WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 (UPI) -- Oklahoma Republican Don Nickles' decision to retire from the U.S. Senate after four terms did not come as a surprise. According to some GOP insiders Nickles, the GOP whip until term limits forced him to step aside, believed his chance to become majority leader had passed, making potential opportunities outside the Senate much more attractive.
What has come as a surprise is the way the race to succeed him is unfolding. Rep. Ernest Istook, R-Okla., was expected to enter the race. More than one party conservative say they believe he was ready to toss his hat in the ring and were taken aback when he announced he would seek re-election to the congressional seat he has held since 1992 rather than run for Senate.
With Istook out of the race, the momentum is now behind Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys, someone much more like Nickles than the other names that had been floated as potential candidates.
Even though Humphreys has not formally announced his intentions, he has picked up some powerful backing. Nickles has endorsed him, as has the state's other U.S. senator, Jim Inhofe, who has agreed to serve as the campaign's honorary chairman.
Inhofe's backing may be crucial in keeping other candidates from challenging Humphreys on the right. Both Nickles and Inhofe have American Conservative Union lifetime ratings just below 100 but Inhofe is seen as being much more of an activist than his Oklahoma colleague and is a regular attendee of Paul Weyrich's Wednesday conservative group luncheon.
With Nickles handling the business types and Inhofe talking to the grass-roots activists on Humphreys' behalf, it looks like any potential opposition is all but shut out -- the one remaining question make being Dr. Tom Coburn, a former U.S. House member who has a big following among both social and economic conservatives and would give Humphreys a competitive primary.
National GOP leaders are hoping the field narrows quickly. They don't want to have to spend money to defend a Senate seat in Oklahoma when they could be spending it elsewhere in an attempt to win seats away from the Democrats.
--
In one of the oddest political pairings since Orrin Hatch and Ted Kennedy became best buddies, People for the American Way President Ralph G. Neas and Grover Norquist, who heads up Americans for Tax Reform, are joining together in defense of the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution.
Neas, the ultra-liberal whose efforts to stop Republicans from putting judges on the federal bench is legendary, and Norquist, who promotes the idea of a governing center-right conservatism throughout the United States, are in agreement that post-9/11 efforts to prevent terrorist attacks from occurring may have put basic freedoms in danger.
They will be appearing on an Oct. 19 panel discussion moderated by actor-turned-liberal-political-activist Alec Baldwin as part of the first national conference of Grassroots America Defends the Bill of Rights attending by activists representing the entire political spectrum.
Asked to explain the strange bedfellows nature of panel Norquist said, "The Constitution is more important than partisan political affiliations and it takes all of us together to protect our civil liberties."
--
One of the biggest complaints about the Internet involves people who register domain names that have little if anything to do with what the address implies.
The latest group to experience a problem with misleading URLs is the American Conservative Union, which has the Web address of conservative.org. Causing some confusion, however, is an X-rated site featuring a model named "Busty Dusty" that has appropriated the ACU's full name in its URL.
ACU spokesman Ian Walters takes the whole thing in stride.
"First of all, I want to make clear that we do not own that URL," Walters says. "It just goes to demonstrate that those who do not like conservatives in general and the ACU specifically have a warped sense of humor," he says, pointing out that this is not the first time a political group has been taken advantage of in this way.
--
Democrats in Georgia are having a tough time finding a first-tier candidate to put up for the seat held by retiring Sen. Zell Miller. Their first choice, Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox, said early on that she was not interested, as have a number of other prominent Democrats in the state.
Some had hoped that Rep. Jim Marshall, D-Ga., the moderate former mayor of Macon, Ga., currently in his first term in the House, would make the race but those hopes appear to have been dashed by the news that he suffering from prostate cancer.
Roll Call, a newspaper reporting on Capitol Hill, reported Wednesday that Marshall had undergone surgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Center as is, according to a top aide, expected to make a full recovery.
"Communications Director Doug Moore said Marshall has not made any decisions about his political future -- whether in the House or the Senate," the papers says, quoting Moore saying that a potential Senate bid has been "on his mind."
--
(That's Politics! is a regular look at the inner workings of the American political process by UPI's Peter Roff, a 20-year veteran of the Washington scene.)
