Obama, Biden Seats in Danger?

By Nathan L. Gonzales

Lost in the focus on President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden’s history-making move down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House in January was the fact that Republicans have a historic opportunity to pick up the pair’s former Senate seats.

Over the past century, half of the dozen seats vacated by a new president or vice president have switched partisan control in the next election. Click here for the Senate chart.

In 2010, Republicans have open-seat opportunities in Illinois and Delaware and could win both seats vacated by a president and vice president in the same cycle for the first time in U.S. history.

The last time a newly elected president and vice president gave up their Senate seats the same year was in 1960. Democrats held President John F. Kennedy’s Massachusetts seat in the next election, but the party lost Vice President Lyndon Johnson’s Texas seat when appointed Sen. William Blakley (D) narrowly lost a 1961 special election to John Tower (R).

“Obviously people see these as elected [not appointed] offices,” said former Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), who was appointed to fill the vacancy in 1989 when Sen. Dan Quayle was elected vice president. “That’s why the first election is so critical.”

Democratic chances of holding Obama’s seat improved when appointed Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) decided not to run next year. Burris’ tenure has been overshadowed by fallout from his controversial appointment by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D), who has since been indicted and impeached. But after Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan (D) took a pass on the Senate race and Rep. Mark Kirk (R) jumped in, Republican chances improved dramatically.

In Delaware, former Gov. Ruth Ann Minner (D) appointed longtime Biden aide Ted Kaufman (D) as a placeholder to fill the vice president’s Senate seat. State Attorney General Beau Biden (D) is expected to run for his father’s seat once he returns from active duty in Iraq. Meanwhile, political operatives on both sides of the aisle are waiting for Rep. Mike Castle (R) to make a decision on the race. With Castle, who has represented the entire state both as Congressman and governor, this race might be one of the best GOP takeover opportunities in the country. Without him, it’s not even competitive.

Over the past 100 years, three Senate seats vacated by a president-elect or vice president-elect have been filled with placeholders (not including Kaufman).

In 1948, Democrats held the seat vacated by Alben Barkley (D-Ky.), who was elected vice president under Harry Truman. When appointed Sen. Garrett Withers (D-Ky.) did not run in 1950, Earle Clements defeated Charles Dawson (R) to keep the seat in Democratic hands. Clements lost re-election six years later.

After Kennedy’s election in 1960, Benjamin Smith II (D-Mass.) was appointed to his Senate seat until the election in 1962, when the president’s brother, Edward Kennedy (D), was old enough run and serve.

More recently, Republicans took over the seat vacated by then-Sen. Al Gore (D-Tenn.) after he and Bill Clinton were elected to the White House in 1992. Appointed Sen. Harlan Mathews (D-Tenn.) didn’t seek a full term, and Fred Thompson (R) defeated Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper 60 percent to 39 percent in the Republican wave of 1994.

The political environment was a critical factor in many of these Senate races.
“Some of these things are beyond the candidate’s control,” former Sen. Rudy Boschwitz (R-Minn.) said in a recent interview. “Dynamics come up that are quite beyond you.”

Boschwitz was elected to the Senate in 1978 when he defeated Democrat Wendell Anderson, who had been appointed to fill the vacancy created when then-Sen. Walter Mondale (D-Minn.) was elected Jimmy Carter’s vice president. Republicans netted three seats in the Senate and 15 in the House that cycle, but the appointment became an issue as well.

Anderson had resigned as governor in order to be appointed to Mondale’s seat by the new governor. Self-appointments are rare and can be politically trickier to explain to voters. In Minnesota, Anderson’s maneuver became an issue, the midterm cycle turned against the Democrats and Boschwitz took issue with Anderson’s absenteeism, resulting in a 17-point victory. Boschwitz held the seat until he lost to Democrat Paul Wellstone by two points in 1990.

The stock market crash helped George McGill (D) defeat appointed-Sen. Henry Allen (R-Kansas) in 1930, who was appointed to the seat vacated when Charles Curtis (R-Kansas) was elected vice president under Herbert Hoover two years earlier. McGill was the last Democrat to represent Kansas in the Senate.

Historically, appointed Senators who follow a president or vice president into office and then run for a full term have had nearly equal odds of winning or losing in the next election.

Before Anderson in Minnesota, Mondale was appointed to the seat in 1965 when Hubert Humphrey was elected vice president under Johnson. Mondale was elected in his own right in 1966 with 54 percent and served until he was elected vice president.

