[But Tuesday’s landslide victory in the GOP
primary by Indiana state
Treasurer Richard Mourdock, a staunch conservative who beat longtime Sen.
Richard G. Lugar, gave Democrats hope for claiming a seat they have not
seriously contested in three decades.]
By Paul Kane
But Tuesday’s landslide victory in the GOP
primary by Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, a staunch conservative
who beat longtime Sen. Richard G. Lugar, gave Democrats hope for claiming a
seat they have not seriously contested in three decades.
The sudden opening reflects a growing sense that
the potential for big Republican gains has begun to ebb and that Democrats have
a real chance of hanging on to their majority.
“Eight months ago, I thought that Republicans
had a 60 to 65 percent chance of taking the majority. Now, it’s a 50-50
proposition as to whether Republicans can take the majority,” said Jennifer
Duffy, a longtime expert on Senate races who works for the independent Cook
Political Report.
Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, said he places his “pinkie
on the scale” now for Democrats retaining the majority, but added that his
calculation hinges on economic improvements, particularly as reflected in the
monthly unemployment numbers. “A few more months of less than 200,000 new jobs,
and I take my pinkie off that scale,” Rothenberg said.
If Mourdock — a longtime politician twice
elected to statewide office — can unify Republicans, he should be a favorite in
GOP-leaning Indiana . But if his candidacy gets swept up in the fervor of the
tea party movement, as some 2010 Republican nominees did, then Indiana could turn into a headache for national Republicans who
would prefer not to expend resources to defend that seat.
“Lugar’s loss in Indiana put the seat in play, but only marginally improved
Democrats’ chances of picking it up,” Duffy said.
But it was not supposed to come down to this:
Republicans gained six Democratic seats in the 2010 midterm elections and,
early on, 2012 looked to be even easier, with 23 Democrats up for reelection,
compared with 10 Republicans. The Democratic president was deeply unpopular,
and six Democratic incumbents and one independent, who generally votes with
them, announced plans to retire. Those departures gave Republicans seven
open-seat targets to pick from.
Democratic retirements in solidly red Nebraska
(Ben Nelson) and North Dakota (Kent Conrad) seemed like sure GOP pickups, while
vulnerable incumbents in Missouri and Montana, both of which Obama lost in
2008, seemed to be laying the groundwork for a GOP majority.
Originally, strategists and analysts predicted
that this scenario would decide the majority: GOP gains in Missouri , Nebraska and North
Dakota would push
Republicans to 50 seats, and a victory in either Montana or Virginia would seal the elevation of Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell (Ky. ) to majority leader.
Republicans still appear to be in fairly good
shape in Nebraska , even though Democrats recruited former senator Bob Kerrey
to run. In Missouri , Sen. Claire McCaskill, who won with 50 percent of the
vote in 2006, remains in a difficult spot, as polls show her in the low 40s,
but Democrats say that the lackluster field of challengers in the August
primary gives her a potential opening for victory. In North Dakota , Democrats have recruited former attorney general Heidi
Heitkamp to face the winner of a June 12 GOP primary between Rep. Rick Berg and
2000 Senate nominee Duane Sand.
But the professional handicappers say that
although they still expect GOP gains, Democrats are slightly favored to retain
their majority, and the majority party is likely to hold just 51 seats — or 50,
with the vice president serving as the tiebreaker.
According to Rothenberg and Duffy, Republicans
have some lackluster candidates, particularly in three Democratic seats that
were expected to be easier targets: Missouri , Nebraska and North
Dakota . Republicans
continue to be hopeful about those three seats in large part because each of
those states has grown increasingly Republican in recent years, putting the
Democrats at some disadvantage.
A few key primaries will determine the slate of
candidates, particularly in Nebraska and Wisconsin , where tea party activists are trying to rally opposition
to GOP establishment figures.
Their strongest recruits are Rep. Denny Rehberg
(Mont. ), whose district comprises the entire state and is a
well-known figure, and former senator George Allen (Va. ), who nearly won reelection in 2006 despite running a poor campaign.
