OK, so I jumped to a conclusion

After years of Democratic and Republican seats being made safer and safer for their respective parties by way of increasingly sophisticated partisan (and incumbent-protective) gerrymandering, one forgets sometimes that members of underdog parties DO occasionally take a run at a seat in the opposing column -- particularly when the seat is open.

So it is that, without thinking about it, I made a mistake when I said that Joe McEachern would be the third candidate we'll talk to who is seeking to fill the seat John Scott is vacating. As a colleague corrected me:

Mr. Byrd is indeed the second candidate we've had in for H.77. But Joe McEachern is not the THIRD candidate we will meet with. He is the third DEMOCRAT we will meet with. The THIRD candidate for this seat whom we'll see is Michael Koska -- one of the two or three Republicans in the race. (I say two or three because there's one candidate whose district is listed as 77 on one GOP document and 79 on another -- and I haven't gotten a call back from him yet).

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Cindi Ross Scoppe

So now you know.

Now that I think about it, Republicans have taken a run at that seat before -- just unsuccessfully.

By the way, I was going to tell you HOW unsuccessfully (I was curious to see if the numbers indicated any sort of opening that would make a Republican candidacy anything other than purely quixotic), but the state election commission Web site isn't providing that information today -- which is inexcusable.