He's gone, but maybe not for long

December 19th, 2006, posted by LVDem

Fresh off of a narrow loss in his first re-election campaign, Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick says that he'll wait to see how his successor fares before deciding whether to run again in 2008.

''We'll see how the new guy works out,'' Fitzpatrick said in a recent interview. The Republican lawmaker lost by 1,521 votes to Democrat Patrick Murphy in the 8th Congressional District race last month and has been widely viewed as a likely candidate to run again in two years.

Fitzpatrick said he's been approached by several people within the party about a repeat candidacy in the mainly Bucks County district, which leans Republican

Filed under:

Congressional Midterms '06

Re: He's gone, but maybe not for long

On December 19th, 2006 phillydem said:

Look at the “second time around” candidates and few, if any, of them won.

Off the Top of My Head...

On December 20th, 2006 pghtory said:

Well, I can name two, who re-captured their respective House seats last month: Baron Hill in Indiana and Nick Lampson in Texas. Granted, Lampson didn’t exactly win HIS old seat back, but he returns to the House nonetheless. With Hill, he takes back a seat he lost by a razor-thin margin (similar to Fitzpatrick’s defeat) two years earlier. In short, it’s tough, but it can be done. I was surprised to see Fitzpatrick beaten on Election Night (my money had been on Gerlach to lose) and I suspect he’ll probably make another run, given the toss-up nature of the district and the fact that he lost by a statistically insignificant margin. I’m not sure what the GOP bench looks like in Bucks, so I’d say that Fitz is the GOP’s best hope to take the seat back, unless someone emerges from the sidelines next year.