Alan Grayson: 'I'm running'

Former Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, the outspoken liberal congressman, is running for Congress once again.

“I’m running,” Grayson told POLITICO Monday evening. “I think Orlando needs a congressman.”

Orlando TV station WFTV was the first to report the news.

The Florida Democrat said he did not know exactly which seat he would run for – the state’s congressional redistricting plan won't be completed until next year – but that he said he believed there would be a new, Democratic-oriented seat based in Orlando that would be a target.

Grayson has remained in the public eye since his loss to Republican Dan Webster by engaging his email list of supporters and blasting out a flurry of attention-grabbing and GOP-bashing fundraising missives that are his hallmark. He’s raised around $100,000 since the beginning of the year after taking in an eyebrow-raising $5 million during the 2010 election season.

He said his more than 80,000 donors in the past two years are proof his no-holds-barred liberal rhetoric works.

“People understood we need a congressman with guts,” he said. “There needs to be some Democrat who’s willing to tell it like it is, and I don’t see a lot of people doing it nationally.”

Alex Isenstadt is a reporter for Politico.