"Senator" Ty Cobb? Yipes!

So here's this Ty Cobb guy again. Yay.

Now Anjeanette's reporting on Cobb's supposed $80,000 in leftover cash to run for the Nevada Senate in 2010.

It's not all that cut-and-dry, though.

The contribution and expense forms make it near impossible to get a true gauge on how much a candidate has left over in a campaign bank account because they require only current fundraising by period. An optional line exists to report unspent contributions. In prior years, Cobb has refused to fill in that line. It's a bit difficult to see how he still has $80,000 left. Adding up all of his reported contributions and expenses from when he first started fundraising in late 2005 indicates he should only have about $61,000 in the bank.

Sixty grand, eighty grand, whatever.

I've previously established my disappointment with Cobb's style of conservative politics. Bob Beers was ousted last year and the Senate does not need him back. Besides, Ty Cobb is no Bob Beers. That man was special.

But if the guy sees fit to keep climbin' the pole, by all means, I am in no position to dissuade him. I cruised on over to his website, just to see what he's got to offer. I was a little startled to see this gem on the lower right corner:
The Sun is Vegas's liberal alternative to the right-wing Review-Journal. It is not a friend to the LuvGuv or his enablers in state politics, but it is a paper of record. If the Sun saw fit to give Assemblyman Cobb an atta-boy, perhaps I needed to re-evaluate my assumptions about the guy.

Unfortunately, I've yet find the June 10, 2007 article cited.

The Sun offers its archives online free of charge, so go ahead an take a look yourself. By my reckoning, there are four post-session wrap-ups from June 10, 2007. Two of them, the editorial and a column from Jon Ralston, go after the LuvGuv for being a blockhead. (The full details of his escapades had not yet surfaced, so they can be excused for rather dull hit pieces.) One is a blog post giving Speaker Barbara Buckley the unofficial title of Best Legislator conferred by the lobbyists of Carson City.

"You could probably re-phrase the first question to ask who is the second-best legislator since Barbara Buckley is clearly the best," wrote one respondent. And that about the Democratic speaker from a business lobbyist! Another wrote that it was "not even a question." Her agenda, her caucus control, her brains, her toughness – those and other qualities were roundly invoked. Congrats, Madame Speaker.

So that leaves a winners-losers sketch by Patrick Coolican. The kudos are numerous and they ignore policy preferences, so the LuvGuv got a high-five for successfully avoiding a tax increase, as he promised. What was there to say about my favorite Assemblyman?

Although widely derided by establishment types for casting the only "nay" vote in the election of Buckley to become speaker, Cobb drew a significant following among conservative Republicans...

Look for Cobb to lead efforts by Assembly Republicans to make some gains in 2008 to narrow the Democrats' 27-15 majority. In 2010 nearly 40 percent of Democrats will face term limits, which will lead to a wide-open election, and, who knows? Speaker Cobb? Probably not, but surely he's fantasized.

(I'll overlook being called an "establishment type." This time.)

That's not a scathing rebuke but also I'm not sure it can be accurately paraphrased as "Thumbs up!" At least not with quotation marks.

The questionable endorsement is part of a campaign mailer put out to sell Cobb's legislative accomplishments in 2007. It's a decent piece. It is odd that a politician from Reno would quote a liberal paper from Las Vegas, but you take what you can get. Still, the RGJ, Review-Journal, Appeal or *shudder* North Lake Tahoe Bonanza didn't have anything more substantive or positive to say about Nevada's latest conservative star?

Anyway, there's the evidence. Ty Cobb is considering running for Townsend's seat in 2010. Now, there has gotta be a Dem in the South Meadows that can keep him out of the Senate. Bonnie Parnell? Sheila Leslie? Anybody...?