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Title: Democratic senators ditch 2012 runs
Source:
The Politco
URL Source: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/50642.html
Published: Mar 5, 2011
Author: JONATHAN ALLEN & MANU RAJU
Post Date: 2011-03-05 11:42:14 by Happy Quanzaa
Keywords: Hopey-changey not workin
Views: 884
Comments: 1
Five senators from the Democratic side of the aisle have already decided to hang ’em up after this term. Each has his own reasons, but it mostly boils down to this: For some senators, a job in the “most exclusive club” is not worth the hassle anymore. “It’s about campaigns,” Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), a retiring member of the Democratic Caucus, told POLITICO. “It’s about both the unremitting — that’s a bad word to use — about the constant pressure to raise money and travel all over the country doing that and the nastiness of the campaign. ... I have no second thoughts about it.” Lieberman, who lost a 2006 Democratic primary only to win in the general election as an independent, faced a tough path to win reelection. And he’s 69. Democrats could well lose the Senate in 2012 anyway, meaning he would lose his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “At least I’m not having to travel around the country raising money and being involved in a political back-and-forth of a campaign,” adds North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad, who says he’d rather work to curtail the deficit than face another tough run in a conservative state. Democratic officials say the early retirement announcements reflect a successful push by Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray of Washington to guard against devastating last-minute surprises by pressing senators to decide sooner rather than later whether they’ll run. The retirements of longtime veterans on the Democratic side, such as Lieberman, Conrad, Daniel Akaka of Hawaii and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, are a sign, too, of the rapidly changing membership of the aging body. 2010 ushered in 16 new senators, one of the biggest classes in a generation, allowing a slew of newer members to quickly grab prized committee assignments and move up the ladder in a body long dominated by senior members. Republicans see the playing field expanding with each Democrat who bails on the Senate. “It certainly suggests that the pathway to get to 51 is achievable,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said Thursday. “I think depending on what happens in the next couple of years and depending on what retirements we have, a lot of these Democrat seats that are opening up, I think there are some opportunities for us — and I hope if we can get the right candidates in the races and resource them, we’ll have a shot at changing the equation.” Murray may have the toughest political job in Washington: Twenty-three Democratic-held seats are on the ballot next year — compared with 10 for Republicans — and a net gain of just four seats would put the GOP in charge. Throw in a presidential election that promises to make already scarce funds even harder to come by, and Murray needs a bit of a miracle to hold the Senate. That helps explain why she wants to know who’s going to run and who’s staying home. The conventional wisdom has held that parties want their incumbents to stay put. But the past three election cycles have been volatile, often turning that wisdom on its head — particularly for senators who have had the most success in climbing the power ladder. Rather than enjoying the “advantages” of incumbency, veteran senators often found themselves on the wrong side of a divide between Washington and their home states, defending their inside-the-Beltway clout. And some of them are just tired of the fundraising and the never-ending campaign grind. “There are people who have been here a long time,” former DSCC Chairman Bob Menendez of New Jersey said. The fifth retiring Democrat, Jim Webb of Virginia, never really took to the Senate and is leaving after one term. Whether it’s better to have a veteran incumbent or a fresh face running in a newly open seat “depends on the dynamic” of each race, Menendez said, noting that “you can have a new candidate who brings ... energy and paints the canvas as he or she wants to, and that can be as powerful.” But one GOP official said the retirements are a “net positive” for Republicans. “None of them, save for maybe North Dakota, are a given by any means,” he said. “It’s still a net positive, but you have a long way to go.” The politics of each state often remain an unstated factor in the decision making. Aside from Arlen Specter, who famously announced that he was switching parties because he couldn’t win as a Republican in Pennsylvania in 2008 — he ended up losing a Democratic primary — few will admit that a tough electoral battlefield is dissuasive. Conrad watched longtime friend Rep. Earl Pomeroy get pummeled in a statewide race for reelection to the House in 2010, and the other member of veteran “Team North Dakota,” Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan, retired rather than battling it out last year. Free of any campaigning and fundraising, Conrad has the political flexibility to pursue bold initiatives as he leads a deficit reduction negotiation. “I’m able to focus my attention on this challenging task of trying to get a plan adopted,” Conrad said. If he did run, the reward would be years 27 through 32 in the Senate, where the grind isn’t getting any easier. “I’ve done thousands of community and county visits, and I am really wanting to focus on trying to get two big things done,” Conrad said. “Reducing our dependence on foreign energy and getting us on a more sustainable financial trajectory.” Akaka, 86, said he didn’t map out the politics at all. “It’s about time for me and my family, and I wanted to give [new] candidates a chance,” said the man who has represented Hawaii in the Senate since 1990. “I didn’t give the race that kind of thought.” Akaka’s pace has slowed quite a bit in recent years, and there’s a logjam of young Democrats champing at the bit to become just the sixth U.S. senator in Aloha state history. It may have been hard for the state’s top power broker, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), to intervene to prevent Akaka from facing a nasty primary challenge such as the one former Rep. Ed Case mounted against him in 2006. Some Democrats think they’re better positioned to hold the seat without him than with him. Hawaii’s a heavily Democratic state, but Republicans have a deeper bench there now than they have had at any time in the recent past. Former Gov. Linda Lingle and former Rep. Charles Djou top the list of GOP candidates with potential statewide viability. Republicans say that’s just spin, and that Democrats could be hurt if a multicandidate primary develops. While older senators depart, there’s at least one reason for younger Democrats to stay in the game even if they face tough races: If Democrats hold the majority, the departing members will leave committee and subcommittee gavels behind. Bingaman runs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Lieberman’s got the government oversight panel, and Conrad is the top Democrat on Budget. Webb is the one that doesn’t really fit with this group of retirees: At 65, he had a successful career as a former author and Navy secretary — and he says he never viewed the Senate as a lifelong job. “First of all, I’m not retiring — this has not been my career,” he said matter-of-factly Thursday. But it’s clear he didn’t have an appetite to both campaign over the next two years and serve another six years. “For us, it was really how do you want to spend the next eight years? People up here focus on campaigns, but for us it was ... where do you want to be at the end of in the next eight years? I think six years in the Senate is a pretty good period of time — for me,” Webb said.. There are still a handful of Democratic senators who have yet to make their intentions clear, including Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin. Nebraska is a heavily Republican state where Nelson is the only Democrat in the congressional delegation, and the GOP swept Wisconsin in 2010. Nelson won’t say what he’ll do, but he’s certainly preparing for a potential run. “I’ve hired a campaign manager, we’re fundraising and we’re doing the kind of things that you can’t start at the last minute,” he said Thursday.
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#1. To: Happy Quanzaa (#0)
In 2012, the GOP could realistically pick up North Dakota, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico and Virginia. Joe Manchin in West Virginia could switch parties. It's much less likely, but they could also pick up Michigan, Ohio, and Washington. The only seat that the GOP holds now that they could lose is Massachusetts. Scott Brown won a special election and its not clear that he could win a general election, especially with a Democrat President on the ticket. A safe prediction is that the GOP will have a net pickup of 6 to 8 seats. If the GOP presidential candidate manages to win, the GOP could net a maximum of 10 seats in the Senate.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."-- Charles Duell, Commissioner of US Patent Office, 1899
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