Sometimes Life Just Sucks II

Drum roll, please. It's time to award our 2nd

Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week Award

to

U.S. Rep. Don Sherwood

Actually, Sherwood has had a no good, very bad time ever since it was disclosed that (a) he had a mistress in Washington and (b) that she alleged he had tried to choke her one night.

Not a good thing to do. Not a good thing to have disclosed in the family-values, oh-so-very-conservative 10th Congressional district in Northeast Pa, wherein resides your wife and 3 children.

Under normal circumstances, Sherwood would be a shoo-in for re-election, especially since the post-2000 census re-apportionment surgically removed the district's largest city, Scranton, and gave Sherwood a long slice of the Northern tier counties (up to and including Lycoming County.)

In fact, Sherwood race without opposition last time out. This time is different. His opponent is Democrat Chris Carney, who is running a campaign that has made Sherwood's philandering a centerpiece -- witness his slogan: Taking Our Values to Washington, not bringing Washington's values home.

To date, Carney's strategy was to point to Sherwood's affair without mentioning it directly. That indirection ended last week with this Carney TV commercial.

Here's a piece in the Scranton Times about the ad, an AP piece that lays out the basics of the race and another piece that talks about Democrats being happy about Carney's chances.

Meanwhile, President Bush is due in the Lackawanna County later this month to help Sherwood with fundraising, which no doubt needs to counter the Carney attacks.