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Will Simmons seek a return to his old congressional seat? He's not saying but a DC GOP operative says "we'd be happy to have him."

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With his apparent decision to abandon his U.S. Senate bid in the face of the Linda McMahon juggernaut, will Simmons seek a return to the cozy confines of the 2nd Congressional District?

He represented the 2nd for six years before losing to U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney in 2006 by less than 100 votes. Some Republicans think the cards are stacked in their favor this year (just as they were for the Democrats in '06) and Simmons would be a plum recruit for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

The Simmons campaign isn't saying and some of his allies predict that he will skip the congressional race and announce that he's sitting out the remainder of the 2010 election cycle entirely. 

The rumor of a Simmons switch first flared up a few months ago. The Simmons camp dismissed it as wishful thinking being fed by McMahon staffers.

Simmons' cash -- he says he has more than $1 million in his campaign account -- could be transferred to a House race. He would have to go out and collect signatures to force his way onto the ballot, but that's not an insurmountable obstacle.

Some GOP insiders say they are less than enchanted with the 2nd District candidate endorsed by the party convention on Friday: Daria Novak, a former State Department expert from Madison who has never held elective office before.

Suzanne Novak, Daria Novak's sister and campaign manager, said they had heard the rumor that Simmons would switch off and on for some time. "That's been out there for some time,'' Suzanne Novak said late tonight. When the Novak campaign talked about it with Simmons, "he told us he had no intention of doing that.''

Novak said tonight she doesn't know if that has changed.

Some Republicans speculated that the NRCC may have tapped Simmons on the shoulder and asked him to run in the 2nd. Party officials wouldn't comment but DC operative said privately "we'd be happy to have him.''









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