shortest campaign ever?

via blue indiana, i see that chris minor has already dropped out of the race for indiana's 2nd district. that's what, two... three weeks after he began his campaign?

minor, you may recall, got a lot of attention a couple weeks back when it was revealed that his paychecks come from controversial mercenary company blackwater usa. then he made things even worse by pulling a dickerson—in other words, he went before the local media and pointed out exactly where all the skeletons in his closet were hidden. (it turns out minor was effectively forced out of the kokomo police in '91, and then got arrested for DWI in 94.) i guess this was an attempt to defuse any future bad press by getting the story out himself. (it didn't work for eric dickerson, either.)

honestly, i was somewhat expecting minor to pull out, after i read last week that minor plans to begin another 6-month blackwater contract in iraq next month. that would place him in baghdad through april, which simply wouldn't give him a realistic amount of time to run in the primary. fortunately for him, minor figured this out in time to drop out of the race and let someone else lose to joe donnelly. unfortunately, if he'd figured it out just a couple weeks earlier, he could've saved himself the embarrassment of having his blackwater connection and his past mistakes all over the local paper.¶