Thu 19 Nov 2009
Several readers have alerted us to a telephone poll that asks people their opinions on a hypothetical matchup between State Rep. Bill Konopnicki and Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick. It then goes on for a while about the state’s budget before asking who the callers would favor in a hypothetical matchup between Konopnicki and State Senator Sylvia Allen. If true, it sounds like Konopnicki is still trying to decide which race to run.
Capitol observers think that his left-of-center fiscal voting record is a better fit for a general election in CD1 than a primary election in LD5, noting that former Congressman Rick Renzi had a conservative voting record on social issues while bringing home the pork to the district. By comparison, Allen has already beaten Konopnicki among party insiders when she got appointed to fill the late Senator Jake Flake’s seat, and she out-polled Konopnicki in the 2008 primaries, getting 10,205 votes to his 9,375 votes, in spite of his significantly longer service.
November 20th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
When you match up Konopnicki’s record in the state legislature against Ann Kirkpatrick’s record in the state legislature they are strikingly similar. So in a CD race they’d be pretty much the same.
However comparing Jake Flake’s record against that of Bill Konoponicki shows that the franchise king of hamburgers is significantly to the left of the late Jake Flake. This suggests that he’d loose an LD match up for Senator Allen’s seat.
Its rumored around the capitol that he’s considering using his state Exploratory Committee’s war chest for a run at the senate seat as either a Democrat or Independent. His voting record suggests he’d be more comfortable as a Blue Dog Democrat than posing as a Conservative Republican.
Maybe he’ll come out of the closet and the voters will end his political career with the biggest loss in legislative history.