I have been extremely busy over the past few days with a number of things including trying to post as freuently as possible about what is going on in the 72nd Assembly District. In my rush I missed an e-mail this morning announcing the potential candidacy of Richard Rios. This comes on the day of Linda Ackerman announcing this morning that she is officially in the race. I have heard rumors that the announcement of Ackerman has made some of the bigger names decide to drop out of the race, but I have not been able to confirm this. I will have more to come on candidates dropping out in the next couple of days but the word up in Sacramento is that a date has been picked for the special election and that date is November 17th.

On the other side of the aisle Democrat John MacMurray has announced his intention to run which has fueled Democrats into an excitement about the possibility of picking up this seat based on the large number of Republicans that could end up on the ballot. Mr. MacMurray is a civics teacher from what I understand so he should be the first person to recognize that even if he were to get the most votes in the special election, (Likely November 17th) he would still be likely to lose based on the rules of a special election like this. Unless somebody gets over 50% of the vote, the top vote getters from each party move on to a general election where Republicans will consolidate.