Bad News Comes Early for Senate Republicans

By Nathan L. Gonzales

The 2010 election cycle is just a couple months old, and Senate Republicans have almost equaled their number of retirements from last cycle, when their party lost eight seats. But this time around, Senators with one foot out the door appear to be making their decisions earlier, instead of keeping party strategists guessing.

Just in the last two weeks, Ohio Sen. George Voinovich (R) and Missouri Sen. Kit Bond (R) announced their decisions not seek re-election. They join Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback (R) and Florida Sen. Mel Martinez (R), who announced last year their plans to exit the chamber.

“These Senators did the right thing for the party by making their decisions early, and in each state, Republicans now have a solid bench of potential candidates who are already hard at work,” said Brian Walsh, communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Last cycle, then-Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) officially announced he wouldn’t seek re-election in January 2007, more than 20 months before Election Day. But the next four Republican announcements didn’t come until much later.

Former Sens. John Warner (R-Va.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) didn’t announce their retirements until September 2007. And former New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) waited even a month later. Former Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) never officially said he wasn’t seeking re-election, but now-Sen. Jim Risch (R) launched his campaign to succeed Craig in October 2007.

Republicans lost three of the five open seats last November, only retaining control of the seats in the two most Republican states (Idaho and Nebraska).

“At a time when statewide candidates need to raise millions of dollars to run a competitive campaign, there is no getting around the fact that an extra six months to raise money, develop an organization and travel around the state provides a tremendous advantage,” Walsh said.

There is no guarantee that Republicans would have won Virginia or New Mexico last cycle if Warner and Domenici had announced earlier. An early Allard decision didn’t help the GOP effort in Colorado.

Republicans would have preferred their incumbents run for re-election. But the early retirement decisions are better than waiting in limbo, and while an early start can’t change the political environment, it does give candidates more time for critical fundraising.


This story first appeared on RollCall.com on January 16, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Nebraska Senate: Don’t Gas Up the Scott Kleeb Senate Bandwagon Just Yet

By Stuart Rothenberg

To hear some of the early Democratic buzz (and even media hype) about Scott Kleeb’s chances in the Nebraska Senate race, you’d think the Cornhusker State’s 2008 Senate race might be worth watching, even without former Sen. Bob Kerrey or Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey carrying the Democratic banner.

Well, at this point, the state’s Senate race is worth watching, but only through the Republican primary. If a Democratic victory in the state is not impossible, it is certainly implausible.

Much has been made by those encouraging Kleeb to run that Democrats have had their share of victories in the state. That’s true. Democrats have won nine of the past 11 Senate races in Nebraska, including a stretch of seven in a row from 1976 to 1994. They’ve also won nine of the state’s past 15 gubernatorial elections.

But if you’ve been watching Nebraska politics for the past 25 or 30 years, as I have, you know those numbers are misleading and probably irrelevant in 2008.

Too often, a vitally important tidbit about Democratic successes in the state is left out: All of those 18 races were won by one of only four Democrats: J.J. Exon, Ed Zorinsky, Bob Kerrey and Ben Nelson. Exon, Kerrey and Nelson were elected as and served as governor before winning election to the Senate. Their records as governor credentialed them to run for federal office.

Zorinsky, of course, was the Republican mayor of Omaha who switched parties to run for the Senate as a Democrat only when the state GOP handed the party’s Senate nomination to the Republican Congressman from Omaha. During his years in the Senate, Zorinsky was a favorite of Washington, D.C., conservatives because he voted like a Republican. Indeed, every two years rumors circulated that Zorinsky would switch back to his old party if it needed his vote to organize the Senate.

So Democrats don’t simply drop out of the sky to win statewide races in Nebraska. Kerrey would have been very competitive next year. Fahey would have been an interesting nominee. Nobody else comes close.

This brings us to Kleeb, whose major asset seems to be his rugged good looks, especially when he is atop a horse or wearing his cowboy hat. He has been praised by one liberal activist as a “solid progressive,” hardly an asset in Nebraska.

Kleeb, who currently is a program officer in the Center for Student Leadership at Hastings College (which is located in the south-central part of the state), drew 45 percent of the vote in an open-seat House race last year in Nebraska’s very Republican 3rd district. On the strength of that showing, some Democrats are making the case that he would be a formidable candidate for the Senate.

