A reader tucks in a complaint among the praise:

You wrote today, “A bit of a surprise in Indiana’s 9th District, where Mike Sodrel will not be the GOP nominee against Baron Hill;” Please do not be surprised if/when Jonathan Paton fails to win the nomination in the AZ 8th. Pundits picking winners before a primary is inappropriate, no better than when the Republican Party attempts it. Please stop interfering in a local decision yet to made.

“Interfering”? Look, as much as I would like to say that kind words from the Campaign Spot can be the difference between victory and defeat for a candidate, a lot of factors go into an election. Any candidate who wants to put the blame for a second-place finish on my blog is looking for excuses.

Would you prefer I lied to you, and told you every candidate who files has an equal shot at winning? Or should I hide the fact that a former congressman who has won a race or two before has a leg up on a first-time candidate? (Todd Young outraised Sodrel by more than 2-to-1, according to OpenSecrets, a pretty rare advantage for a first-time candidate over a guy who represented the district earlier.)

Perhaps one of the other candidates will overtake Jonathan Paton; but he currently leads in fundraising and he’s won some races already. He has $200,000 more cash-on-hand than any other Republican in the race, and he’s actually run and won races as a state senator before. This is not to say the other candidates, Jesse Kelly and Brian Miller, aren’t good guys, or that they wouldn’t make good candidates. But we just don’t know if these guys can bring out their voters, whereas Paton has run for state senate four times and won the last two.