Longtime Congressman Dennis Kucinich apparently prefers staying in Congress to staying in Ohio.
Kucinich, who has represented Ohio's 10th Congressional District since 1997, is concerned about the effect redistricting will have on his political career. Ohio is due to lose two congressional seats as a result of the 2010 Census, which showed barely any population growth in the state over the last decade. The population of Cleveland, where Kucinich's district is located, actually declined. Perhaps declined isn't the correct word; collapsed seems more appropriate. Cleveland's population went from 478,403 in 2000 to 396,815 in 2010.
Because of this, the Cleveland area is likely to suffer the loss of a seat, and Kucinich's district is likely to be the one that gets erased. Most Congressmen faced with such a scenario would do one of two things: a) retire from public office and get a real job in the private sector, or b) face off against another incumbent Congressman in a battle for a single seat. In fact, this is precisely what happened to Democrat Congressman John Dingell of Michigan in 2002. Michigan lost a congressional seat after the 2000 Census, so Dingell defeated another incumbent Democrat, Lynn Rivers, in the primary election and went on to win the general election.
Again, most people would choose one of those two options. But Dennis Kucinich is not most people. Kucinich is a supporter of anti-American leftist autocrat Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, once sued a cafeteria for $150,000 because an olive had a pit in it, and infamously introduced a bill that would ban "space-based weapons" that are used for "mind control." But on the plus side, his wife is smokin' hot.
Anyway, Kucinich is concerned that he might not win reelection if his current district is eliminated and he is forced to compete in a district that has completely different boundaries (and therefore a much different group of voters), perhaps against another sitting Congressman. As he explained in this video from RealClearPolitics, "If I don't have anywhere I can run in Ohio, I have to start thinking about what my options are." And it seems that one of those options is to flee Ohio and become a carpetbagger Congressman in some other state.
Kucinich says that other states have asked him to run, although he did not name any of the states that allegedly expressed interest. (My guess is that California is one of them. Call it a hunch.) But who knows? Maybe he'll decide to head even further west than Cali and go all the way to North Korea, a country with a political and economic system that is the logical conclusion of most of the policies he is known for advocating.
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