Kucinich opposing veteran Democrat in Ohio primary

In this photo from ear­lier this year, Rep. Den­nis Kucinich, D-Ohio, hands out copies of an Office and Man­age­ment Bud­get (OMB) report as he walks past reporters after attend­ing a Demo­c­ra­tic cau­cus meet­ing on Capi­tol Hill in Wash­ing­ton. Kucinich says he’s stick­ing with his plan to run against fel­low Demo­c­rat Marcy Kap­tur in a U.S. House race that will pit two vet­eran law­mak­ers against each other. (Asso­ci­ated Press File | Susan Walsh)

JOHN SEEWER

Asso­ci­ated Press

TOLEDO — Ohio Rep. Den­nis Kucinich has set­tled on a pri­mary run against fel­low Demo­c­ra­tic Rep. Marcy Kap­tur, set­ting up a race between two U.S. House veterans.

Kucinich filed the paper­work to run Wednes­day. He had spent the last few weeks mulling whether to seek another con­gres­sional seat closer to his home in Cleve­land after the Ohio Leg­is­la­ture approved a new con­gres­sional dis­trict map.

The new map gave Kap­tur a big­ger chunk of her cur­rent dis­trict in the Toledo area, lead­ing to spec­u­la­tion that Kucinich might con­sider run­ning against Rep. Mar­cia Fudge, a Cleve­land Demo­c­rat. He also had toyed this sum­mer with the idea of run­ning in Wash­ing­ton state.

Kucinich, an eight-term con­gress­man, announced in Sep­tem­ber that he would run against Kap­tur after Repub­li­cans who con­trolled the redis­trict­ing process put them in a dis­trict that hugs the Lake Erie shore­line from Cleve­land to Toledo.

But Ohio law­mak­ers threw out that map and approved new con­gres­sional bound­aries two weeks ago after Democ­rats com­plained that their first attempt to redraw the dis­tricts was too par­ti­san and split too many coun­ties in half.

That led Kucinich to rethink his strategy.

While the first map seemed to favor Kucinich because it included more of his base in sub­ur­ban Cleve­land, the final ver­sion appeared to shift the advan­tage to Kap­tur because it added about 90,000 vot­ers in the Toledo area.

The win­ner of the March pri­mary will be heav­ily favored to win the seat in November.

Kap­tur and Kucinich, both 65, have had strong sup­port from union lead­ers and blue-collar work­ers over the years. They call them­selves friends of each other.

Kucinich, who ran for pres­i­dent in 2004 and 2008, has a national fol­low­ing among pro­gres­sives. He is known for his off­beat, brash style since becom­ing Cleveland’s “boy mayor” at age 31.

Kap­tur is the longest-serving Demo­c­ra­tic woman in the House. She was first elected to Con­gress in 1982. Labor lead­ers urged her to run for gov­er­nor in 2006, but she decided to stay in Congress.

Posted by AP News on Dec 28 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.