That’s the word that’s going down on the street:

A Democratic official says Rep. Patrick Kennedy has decided not to seek re-election for his seat representing Rhode Island in the U.S. Congress.

The official spoke to The Associated Press only on the condition that his name not be used because he was not authorized to speak ahead of the official announcement.

[snip]

Patrick Kennedy has been in and out of treatment for substance abuse since crashing his car outside the U.S Capitol in 2006.

Interesting that the Kennedy name is no longer sufficient to protect its holders from premature leaks like this.  Also interesting that this is happening; then again, his numbers were abysmal.  They were so abysmal that GOP challenger John Loughlin might even be disappointed about this, although… no, I doubt it.

More here: apparently, Kennedy felt the need to take his life in a ‘different direction.’  I would be cruel about my suggestions of where that different direction might end up going - but I just noticed something about this video I did a while back:

The Democrats are starting to run out of sitting Congressmen featured in it who’ll still be sitting Congressmen, starting next January.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

The law professor, William Jacobson, who blogs at Legal Insurrection has set his sights on unseating Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D) of Rhode Island in the 2010 midterms. Patrick Kennedy is the son of the late US Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. Professor Jacobson, who hails from Rhode Island, is a big Scott Brown supporter. As a fellow New Englander, I’d like to offer my own explanation of how Patrick Kennedy is going to lose his seat in Rhode Island this fall.

Our President and his friends on the left will be glad to know that I’ve boiled my theory down to five simple points which can hopefully be understood by every knuckle dragging troglodyte conservative in all the bitter, gun-clinging, bible clutching, flyover red states like… Massachusetts.

Here goes…

1. Scott Brown won every Massachusetts town on the Rhode Island border except one.

2. Scott Brown won more than 50% of the Massachusetts towns that border Connecticut.

3. On February 4th, less than three weeks after Scott Brown’s stunning Massachusetts victory, Patrick Kennedy referred to Brown’s win as “a joke.”

4. Rhode Island news outlets are already reporting on Patrick Kennedy’s vulnerability.

5. Rumor has it that a well known politician is planning to run against Patrick Kennedy and he’s very popular with the people of Rhode Island. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.

Buddy Cianci has had his share of troubles as a politician but a majority of citizens in the Ocean State absolutely love him. As the Mayor of Rhode Island’s capital city of Providence for over 21 years, Cianci was incredibly effective. He has the trust of Rhode Island voters and tremendous name recognition.

If Cianci chooses not to run, the anti-incumbency wave that recently helped carry Scott Brown to victory will most likely defeat Kennedy anyway. When I recently covered a “campaign school” in the Boston suburb of Braintree, I met more than one attendee from Rhode Island.

If the rumor is true and Cianci decides to run, I suspect most Rhode Island voters will be asking themselves only one question this November.

Patrick who?

Cross posted at Mike LaChance.

(H/T: Hot Air & JammieWearingFool) A lot of the focus of this article is on the abysmal performance of Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D, RI) in it - when asked if he deserved re-election, only 35% of his constituents said ‘yes’; 28% said ‘no,’ and 31% asked ‘what are our options?’ - and we’ll get back to it (and John Loughlin, who’s running for the job) in a moment.  But I would like to highlight these two paragraphs about Sheldon Whitehouse:

Just 33 percent approved of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s job performance, down 11 points from a mid-December Brown University poll.

Fleming said a factor may have been the senator’s controversial December statement that floor opponents of health-care reform were fueled by fanatics, “right-wing militia” and Aryan support groups that hate President Obama.

The NRSC would be well-advised to start atoning for its error in 2006 by finding an acceptable candidate to oppose this fellow in 2012.  And by ‘acceptable’ I don’t mean ‘acceptable to the NRSC.’

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(Via @CalebHowe) What did you do in a previous lifetime to deserve this, AG Coakley?  Drive a bus full of kittens and baby harp seals off a cliff?

…then you know we have a lot of digging to do, but some work needs to be done and this president’s in the process of doing it and we need to get Marcia Coakley to help him to do that.”

(Curiously, [Rep Patrick] Kennedy [D, RI] mentioned Coakley repeatedly during his remarks to reporters, each time referring to her as “Marcia,” not “Martha.”)

‘Curiously?’  I can think of at least three reasons why it wouldn’t be, and one of them doesn’t even imply a substance abuse problem on Kennedy’s part.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.