Thune passes on NRSC Job
As reported in the Rapid City Journal this morning, U.S. Senator John Thune is done considering whether or not he's going to take the National Republican Senatorial Committee job:
Read it all here.
Sen. John Thune said Sunday that he would not seek the job as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, a position seen as a springboard to the upper echelon of GOP Senate leadership.
Thune confirmed in an interview with the Journal late Sunday afternoon that he had told Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, on Thursday that he would not run for the committee chairman’s spot. That ended months of speculation that Thune — who rose quickly to prominence for a freshman senator after his upset win two years ago over Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle — might take over fundraising and candidate recruitment efforts for the GOP in the 2008 elections.
Before a tour of the Eastridge Fire area Sunday, Thune said he struggled with the decision about the chairman’s job for months. But finally, he decided that his obligations to his family and demanding South Dakota issues took precedence over the campaign position, Thune said.
“I’m going to take a pass. It’s not the right fit for me, at least not right now. I still have a daughter at home, and this would have meant missing a lot of her activities,” Thune said. “And in terms of the stuff I have to focus on for South Dakota right now, I just didn’t think I had the bandwidth to do it all.”
Read it all here.
Comments
I hope that the Democrats will put out a laudatory press release praising Thune's decision, given that they encouraged him to do just this just a few days ago.
Good for Thune...he's doing good
And as a Republican, I respect the effort of Johnson, who has little pull. Maybe Thune needs to get angry and then not apologize to everyone including John Bolton, which still escapes me as to why he would attempt to clarify his statement on running from Bush to the imbattled neo-con recess appointment to the UN. Any explaination for that?
Tom Daschle's solution to Ellsworth was to fix it up just enough to have a campaign issue every time the BRAC committee convened.
John Thune's solution was to show BRAC that we needed two B-1 bases and training areas but he also brought a 700 job addition to the base and he is working on the UAV thing.
What did Daschle do for Ellsworth: he got more money to build a high tech crapper on the edge of the base so pilots wouldn't have to walk so far when they got out of their planes.
Oh better yet how about Daschle on bringing jobs to South Dakota. Daschle would rather use every power in 5 foot nothing body to stop jobs cold from coming to SD.
Thune goes out and helps private industry partner with the government to line up this DME project which will bring 1000's of jobs to rural SD.
The choice was clear and still is.
I couldn't have said it better. When you get out of our State almost no one can name our older senator.
Tim knows he is on slippery slopes without Tom to help him out.
Yes, and how much was thune paid as a "lobbyist" and what did he actually do prior to his election. Smile and take a check one would suspect.
"1000s of jobs" huh? are those permenant or just temporary construction jobs? will they go to SD residents or out-of-staters who have the qualifying degrees/experience?
or will the jobs go to the clean up crew since dm&e has one of the worst safety records (and i might be mistaken, b/c it could be the worst safety record) for locomotives.
notice they just had two major accidents, one in wyoming. yeah train derailments!!!