State Rep. Kelly Skidmore, D-Boca Raton, will enter the 2010 race for the state Senate seat of Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, who is running for chief financial officer.

Skidmore, serving her second House term, does not live in Atwater’s Senate District 25 but said she would have “no problem moving back into the district where I have lived most of my life.”

Palm Beach-Broward District 25 has a Republican registration edge of roughly 38 percent to 36 percent. But Democrat Barack Obama carried the district in November’s presidential election.

Three Republicans have already announced they are running to succeed Atwater: state Reps. Ellyn Bogdanoff of Fort Lauderdale and Carl Domino of Jupiter and businessman Nick Loeb of Delray Beach.

Former Democratic state Sen. Skip Campbell has said he’s interested in running for the District 25 Senate seat.

Skidmore was a longtime aide to U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, when Klein served in the state legislature. In 2006, Skidmore got 29.1 percent of the vote to win a four-candidate Democratic primary and capture the District 90 House seat. Republicans did not field a candidate in the heavily Democratic district, which includes parts of southern Palm Beach County and a portion of northern Broward County.

Skidmore said she decided to enter the Senate race after talking to political consultant Neil Schiller and Eric Johnson, the political operative and chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton.

Skidmore’s decision to run for the state Senate could set off a Democratic free-for-all for her House seat. Insurance agent Len Turesky, who finished second to Skidmore in the 2006 Democratic primary, has expressed interest in running.

Tags: Carl Domino, Ellyn Bogdanoff, Kelly Skidmore, Nick Loeb, Skip Campbell

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 5:27 pm and is filed under 2010 campaigns, State Senate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.