“The election is a way of ratifying or denying that appointment,” Coats explained. “Ninety percent of Indiana didn’t know who I was, so I thought I better get in front of them.” After his appointment to Quayle’s seat, the former Congressman defeated Democrat Baron Hill with 54 percent in 1990 and was elected to a full term in 1992 with 57 percent.

After Sen. Richard Nixon (R-Calif.) was elected vice president under Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, appointed Sen. Thomas Kuchel was elected to the remainder of Nixon’s term in 1954 and served until 1968.

Along with Allen in Kansas, the Blakley loss in Texas in the 1960s and Anderson’s loss in the 1980s, Democrats lost Harry Truman’s Missouri Senate seat, the only presidential Senate seat to immediately switch party hands in the last century.

Frank Briggs (D) was appointed in Missouri after Truman was elected vice president under Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944. But when Roosevelt died a few months later, Truman ascended to the presidency. Then in 1946, Briggs lost to James Kem (R), who was known as a staunch Truman opponent. Kem served only one term before he lost re-election to Stuart Symington (D).

Surely, the White House doesn’t want to fuel Republican confidence or give the party a rallying cry by letting Obama’s or Biden’s Senate seat fall into GOP hands.

Republicans lost Vice President Gerald Ford’s Michigan House seat in a February 1974 special election at a time when Nixon’s approval was sagging. The race also foreshadowed larger GOP losses that would come that fall.

Democrat Richard Vander Veen’s special election victory was remarkable since the Grand Rapids-area district hadn’t elected a Democrat since 1912 — and hasn’t elected one again since 1974.

Ford’s seat is one of two House seats that have been vacated by an incoming vice president.

Speaker John Nance Garner (D-Texas) left Congress when he was elected vice president under FDR in 1932. Milton West kept Garner’s 15th district seat in Democratic hands for seven terms, but Garner may have been a bit jealous since he famously described his new job as “not worth a bucket of warm piss.”

This story first appeared in Roll Call on July 29, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. Some updates made to original.

Capitol Hill Democrats Have Met Their Enemy and It Is Them

By Stuart Rothenberg

Earlier this week, I asked a veteran Washington-based Democratic political operative who has worked for more than his share of liberals whether he had seen any indication that grass-roots “progressives” were getting angry with the party’s performance on Capitol Hill and were starting to make their anger known.

“No. No. Not yet,” he said, shaking his head. “Right now we are just happy to be in the majority. We were out of power for a long time,” he laughed. “But it will come; it will come,” sighed the Washington veteran, looking as if he might like either a glass of scotch or at least a couple of aspirin.

Twenty-four hours later, I was interviewing a reliably liberal Democratic candidate running in 2010 in a swing state. I asked him what he will say when his formidable Republican opponent argues that the country doesn’t need yet more Democrats in Washington, D.C. — that it needs more officeholders who will act as a check on President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress.

“I’ll say that if you look at what has been happening in Congress right now, we appear to have plenty of Democrats who are acting as checks on Democrats in Washington,” he answered with a smile.

Rattle off names such as Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) or Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.) to a member of Democratic House or Senate leadership, and they are likely to think, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”

Democratic Blue Dogs and deficit hawks are showing their muscle right now. Whether it’s out of principle or merely a political reflection of the president’s loss of support on health care among independent voters in a number of recent surveys, moderates in the president’s own party are now driving the bus.

The Democratic grass roots so far have been patient with Congress, but at some point that patience may wear out.

Few people outside of the political class understand how Capitol Hill works, so it shouldn’t be surprising that many Democrats around the country assumed that a 60-seat Senate, an overwhelmingly Democratic House and a Democratic president would pass a health care bill with a public insurance option rather easily.

Ultimately, the president is likely to get a health care bill that he will sign. No bill means broken promises by both the White House and the Congressional leadership, and with the healthy majorities that Democrats have on Capitol Hill, blaming Republicans will almost certainly not work, no matter how damaged the GOP brand currently is.

But it is increasingly obvious — indeed it has been rather clear for at least the past couple of weeks — that the final health care reform product won’t be what Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, would prefer. Nor will it be the bill that Obama would write, if he had the power to do so.

Still, the president is likely to hail passage of any bill as a historic achievement, taking credit for “the most dramatic health care reform in the nation’s history,” or words to that effect. It really doesn’t matter exactly what is and what is not in the bill. The president will have to claim victory for producing “change” no matter the specifics.

The key for Democrats is how much discontent will be caused by a bill that disappoints, maybe even angers, the party’s more liberal wing.

Will activists be so happy to get anything that they swallow hard and smile even if the final bill lacks a pure public insurance plan option? Will they accept the president’s likely assessment of the final product, when he says that the final bill is a huge step toward universal coverage and controlling cost?

