According to an article in the Louisville Courier Journal, Democratic incumbent Baron Hill is running strong. What’s more surprising is that Mike Sodrel is apparently running a lifeless campaign in this re-re-rematch. Libertarian Candidate Eric Schansberg has ads running where “Millionaire Mike” Sodrel does not.

The lone public poll in the race — by Survey USA, which uses recorded voices to ask questions — shows Hill with an 11-point lead over Sodrel. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

Of the 603 likely voters surveyed Sept. 8-10, 50 percent said they planned to vote for Hill, 39 percent said Sodrel and 5 percent said Schansberg, with the rest undecided.

As a third party candidate — no matter how compelling his platform — Schansberg isn’t going to close a 40 point gap as a Third Party Candidate. (Sorry Dr. Schansberg). But, what I would love to see is for Schansberg to eat into a huge chunk of Sodrel’s base; and not so much because this would also help Hill. I want a Democratic Congress this year, but Hill isn’t my favorite Democrat. The dynamic I would like to see is for the major parties to see that libertarian principles are attractive to voters. Usually this results in a shift by one or both of the parties to co-opt those principles. We’ll never see anything like pure libertarianism — and I’ve reached a point where I realize that I personally wouldn’t want to — but a shift in that direction would be welcome. The larger the percentage Dr. Schansberg is able to rack up in this election, the less likely his positions will be ignored in future elections.

Incidentally, I’ve taken Steve Buyer to task for not debating Nels Ackerson. I have to do the same for Baron Hill who says he won’t debate until Sodrel “apologizes” for his childish antics during the transition when Hill beat Sodrel. Sounds like a pretext to me. The Ninth District deserves a debate (though, not as much as the Fourth District for whom meaningful Congressional debates have been absent for a long time.)