I kind of missed not having more Congressional candidates to talk to, last week. Don’t get me wrong: it’s great to have nine Presidential candidates show up at your event. But one of the fun things about the RedState Gathering is that most years you get to talk to a bunch of candidates for other federal, statewide, or state offices, too.  We unavoidably had less of that this year.

But I was able to talk to Brian Mast, who is a disabled veteran running in the FL-18 (R+3) Republican primary. That’s Allan West’s old district – and current incumbent Democrat [mc_name name=’Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-FL)’ chamber=’house’ mcid=’M001191′ ] had to give up running for re-election so that he could either lose to [mc_name name=’Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL)’ chamber=’house’ mcid=’G000556′ ] in the Senate Democratic primary, or else lose to the Republican candidate in the general. So the seat is going to be a good pickup opportunity for the GOP. Which means that people should pay attention to what happens in this race.

Brian Mast’s site is here.