Blogger Mickey Kaus Eyes Run for U.S. Senate

(March 2) -- Mickey Kaus is on the verge of becoming one of those people he blogs about: a politician. The creator of the long-running and widely read Kausfiles on Slate has taken out nomination papers to run in California's Democratic primary against Sen. Barbara Boxer.

LA Weekly initially reported Monday that Kaus had formally filed as a candidate, which raised eyebrows around the blogosphere. It corrected the report after Kaus confirmed the rest of the story on Kausfiles.

"I did go down to the local registrar's office Monday and take out nomination papers to run in the primary for U.S. senator against Barbara Boxer. If I return them in timely fashion with enough signatures, I should be able to get on the June ballot. We'll see what happens," he wrote in his first post since Feb. 24.

As a blogger, Kaus is known for challenging Democratic orthodoxy on issues including unions, immigration and affirmative action. He indicated he would do the same as a candidate to give Democrats "a mechanism that lets them register their dissent in the primary."

The question -- raised immediately by several of his fellow bloggers -- of whether he can continue writing for Slate is "still to be resolved," he said.

Much like Kaus himself, reaction to the self-described neoliberal's possible Senate run is contrarian. Bloggers on the left are trashing him while those on the right are cheering him on -- if only in anticipation of a Democratic train wreck. And so far, neither side appears to be taking the whole thing too seriously.

Ann Althouse wished Kaus good luck, saying "Democrats could use a good dose of conservatism."

"He's got my vote," chimed in Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds.

"Mickey Kaus would provide the sort of iconoclasm the Democratic party desperately needs, particularly in California," added Jonah Goldberg on National Review Online.

"If he ever got into debates with Boxer, that would certainly be worth listening to," conservative Betsy Newmark predicted. "He'd certainly have the blogger vote."

Well, not all of the blogger vote.

The Web site Fire Mickey Kaus isn't an overnight online response to news of his political ambition. It's been around for years, and its reaction was predictably harsh. "Mickey's just a dog chasing cars. He wouldn't know what to do with one if he caught it."

Gawker heaped on the scorn with this jab from Adrian Chen: "Look for the 14-part Slate series 'Running Scared: My life as a Gag Senate Candidate.'"

"Absent a political base of any sort in California, I'll assume this is about something other than, you know, becoming a senator," said Kevin Roderick of LA Observed. "Fostering debate on the great issues? Weakening Boxer for the Republicans in November? Blog traffic? Unknown, but it could be interesting for a while."

There has never been a blogger-turned-senator. Imagine what would happen if Kaus somehow got himself elected. Matthew Yglesias did ... in a blog post titled Feel the Kausmentum.

"It's not really clear to me what votes Kaus would have cast differently from Boxer or what difference it would have made," Yglesias said. "And of course like all politicians if he were actually in office he would face strong incentives to act like a conventional politician rather than like a contrarian blogger."