Baumgartner 2010 words could bite
State Sen. Mike Baumgartner is weighing a run for the other Senate, the one in Washington, D.C.
The Spokane Republican said he’ll make up his mind in the next few weeks about whether he’ll wage a campaign against Democrat Maria Cantwell, who’ll be seeking her third term. The GOP field isn’t exactly teeming with contenders these days, and Baumgartner has a good résumé that includes State Department experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and being named one of Spokane’s sexiest people by the local weekly.
It would be a big jump, a race several orders of magnitude higher on the political Richter scale, from his successful legislative race in 2010. And it’s a tough race for any East Sider, considering someone from this side of the Cascades hasn’t been elected to the U.S. Senate since Babe Ruth was hitting homers for the Yankees.
There’s every likelihood Democrats would try to make him eat his words from the 2010 campaign, when he sharply disputed a suggestion by opponent Chris Marr that he was running for the Legislature as a stepping stone to higher office.
“It’s quite a compliment, but I am afraid Chris is just projecting his own desires, not mine,” he said in a press release that was still available last week on the Spokane County GOP website.
