It seems the saga of Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Dale trying to run for reelection this year continues on. From Insurance Journal:
Attorneys for both sides have given a judge their written arguments about whether Mississippi Insurance Commissioner George Dale should be allowed to seek re-election this year as a Democrat.
It could be several days, however, before Circuit Judge Henry T. Lackey hands down a ruling in the case.[...]
The circus got started when the Mississippi state Democratic party decided to kick Dale off their ballot about two weeks after the deadline for candidates to file to run in the 2007 election season. The official reason given was that Dale supported Bush in the ‘04 elections (Bush won the state by a 3:2 margin)…but I can’t help but wonder if there’s a concern about Dale’s walking the fine line between consumer protection and defending the viability of the insurance market in the wake of Katrina.
Dale’s current gripe is that he’s being blocked from both the Democratic primary and from running as an independent in November by virtue of the party’s actions.
This, of course, would be an example of why the deadline for filing to run an independent campaign ought to be more generous than the deadlines involved for running a partisan campaign…something that Connecticut needs to keep in mind in the wake of the Dems’ temper-tantrums thrown by Lieberman running for Senate as an independent hours after losing the Democratic primary.
I’d better stop here, lest I devolve further into ranting about the special status given the elephants and donkeys in most states, at the expense of the voters.