Illinois state Sen. Jim Oberweis kicked off his bid against freshman Democratic Rep. Lauren Underwood by accidentally running for the Senate for a few hours.

On Sunday, Oberweis filed paperwork with the FEC to seek the GOP nod to challenge Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, who beat him 54-43 in 2014. This news came as a surprise to us, since Oberweis had expressed interest last month in taking on Underwood. However, it seems like this news was an even bigger surprise to Oberweis himself. On Monday, he told Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller that he was indeed challenging Underwood, and that “the person who filed the paperwork for him accidentally checked the wrong box.”

We always caution readers that a politician isn’t running for office until they actually say they’re running for office, and that not everyone who sets up a campaign committee with the FEC ends up jumping in. There are many reasons we’ve been such sticklers about this over the years, but accidentally filing for the wrong seat is a new one. In any case, Oberweis is now belatedly running against Underwood in Illinois’ 14th District, a 49-45 Trump seat in the western Chicago area. However, as we’ve written before, while Underwood will likely be a top GOP target, Team Red can almost certainly do better than Oberweis.

That’s because Oberweis, who is one of Daily Kos Elections’ favorite frequent candidates going back to our Swing State Project days, has unsuccessfully run for the House or statewide office a grand total of six times beginning with his 2002 primary defeat to take on Durbin. Unlike his day-long 2019 Senate bid, all of these losing campaigns were waged deliberately.