Leading State Lawmaker to Bid for Udall’s Open Colorado House SeatDemocrat Joan Fitz-Gerald, the president of Colorado’s state Senate, formally confirmed that she will run next year in the state’s 2nd Congressional District, located in and around Boulder.
Fitz-Gerald will be seeking to keep the open House seat in Democratic hands. Her announcement came two days after incumbent Rep. Mark Udall made official his plans to run for the Senate in 2008 by filing a statement of candidacy with federal officials.
“I’m excited to announce my candidacy for Congress and bring Colorado’s record of change to Washington,” Fitz-Gerald said in a news release. In that statement, she emphasized her support for military veterans and for American troops serving in Iraq — but also said she would work to end the war.
Fitz-Gerald had made clear months ago that she intended to run in the 2nd, which is open as a result of Udall’s decision to run for the Senate seat that Republican incumbent Wayne Allard is leaving open to retire. Udall had said as early as March 2005 that he would run for the Senate, regardless of Allard’s plans.
To prepare for her congressional bid, Fitz-Gerald three weeks ago stepped down as the chairwoman of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which works to elect Democrats to state legislative seats.
Fitz-Gerald is the leading Democratic candidate in a district that is more likely than not to elect a Democrat to succeed Udall. Colorado’s 2nd, which also includes Vail and Thornton and nearly all of Westminster, gave 58 percent of its votes in the 2004 presidential election to Democratic nominee John Kerry. Udall has typically prevailed in his House races by even wider margins.
http://www.nytimes.com/cq/2007/04/18/cq_2590.html
