Wisconsin’s Doyle joins Summer of Guvs dropping out

Pawlenty, Doyle signed pact to share money-saving tips. Photo: MN Northstar

This summer, it seems whenever you turn on the TV or tune in a radio newscast, another prominent pol has dropped out of contention for re-election. Republican governors especially have been dropping like flies: first Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty, then Alaska’s Sarah Palin, and last week (officially and inevitably), South Carolina’s Mark Sanford. Now a Democrat will join that field: Wisconsin’s Jim Doyle.

With Doyle’s departure — his decision to not run for a third term is expected to become official today – Wisconsin likely won’t see anything quite like the crowd of possible gubernatorial candidates (nearly 40-strong) that has overrun Minnesota since Pawlenty’s announcement.

But a couple Republicans have already seized on Doyle’s perceived political weakness as an open invitation to re-take the governor’s mansion.

The Democratic field will likely include Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who was also in the news over the weekend for stopping an assault at the Wisconsin State Fair parking lot, leaving him hospitalized with injuries to his head and a broken hand.

“The mayor’s heroic actions clearly saved a woman and others from harm,” Doyle said.

Still unclear is whether Doyle will also resign from office, like Palin, or complete his term, like fellow two-termers Pawlenty and Sanford.

Sanford’s statement last week that his political career will end when he leaves the South Carolina governor’s mansion was anticlimactic after a summer of scandal that made the move almost inevitable. The straw that apparently broke Sanford: news that he’d used a state plane for personal travel.

But until Sanford made his announcement, there still seemed a chance that he might follow the example of a stalwart backer in his inner circle: South Carolina comptroller and Duluth native Richard Eckstrom.

Eckstrom proved that billing the state government for personal travel and being the butt of a “Saturday Night Live” satire sketch need not impede an office-holder from getting re-elected. South Carolina voters apparently accepted his apology for driving a state minivan and buying gas with a state credit card for a 2004 family trip to his home state of Minnesota.