No, not Jakob Lodwick. (Give him time.) But Harold Ford, Jr.! Ford is planning a run against appointed New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and he has the backing of New York's richest Democratic donors.

Ford, son of Tennessee congressman Harold Ford, Sr., was a congressman from the Memphis area for ten years. Then he ran for Senate, and lost a close, bitter campaign, that is remembered primarily for a race-baiting TV ad in which a sexxxy white girl mentioned meeting Ford (who is, btw, black!) at "the Playboy party," and said, "Harold, call me!"

Ford was a bachelor at the time, but the white girl just may have been based on 2003 gossip linking Ford to Georgetown sex columnist Julia Baugher.

At the time, Baugher was famous primarily for a plagiarism scandal (Baugher was famous merely for her sex column at the time, as the plagiarism scandal did not "break" until 2004!)—she got caught copying borrowing from an iVillage listicle for her Hoya column in 2002—when Washington Post gossip columnist Lloyd Grove broke the news that she was spotted dining with Ford.

After the Post mentioned their relationship, Ford stopped calling Baugher. Baugher grew up and moved to New York and became Julia Allison, who wrote about her relationship with Ford in Cosmo and on her blog.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee decided that this brief courtship with Allison meant that ads implying that Ford loved white girls were totally fair game. Rush Limbaugh read from Julia Allison's blog, on-air. 2006 was a weird and terrible time.

Anyway! Ford lost and became the head of the DLC and got a job with Merril Lynch and, overall, proved himself to be a very mediocre Democrat and uninspiring politician. But he has lots and lots of rich friends! The Times reports today that Steven Rattner, Merryl Tisch, and Mike fucking Bloomberg are encouraging Ford to make his move against Gillibrand.

A primary battle between a black moderate Democrat from Tennessee with big-money ties who is opposed to gay marriage and a female moderate Democrat from upstate who loves guns? Someone pinch us, this is a dream come true!