Dennis Kucinich offers no support for Marcy Kaptur after primary defeat

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) declined to offer his support for Rep. Marcy Kaptur’s (D-Ohio) reelection campaign Thursday, two weeks after Kaptur defeated him in a primary and ended his eight-term run in the House.

“I’m not going to talk about that campaign at all,” Kucinich told Current TV when asked if he would endorse Kaptur. “There are some things that need to be resolved.”

{mosads}Kaptur and Kucinich were pitted against each other by GOP mapmakers in Ohio who drew the two into a single Democratic district along the coast of Lake Erie. After his defeat in the primary by about 15 points, Kucinich accused Kaptur of running a campaign on his turf that was “utterly lacking in integrity, with false statements, half-truths, misrepresentations.”

He said Thursday he wasn’t backing down from that claim.

“Frankly, that race is over,” he said. “I appreciate the fact that in my old
district in Cleveland, three out of every four voters supported my
campaign.”

Kucinich has kept a low profile since the primary, dodging direct answers to questions about his future plans and saying he was focused on finishing out his term in the House. But Kucinich has inched back into the political scene this week by way of the Current TV interview, a letter to his supporters and news of an out-of-state trip that reignited speculation about a last-ditch attempt to stay in the House.

When it became apparent during redistricting that Kucinich’s district might be chopped up, he flirted with the notion of running for a seat in Washington state instead. As his primary fight with Kaptur grew closer, he put those rumors to rest, with a spokesman saying it would be impossible because he would have to step down from his current term in Ohio to establish residency in Washington state.

That turned out to be incorrect, and the rumblings came roaring back Thursday when Washington Citizens for Kucinich, a group trying to draft him into a run in their state, announced that Kucinich will travel to Washington in April to be the featured speaker at a Social Security forum.

But Kucinich was vague on Thursday when describing the nature of his plans for the future.

“I’m going to continue in every way that I can, not just to be a voice, but to be someone who proposes ways that we can move this country ahead,” he said.

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