Tony Perkins, the president of the religious-right activist group the Family Research Council, has just announced that he will not challenge Senator David Vitter (R-LA) in the 2010 Republican primary.

Not only that, but he's endorsing Vitter: "I am grateful for those who've encouraged me to consider returning to elected office, but this is not the right time. Along those lines, I would like members of the State Central Committee to know that I support Senator David Vitter's bid for reelection in 2010."

Perkins is also a former Louisiana state Representative, and he ran for Senate in 2002, winning 10% of the vote in the all-party primary that the state used at the time. Had he run, Perkins might have posed a real threat to Vitter's renomination -- after all, one of them is a top-level social-conservative activist, and the other is a social-conservative politician whose career got bogged down in the D.C. Madam prostitution scandal in 2007.

Of course, there was a serious risk in any potential candidacy: That he might run against Vitter, lose the primary, and have only succeeded in softening up the incumbent against a Democratic challenger.