The president continues to draw strong support from Democrats, particularly the most liberal in his party. Gallup’s massive mid-July aggregated weekly tracking numbers show Obama’s job approval at 92 percent among Democrats and 95 percent among liberal Democrats.

Both groups apparently have great confidence in him and are likely to give his interpretation of the final bill great weight. But between now and final passage, will the voices on the Democratic left get louder and more angry? And if they do, what will that mean for the rest of the Obama agenda?

The division within the Democratic Party has Republicans feeling almost giddy. The health care debate, following the stimulus bill, the fiscal 2009 omnibus spending bill, the auto industry bailout and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, has resurrected two issues, spending and taxes, dear to GOP hearts. And many Republicans are now confident that the pendulum is swinging back to them.

These are interesting times politically, even if Democrats do control all of the levers of power in Washington, D.C.

This column first appeared in Roll Call on July 27, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Late Primaries Can Equal Big Headaches in Targeted Races

By Nathan L. Gonzales

As House Republicans are drawing up their list of top Democratic targets in 2010, a familiar enemy awaits: the primary election calendar.

A handful of the GOP’s best takeover opportunities are in states such as Arizona, Maryland, Florida and New Hampshire, where late and crowded primaries have the potential to put the party’s nominee at a distinct disadvantage heading into the general election.

In addition to often leaving the party’s base fractured, late primaries can produce battered nominees with depleted bank accounts and only a few weeks to recover.

Last cycle, in what one GOP operative described as a “train wreck,” Maricopa County Treasurer David Schweikert won the Republican nomination with 29 percent in a six-way primary in early September in Arizona’s 5th district.

While Schweikert began to reload for the general election, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee unloaded television ads attacking him the same week. Schweikert was never really able to regain strong footing, and Rep. Harry Mitchell (D) — who was then a top target after knocking off a Republican incumbent in 2006 — easily won re-election, 53 percent to 44 percent.

Schweikert “never got out of the box,” one Democratic strategist said.

Mitchell is once again a top target in 2010, but Republicans face yet another late primary. Schweikert is running again, and this time he faces a primary against former LucasArts President Jim Ward.

Along with the financial ramifications of a late primary, the increasing emphasis on early voting is a challenge because it narrows the window between when the primary ends and the general election begins. In Arizona, next year’s primary will be Aug. 24 while early voting begins Oct. 7.

Republicans also have their sights set on freshman Rep. Frank Kratovil (D-Md.), who won in the heavily Republican 1st district last year with 49 percent of the vote. Kratovil benefited greatly from a bloody GOP primary fight between moderate Rep. Wayne Gilchrest and state Sen. Andy Harris. Harris won, but the fight left the party heavily fractured, both ideologically and geographically, with Harris burning many bridges in the Eastern Shore-based district. Gilchrest went on to endorse Kratovil, and Harris couldn’t match the Democrats’ spending on Baltimore television.

Harris is running again, but he may face state Sen. E.J. Pipkin (who came in third in the 2008 primary) or former state Del. Al Redmer in the primary. More importantly, last year’s primary was held Feb. 12 in conjunction with the presidential primary, but next year it will be Sept. 14.

Last cycle, the National Republican Congressional Committee in particular took heat for not getting more involved in primaries in order to get the strongest general election candidate. But in an age when candidates are eager to run against the establishment, there isn’t a lot the national parties can do to clear primary fields.

“The NRCC’s policy on primaries is that there is no policy,” one committee official said. At times in the past, the committee’s intervention has created exactly the opposite effect of what was intended.

One thing the campaign committees can do is grease the fundraising gears. Earlier this decade, the NRCC created special funds to raise money for its eventual nominees in competitive races with contested primaries. The accounts were a repository for money from other Members and for money that the White House helped raise to be transferred to the Congressional nominee after the primary.

For example, in 2004, then-Washington state Rep. Cathy McMorris inherited $200,000 after she won the GOP nomination on Sept. 14 in a three-way primary. The infusion of money helped her gain the 5th district seat over a self-funding Democratic opponent.

“Late primaries have to be managed,”one GOP operative said. Aside from setting up special accounts, Republicans try to prepare by making sure potential nominees have their general election media and mail plans in places, including research on potential opponents.

The DCCC prepares research on all potential GOP opponents, but instead of setting up generic fundraising accounts in certain races, the committee immediately puts its nominees on the “Red to Blue” program list in order to jump-start their fundraising and boost the candidates’ ability to collect Member contributions.

