Well, we can't say he didn't warn us. When Bob Thomas told us all that we would know who Bob Thomas is, that was probably a hint that fun times were just around the corner. Sylvia A. Smith brings us the opening salvo in what will probably be the most entertaining primary of the cycle:
In a radio ad that began airing this week, Souder jabs at Thomas, who owns car dealerships in Fort Wayne and Indianapolis, lived in an Indianapolis suburb for 25 years and recently leased a home on Fort Wayne's north side.
Souder refers to Thomas as "rich Bob" because in an interview last month Thomas said he is prepared to spend at least as much as Souder during the campaign and has "enough money to put on a very, very serious campaign."
Aside from the fact that Souder is already running negative ads against an opponent who only announced his candidacy a few weeks ago, Thomas's response makes it even more clear that Souder is in trouble.
Are we talking about the same Mark Souder who instantly supported Dan Coats for his bid for the Senate seat who was still living and had been living for 12 years in Virginia? And is this the same Mark Souder who had lived in the Washington, D.C., area for 10 years until about two or three months before coming back here and filing for the same seat we're talking about? ... If that's the same Mark Souder, he's an incredible hypocrite," Thomas said.
Souder, who grew up in Grabill, worked for Coats on Capitol Hill until mid-1993, when he returned to Indiana and six months later became a formal candidate for the congressional seat he won in the 1994 election.
Rep. Mark Souder isn't having the best of weeks. Although he's been attracting primary challengers for months now, the last few days have brought forward what can only be described as a credible threat to his incumbency. And car dealership tycoon Bob Thomas isn't shy in talking about his potential intra-party coup.
"We're going to define the issues in this campaign," Thomas said in a 45-minute interview prior to Saturday's Elkhart County Republican Party Lincoln Day Dinner. "People are going to know about Bob Thomas."
[...]
Thomas said he will finance his campaign personally, at least through the primary. If he wins, he's confident he won't have trouble raising additional campaign funds.
If Thomas remains a financially viable candidate, the primary could become quite expensive for Souder, who was first elected in 1994. If he survives, that early spending could be troublesome in the general election, as likely Democrat nominee Dr. Tom Hayhurst outraised Souder in 2009 by more than $5,000.
Souder has just over $150k cash on hand -- a total that doesn't seem like much when considering that even if he emerges unscathed from a costly primary battle, Democratic candidate Tom Hayhurst will have been banking coin unabated.
Thomas is rumored to have placed a $500k target on the primary contest.
In CD 03, you need to keep your eye on the second challenger of U.S. Rep. Mark Souder (R) to the right, Fort Wayne and Indianapolis car dealer Bob Thomas (R). We're hearing that the former head of the national Ford dealers council, a Princeton and Harvard alum, has assembled an impressive cadre of handlers and is budgeting $500,000 to be spent between now and the first week in May.
That's a serious amount of coin, especially against a habitually bad fundraiser such as Souder. I'll be keeping an eye on this contest as it develops.
Kudos to Ed Feigenbaum for another great scoop. If you haven't considered a subscription to one of his great publications, you should do so today.
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