry into the Assembly race is here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 9th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.