He’s back: maybe

Apparently, now that East Lansing Democrat Lance Enderle failed to get enough write in votes to be the Democratic nominee in the 8th congressional district in the primary election on Tuesday, the person who forced the need for a write in campaign may be getting back in the race.

In June Democrat Kande Ngalamulume announced that he was ending his campaign for Congress for the 8th District, but it was well past the withdraw deadline, meaning his name will appear on the primary ballot and the general election ballot. Apparently, Ngalamulume told WKAR that he's "80-percent" leaning towards re-entering the race based on his performance in the polls yesterday.

He got 26,341 votes or 25 percent to Mike Rogers 75 percent. My advice is don’t bother, and I will not vote for him.

Enderle needed more votes than Ngalamulume in yesterday’s primary to replace him on the Nov. 2 ballot, but a write in candidacy is a huge long shot. There was another way for Enderle’s name to appear on the ballot as the Democratic candidate.

If Ngalamulume moves out of state, or dies, a provision in state law is triggered that would allow the chairs, secretaries and treasurers of all five counties within the 8th District to convene a special 15-person panel to name a replacement nominee after the Aug. 3 primary.

Word is that Ngalamulume did move out of state for work, but he declined to change his voter registration. When he dropped out, Ngalamulume said it was because “there is not enough interest amongst the political establishment and many constituents in this district to replace Mike Rogers in Congress.”

There was no doubt it would be very difficult to unseat an entrenched incumbent in a gerrymandered district to make it a strong Republican seat, but the path Ngalamulume took was completely wrong.

If he was not going to cooperate in helping take his name off the ballot, he should have just kept silent to at least keep Rogers honest. If he didn’t want to do that, he could have announced he was scaling back his campaign to earn a living because he could not continue to campaign at the taxpayer’s expense like Rogers is, and that he was only going to campaign when his work schedule would shave allowed it. That, I think, people can respect.

If he decides to restart his campaign, he will have to a lot of explaining to do.