Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Obama loses 41 percent of W.Va. primary vote to federal inmate


Meet Keith Judd, who's incarcerated in Texas for extortion. He's also a serial presidential candidate, and in West Virginia's Democratic primary Tuesday, he grabbed 41 percent of the vote from President Obama. Republicans are gleeful.

In an embarrassment to President Obama, Federal Inmate No. 11593-051 – otherwise known as Keith Judd – won 10 counties and 41 percent of the vote in West Virginia’s Democratic presidential primary Tuesday.

Mr. Judd is incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Texarkana, Texas, where he is serving a 210-month sentence for extortion, according to The Charleston Gazette. Judd had paid the $2,500 filing fee and submitted a notarized “certificate of announcement” to appear on the ballot.

He is even qualified to have a delegate at the Democratic National Convention, because he won at least 15 percent of vote. However, no one has stepped forward to fill that role.

But those are just details. The Republicans are having a field day with this slap at the president. Mr. Obama is deeply unpopular in West Virginia and was already certain to lose the small mountainous state in November. But the fact that enough people bothered to turn out in an uncontested primary to register a protest against the incumbent is telling.

“Just how unpopular does someone have to be for this to happen?” says Joe Pounder, research director and deputy communications director at the Republican National Committee, in a statement.

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