The DPW reports Dick Leinenkugel used a state telephone line as the contact for a website he registered Monday, leinenkugelforsenate.com. I doubt Leinenkugel was trying to campaign on the state’s dime, the action was more of a glaring oversight than anything. As xoff points out Leinenkugel isn’t even at that number anymore. Regardless, it doesn’t look good for the campaign.
More interesting is why exactly is Dick Leinenkugel running? Cory Liebmann poses three good questions, the first being who (if anyone) recruited Jim Doyle’s Secretary of Commerce, in charge of wrangling the hated stimulus money, to run for Senate as a Republican?
“Who knows? Maybe it could be big biz folks and/or Tommy loyalists that recruited him. Or maybe it was the national Republican big-wigs that have been so desperate to get a real candidate.”
Xoff predicted yesterday if Leinenkugel’s in, Tommy’s out of the Senate race. That’s a fair prediction, with either one running there would be two candidates with government experience in the race, although Tommy isn’t technically “in” the race (yet?).
Regardless of Is He In? Tommy’s decision, I’m guessing Terrence Wall will drop out first. I believe Dave Westlake when he says he’s in it until the end even if Tommy runs, mostly because he’s never had much of a chance to begin with and is still sticking it out. Terrence Wall said the same thing, but of course a candidate won’t acknowledge dropping out if a potential candidate enters.
Wall says he talks to Thompson once a month. That relationship alone tells me that a man who has never won an election in his life would drop out if an acquaintance and seasoned politician stepped in. More importantly, Wall’s campaign has been nothing short of embarrassing. Three prominent Milwaukee right-wing radio show hosts gave his candidacy three thumbs down. His Twitter feed is a diagram for being out of touch with regular people. Wall has dropped at least $275,000 into his campaign so far. He will need to either spend more in the fruitless pursuit of a Senate seat, or cut his losses and go back to the real estate business he is actually good at.
I think things look pretty good for Feingold.
While I’m inclined to agree with you that Wall seems the most likely candidate to drop out first, he strikes me as having an incredibly large ego, so I think that fact alone will prevent him from dropping out first, so he doesn’t lose face. From what I’ve been told from “those in the know,” my suspicions about Wall having a huge ego are correct, so I’m betting he’ll stay in to the bitter end – and given how negative his campaign has been, it truly will be a bitter end.
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