Rachel Maddow rejects talk of 2012 Senate Run

By Sterling Wong -

Imagine this scenario: Progressive favorite and Democratic candidate Rachel Maddow challenges the incumbent Scott Brown for the Massachusetts Senate seat in 2012.
Many liberals in the Harvard University audience certainly got excited at such a prospect, peppering the MSNBC host with questions on running for office after Maddow delivered an address on political journalism at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government on Sunday.
However, the Boston Herald reports that Maddow firmly rejected any possibility of her running for office, saying that she “will never be” a politician.

Talk of a possible Maddow candidacy in 2012 began in March when the Democratic state chairman tweeted a mysterious message which seemed to imply that Maddow was planning such a run. This prompted Brown to send a mass fund-raising email that warned his supporters of Maddow’s intentions. Maddow took out a full-page ad in a local paper denying it.
During her address last night, students brought up the topic again. One student inquired why she switched from politics to news.
“I stopped trying to change the world on March 9, 2007,” Maddow said, quoting the day when she quit working as an activist and began working as a d.j. at the liberal radio station, Air America.
“You say you’re no longer an activist, but aren’t you?” a law student asked in response to Maddow’s answer.
“No,” Maddow said.
“You have confirmed over and over again that you’re not going to run for office, and we don’t have the privilege to elect you,” another student stated.
“I’m real happy with my job,” confirmed Maddow.
“There’s a reason people in opinion-driven news flirt with running for office. It gets a ratings spike,” Maddow said to the audience. In her case though, the flirting has stopped before it even really began.


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