U.S. Rep. Joseph Courtney, who has expressed interest in the seat U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman will be vacating, said he’s going to make his decision soon.
“I’m not going to torture people,” Courtney said Friday after a meeting with his colleagues in Hartford.
Courtney, the fairly moderate Democrat from the state’s Congressional District, who is currently serving his third-term said Lieberman’s retirement decision was sped up considerably. That created a snowball affect forcing those who had their minds made up jump in the race earlier than anticipated.
First to announce, even before Lieberman’s announcement, was former Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, who was followed by U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy.
Some in the Democratic party are anxious about pitting two sitting Congressman against one another in a primary for the seat, while others believe primaries make the candidate who emerges stronger to challenge the handful of Republicans being named. No Republican has announced they will seek the seat.
Courtney seems to have beat out Murphy in CTNewsjunkie’s first unofficial, and unscientific poll on the race, which ran for six days last week.
Also House Speaker Chris Donovan of Meriden said Friday that he’s interested in running for Murphy’s seat in the 5th Congressional District, but isn’t close to making up his mind.
He said it was an unfortunate coincidence that he happened to be in Washington D.C. for a redistricting conference last week when the game of political musical chairs started because people may have assumed he was down their looking for support for a possible run. He said that wasn’t the case.
