Joe Walsh changes mind on which district he’ll run in

Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) will run in a new Democratic-leaning district rather than challenge Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.) in a primary, he announced Thursday in Chicago.

Walsh, a Tea Party favorite with personal baggage stemming from alleged failures to pay child support, will face an uphill battle. Two strong Democratic recruits, Tammy Duckworth and Raja Krishnamoorthi, are already in a district that both President Obama and Sen. John Kerry (Mass.), the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, would have carried based on the new district lines.

{mosads}Walsh had originally said he would challenge Hultgren, and seemed to have the upper hand after the Club for Growth, a deep-pocketed fiscally conservative group, said they would back him should he run in the primary. But after it came out that Walsh’s wife was suing him for failing to pay years of child support, the group backed away from the congressman.

But Walsh is unlikely to go away quietly. The fiery congressman has almost $500,000 in his campaign account, much of it gathered during a fundraising surge while he was fighting any increase in the debt ceiling last summer.