Kleeb’s showing was good, considering that he parachuted into the state (from Colorado and then graduate school at Yale) shortly before he began his Congressional bid. In one of the most creative efforts I’ve ever seen to connect a candidate to a state with which he had little or no personal connection, Kleeb’s Congressional campaign distributed a sheet that said that he “was raised on Nebraska stories” and “was raised on a U.S. Army installation in Italy, but he grew up knowing his home was in Nebraska.”

So what about Kleeb’s 45 percent showing in a district that went 75 percent for George W. Bush two years earlier? Doesn’t that demonstrate Kleeb’s appeal and potential statewide strength?

First, 2006 and 2008 are very different years, with last year being the worst political environment for Republicans since Watergate and next year being a presidential year. Second, those who point to Kleeb’s showing either don’t know to look at the district’s history or ignored important facts that put his showing into context.

Nebraska’s 3rd district was open in 2000, when football coach icon Tom Osborne (R) was easily elected to fill it. But the previous time it was open was 1990, when veteran Rep. Virginia Smith (R) retired.

The election to fill Smith’s open seat was close — far closer than Kleeb’s 10-point miss last time. Republican Bill Barrett beat Democrat Sandra Scofield by just 4,373 votes, 51 percent to 49 percent. The race was that close even though George H.W. Bush carried the district with 67 percent in 1988 and Ronald Reagan took 78 percent there in the 1984 White House election.

In 1992, Barrett won re-election with 72 percent of the vote as Bush was carrying the district in a three-way race with 49 percent and Democrat Bill Clinton was finishing third (behind Ross Perot) with 23 percent of the vote.

Want further evidence that Kleeb’s showing in last year’s open seat wasn’t all that shocking? When the untouchable Virginia Smith first won the 3rd district House seat during the 1974 midterms, her margin was 737 votes (50.2 percent to 49.8 percent) over Democrat Wayne Ziebarth. Two years later, she won re-election with 75 percent as Gerald Ford (R) was carrying the district with 63 percent of the vote in the presidential contest.

Apparently, close open-seat races in the 3rd district are the rule, not the exception, at least when they occur during midterms. And two of the past three were closer than 2006.

Republicans have two strong, conservative candidates for the Senate. Unless the Republican primary produces an absolute bloodbath — and the May primary date gives time for wounds to heal — the party will have a well-known current or former statewide officeholder running for the Senate in a presidential year. The national Democratic ticket is not likely to have much appeal in central and western Nebraska. [Editor's Note: Since the article was first written, Attorney General Jon Bruning (R) dropped out of the race, eliminating the chance of a competitive primary.]

You need to believe the unbelievable to think that Kleeb or any Democrat not named Kerrey (or, possibly, Fahey) would have any chance of winning the state’s Senate seat next year. Kleeb apparently is mulling a Senate bid or another run for the House, which would be almost as uphill. If he’s serious about a political career, he ought to look at another route to federal office.

This column first appeared in Roll Call on November 19, 2007. Copyright 2007 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

DSCC Could Hit Recruiting Mother Lode

By Stuart Rothenberg

While Democratic strategists have not yet started to count their chickens, there is increasing evidence that two key Democrat Senate recruits are moving toward '08 Senate races.

Former New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, who narrowly lost a 2002 Senate race against Republican John Sununu, has reversed her earlier decision against running next year and, after a heavy recruiting effort by many Democrats, including Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, appears to be leaning toward a re-match with Sununu.

Insiders stress that Shaheen has not made a final decision, but they agree that the betting at the Harvard Institute of Politics, where she is the director, and in savvy political circles in New Hampshire, is that she is now likely to enter the Senate race.

In Nebraska, former Senator (and former Governor) Bob Kerrey also appears to be inching toward entering the state’s Senate contest, assuming that incumbent Senator Chuck Hagel (R) decides not to seek reelection. Kerrey would not challenge Hagel if the Republican decides to seek another term, which many think is not likely.

Kerrey, who is telling friends that his wife has signed off on a Senate race, has already paid for a survey and contacted operatives who worked for him in the past. And he is the keynote speaker at this weekend’s annual Democratic event, the Morrison-Exon Dinner, on June 23. "He wouldn’t go and do the dinner if he wasn’t serious about the Senate," one knowledgeable Democratic insider told me.

Based on early recruiting, Democrats have so far put three GOP Senate seats in play, the open seat in Colorado and seats held by Norm Coleman (Minn.) and Susan Collins (Maine). They are still looking for a top tier candidate against Oregon’s Gordon Smith.

Democratic chances for another mega-year in the Senate would also be enhanced by possible additional Republican Senate retirements in Virginia and Nebraska.

This item first appeared on Political Wire on June 21, 2007.

