Feb
02
Exit Shuler
ByRep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) will not run for reelection after three terms in office.
“This was not an easy decision,” Shuler said. “However, I am confident that it is the right decision. It is a decision I have weighed heavily over the past few months. I have always said family comes first, and I never intended to be a career politician.”
Heath Shuler will miss living at C street most of all.
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There’ll still be a C Street room with a chocolate on the pillow when he goes back there as a lobbyist.
Twitter: randallt
says:
What a long strange trip. My passion for defeating Mr. Taylor was what brought me back into politics.
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Did you see the snarky Republican statement the NRCC released? I never cared much for Shuler, but those people make me mad!
http://ascendofasheville.com/2012/02/02/surprise/Rate this comment:
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Twitter: dixiegirlz
says:
It was reported in WaPo earlier today, that Schuler was one of the low men on the totem pole as per fund raising. That MAY have something to do with his decision.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/fourth-quarter-fundraising-winners-and-losers/2012/02/01/gIQAeAH8hQ_blog.html
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That reminds me, will Shuler endorse Cecil?
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Twitter: gordondsmith
says:
“A source close to Congressman Heath Shuler’s office tells News 13 his chief of staff Hayden Rogers in considering running for the 11th District Congressional seat.”
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Bad quarterback, worse Democrat. Neither intelligence nor balls.
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Twitter: ThunderPig
says:
Cecil was in Franklin tonight at a previously scheduled town hall and I got his reaction to the retirement on camera.
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Where does Cecil live? In the new 11th or 10th?
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Twitter: gordondsmith
says:
Cecil lives in the new 10th, but that doesn’t disallow him from running in the 11th.
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Twitter: ThunderPig
says:
Video of the full Town Hall held by Cecil in Franklin is on my blog, if it is permissible to engage in self promotion twice in one thread.
Only one of the two newspapers in town was at the event, their coverage won’t be out until next Thursday. The local radio station was not there, either.
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Shuler may not have been the darling of the Asheville progressive set, but he was the only kind of Democrat who could get elected from NC-11 as it was drawn and it remains extremely unlikely even a Blue Dog can get elected from it as it is drawn now. As I’ve said in the past it won’t take very long at all of having Patrick McHenry representing them in Congress before Asheville progressives start pining for the days when Heath Shuler was their congressman.
RHS,
I agree with the sense of what you’re saying, but not with the sentiment.
Asheville’s Democrats still showed up and voted for Shuler.
So why should we progressives not complain about and cast as an adversary a member of the health-care-opposing, cap-and-trade-wheeling-dealing, Blue-Dogging segment of the Democratic House caucus simply because he happens to be the congressman from our district?
And how else should we have responded?