In addition to the Arizona race, the DCCC went on the air in New Hampshire’s 1st district almost immediately after former Rep. Jeb Bradley secured the GOP nomination in early September of last year. The committee’s spending helped boost Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D) to a 52 percent to 46 percent victory in November.

Two years before, Shea-Porter surprised both parties when she knocked off state Senate Minority Leader Jim Craig, the DCCC’s preferred candidate, and went on to defeat Bradley without support from the national party.

This cycle, Republicans look to be headed for another September primary to determine who will take on Shea-Porter. But Democrats will also likely have a crowded primary in the state’s 2nd district, where they are trying to hold the seat being vacated by Rep. Paul Hodes (D) to run for Senate.

The DCCC chose not to immediately flex its fundraising muscle last year in New York’s 26th district after Alice Kryzan (D) was the surprise winner of the Sept. 9 primary over the DCCC’s favored candidate.

Recent Republican successes in races that featured late primaries have often been circumstantial.

Last year in Kansas’ 2nd district, state Treasurer Lynn Jenkins beat former Rep. Jim Ryun in a competitive Aug. 5 primary. But Jenkins’ general election victory over then-Rep. Nancy Boyda (D) had more to do with the Republican nature of the district and the relatively inexpensive media markets there. Another big factor was that Boyda shunned all outside help, so the DCCC didn’t come in with its usual TV blitz.

Back in 2000 when Republicans enjoyed more fundraising parity (and were able to use soft money), the NRCC helped elect Ric Keller (R) in Florida’s 8th district by going on television and attacking Orange County Chairman Linda Chapin (D) three weeks before the primary. Keller finished second in the Sept. 5 primary and first in the Oct. 3 runoff.

But a late primary also helped foreshadow Keller’s loss in 2008. The Congressman’s 53 percent to 47 percent primary victory over an unknown candidate on Aug. 26 demonstrated that he had significant cracks in his base of support. He lost in November 52 percent to 48 percent to now-Rep. Alan Grayson (D).

Multiple candidates are interested in taking on Grayson in 2010, setting up what could be a competitive Aug. 24 GOP primary in the 8th district. Republicans could also see a crowded primary in the 24th district represented by freshman Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-Fla.).

Democrats are not immune to the negative fallout from late primaries, but with a significant majority in the House, they are less of a concern.

Democrats will likely see a competitive September primary in Hawaii’s 1st district, where Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D) is running for governor. Honolulu City Councilman Charles Djou (R) is hoping for a repeat of 1986, when Republican Pat Saiki was elected to Congress in the wake of a bloody late Democratic primary.

Multiple Democratic candidates are lining up to take on Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), including 2008 nominee Elwyn Tinklenberg, physician Maureen Reed and state Sen. Tarryl Clark. Democrats hope the party’s nominating convention winnows the field before the September primary.

Similarly in Colorado’s 4th district, Republicans hope that state Rep. Cory Gardner’s early fundraising and the district’s convention sorts out the GOP race before the Aug. 12 primary.

This story first appeared in Roll Call on July 23, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

2010 Senate Ratings

Here are our latest Senate ratings.

#- Moved benefiting Democrats
*- Moved benefiting Republicans

Toss-Up (4 R, 2 D)

• KY Open (Bunning, R) *
• MO Open (Bond, R)
• NH Open (Gregg, R)
• OH Open (Voinovich, R)
• IL Open (Burris, D) *
• Dodd (D-CT)
  

Narrow Advantage for Incumbent Party (2 R, 2 D)

• Burr (R-NC)
• Vitter (R-LA) #
• Reid (D-NV)
• Specter (D-PA) *
  

Clear Advantage for Incumbent Party (1 R, 2 D)

• FL Open (Martinez, R) *
• Bennet (D-CO)
• Lincoln (D-AR)

Currently Safe (11 R, 12 D)

• Bennett (R-UT)
• Coburn (R-OK)
• Crapo (R-ID)
• DeMint (R-SC)
• Grassley (R-IA)
• Isakson (R-GA)
• McCain (R-AZ)
• Murkowski (R-AK)
• Shelby (R-AL)
• Thune (R-SD)
• KS Open (Brownback, R)
• DE Open (Kaufman, D)
• Bayh (D-IN)
• Boxer (D-CA)
• Dorgan (D-ND)
• Feingold (D-WI)
• Gillibrand (D-NY)
• Inouye (D-HI)
• Leahy (D-VT)
• Mikulski (D-MD)
• Murray (D-WA)
• Schumer (D-NY)
• Wyden (D-OR)