Waiting for Godot ... or Hagel, Warner, Cochran and Craig

By Stuart Rothenberg

While the clock ticks on the 2008 election cycle, Republicans are holding their collective breath about the political futures of four veteran GOP Senators.

Nebraska’s Chuck Hagel, Virginia’s John Warner, Mississippi’s Thad Cochran and Idaho’s Larry Craig all have been coy — and that’s an understatement — about their re-election plans, and at least three of those seats could be at risk if the incumbents retire at the end of their current terms.

That’s right, four states that have each voted for a Democratic presidential nominee just once since the 1960 Richard Nixon-John F. Kennedy election — Idaho, Nebraska and Virginia in 1964, and Mississippi in 1976 — could see competitive Senate contests if things fall apart for the GOP and into place for Democrats.

The Democrats’ opportunities stem from the presence in at least three of the states of formidable potential Democratic candidates who already have proved their appeal and seem to have the ability to run credible campaigns.

No, we aren’t talking about fundamental partisan shifts (Virginia is the only one of the four where one could plausibly argue that partisan allegiances are shifting), but that would be of little comfort to the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee or Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) if any of those Senate seats were to be won by Democrats.

Of the four states, the only one where Democrats lack a strong bench and a top-tier challenger-in-waiting is Idaho. If Craig, who has so far been tight-lipped about his political future, decides not to seek a fourth term, Democratic prospects would improve, but only slightly.

Only three Democrats have been victorious in the 36 gubernatorial and Senatorial elections held in Idaho since 1950. Frank Church was elected four times to the Senate (the last time in 1974), while Cecil Andrus won four gubernatorial contests and John Evans won two. The party did not even have a nominee against Sen. Mike Crapo (R) in the 2004 Senate race.

Former Rep. Larry LaRocco (D) has declared his candidacy for the Senate next year, and businessman Larry Grant (D), who drew 45 percent of the vote in a losing Congressional bid last year, is thought to have some statewide interest. But no Democrat in the state seems to have anything close to the advantages of five-term Rep. Mike Simpson, who represents half of the state and would be an obvious Republican replacement for Craig, were he to retire.

Of the three other states, Virginia appears to be the GOP’s worst nightmare. While the state still leans Republican, recent elections demonstrate increasing Democratic strength, particularly when Democrats nominate a moderate statewide candidate.

If John Warner retires, popular former Democratic Gov. Mark Warner would be a clear favorite to win the seat. Republicans certainly would have formidable candidates in an open-seat race, including Rep. Tom Davis and, possibly, former Gov. Jim Gilmore, who currently is running for president (of the United States of America, that is). But Mark Warner’s success as governor, fundraising ability and overall appeal would, at the very least, put Republican control of the seat at great risk.

Nebraska certainly has a reputation as a Republican state, but unlike Idaho it has a history of electing Democrats as governor or to the Senate. In fact, Democrats have won nine of the state’s past 11 Senate races and half of the state’s past 10 gubernatorial elections. Clearly, a strong Democrat in Nebraska can be formidable in any statewide election except president.

If Hagel doesn’t seek re-election, or if Republicans have a divisive primary, Democrats could well turn to Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey. Fahey, 63, is serving his second term as mayor of the state’s largest city. Before he entered government, Fahey was a small-business man, having founded and run a title insurance company. (Even former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey might choose to consider an open-seat bid.)

Finally, Mississippi could be at least a bit of a problem for the GOP if Cochran were to retire.

While the state GOP has a deep bench of potential Senate candidates that includes at least two Members of Congress, Reps. Chip Pickering and Roger Wicker, and a popular governor, Haley Barbour, Democrats might be able to recruit former state Attorney General Mike Moore for an open seat. Moore was the first attorney general to file a lawsuit against the tobacco companies, and he is often mentioned as a possible candidate for the Senate if and when a seat becomes open.

Moore would have a difficult time winning a federal race because of the state’s conservatism and strong Republican bent, but he would give Democrats a credible candidate whom Republicans would have to take very seriously.

The reason that these four races are of considerable concern for Republicans is that the party already is guaranteed to be on the defensive this cycle even without any further retirements. And GOP strategists certainly don’t need to be worrying about Senate seats that are locks if incumbents run for re-election, especially when they are in normally reliably Republican states.

Democrats are watching closely for opportunities to “expand the playing field” in next year’s elections. These four states with potential open Senate seats could be just what they are looking for.

This column first appeared in Roll Call on April 23, 3007. Copyright 2007 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.