Too good to check: No-name lefty candidate may sneak in as Dems’ Indiana Senate nominee

Remember that last-minute filing deadline that Ed talked about this morning, how Indiana Democrats would be forced to go through a caucus process because no one qualified for the ballot in time? Well, “no one” is on the verge of becoming someone.

Red State’s got the right idea. She claims she needs 500 signatures by tomorrow, especially from the 8th District, although she’d feel safer with 1,000. If you’re a conservative Hoosier and you get a knock on the door, you know what to do.

It would be something close to a nightmare scenario for Democrats: were [Tamyra] D’Ippolito to qualify for the ballot, she would be the likely nominee and the party would be left to face the GOP with a political neophyte who said she is running in part to take on a party establishment she said practices “sexism with a big S.”

It’s precisely what Bayh had hoped to avoid. By disclosing his retirement one day before the filing deadline, the idea was that no Democrat would qualify for the primary ballot and the party’s state central committee could tap their favored candidate…

“This would be a complete and unmitigated disaster,” said a leading Democrat in the state. “We’d be up sh—’s creek.”…

She said she was committed to the race in part because she was sick of the male-dominated Democratic Party in the state.

“It’s very much an old boys club in Indiana and I’m out to break it,” she said.

She tells TPM that the state party is working against her, which is undoubtedly true and will be even truer now. But don’t lose hope. Remember, Harry Reid initially vowed to block Roland Burris’s appointment by Blagojevich until the race card was dutifully played by Burris’s supporters, leading to the inevitable reversal in the name of diversity. Sounds like D’Ippolito’s already got her own identity-politics ducks in a row, so if anything underhanded is tried to disqualify her, this is going to turn into one glorious clusterfark. Cross them fingers.

Here’s her campaign Facebook page. She says she’ll be collecting signatures tonight at someplace called Ragazzi’s. Hop to it, Hot Air Indianans!

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