Those two will face off against well-known figures, too: Sen. Jon Tester
(D-Mont.) and former governor Timothy M. Kaine (Va. ), making those two races potentially epic battles that could go down to
the final days of the campaign as neck and neck.
Even if Democrats lose most of those seats, the
biggest shift since last summer has been the emergence of opportunities for
Democrats to pick up Republican-held seats in Maine , Massachusetts and Nevada . These would mitigate the losses on their turf, setting up
the possibility of only the second 50-50 Senate in U.S. history.
Former Obama adviser and Harvard Law professor
Elizabeth Warren has emerged as a liberal icon and her Senate race against
incumbent Scott Brown (R-Mass.) has become a rallying point for Democrats far
beyond Massachusetts . Warren has raised nearly $16 million since she entered the
race eight months ago. Her missteps over her claims of Native American heritage
have raised questions about how she will handle the day-to-day work of
political glad-handing that Massachusetts voters are accustomed to, but her campaign will have
abundant resources in a state in which Brown will have to outperform presumed
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney by roughly 500,000 votes in order
to win.
In Nevada , Sen. Dean Heller (R) and Rep. Shelley Berkley (D) are in
a tight race that could depend on how well Obama and Romney do in that
battleground state.
The biggest break for Democrats came with the
surprise retirement of Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), who, despite her
moderate views, faced no real challenge in her primary and was likely to cruise
to reelection. Now, former governor Angus King, an independent, is running for
her seat and most observers think he will win and caucus with Democrats.
WHY DICK LUGAR LOST
[“A strong majority of GOP primary voters felt that Lugar had served too long and was too old and should retire,” said Christine Matthews, a Republican pollster who conducted several bipartisan surveys in the state. “Three-fourths of voters supporting Mourdock said their reasons centered around Lugar’s longevity, age, and lack of residency.”]
By Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake
Instant analysis of Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar’s crushing
defeat at the hands of state Treasurer Richard
Mourdock in Tuesday’s
Republican primary cast it as yet another example of a tea party-aligned GOPer
ousting a prominent face of the party establishment.
And that instant analysis would be wrong. Lugar
lost — and lost badly — for a number of reasons, the vast majority of which had
nothing to do with the relative tea party-ness of his opponent.
At its heart, Lugar’s defeat was attributable to
the fact that he broke the political golden rule: Never lose touch with the
people who elected you.
“A strong majority of GOP primary voters felt
that Lugar had served too long and was too old and should retire,” said
Christine Matthews, a Republican pollster who conducted several bipartisan
surveys in the state. “Three-fourths of voters supporting Mourdock said their
reasons centered around Lugar’s longevity, age, and lack of residency.”
Matthews added that less than one in five voters
in her last poll were
supporting Mourdock for what she described as “tea party talking points”
including Lugar’s vote to confirm Elena
Kagan to the
Supreme Court or his support for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)
bailout.
Look at Marion County Indianapolis (where Lugar was mayor in the 1970s) and is the center of
establishment Republicanism in the state. Lugar only won the county by eight
points — not even close to the margin he would have needed to offset Mourdock’s
margins in the rest of the state.
View Photo Gallery: Few incumbent
senators have lost bids for their parties’ nomination over the last 60 years,
making Sen. Richard Lugar’s (R-Ind.) loss on Tuesday all the more newsworthy.
We look at Lugar and nine senators whose losses surprised us the most.
Lugar’s campaign did nothing to help him and, in
fact, reinforced the fact that he had fallen badly out of touch with Republican
voters in his state.
Rather than heed the advice of national campaign
professionals, who told Lugar he needed to professionalize his campaign
operation, the incumbent went in the opposite direction — parting ways with
respected pollster Linda DiVall and surrounding himself with Senate loyalists
who knew far more about cloture than campaigns.
Lugar convinced himself that the way he was
regarded in Washington — as a senior statesman — was the way he was regarded in Indiana . He cavalierly dismissed the seriousness of Mourdock’s
challenge and didn’t seem to grasp the danger inherent in the extended public debate over whether or not he was even a
resident of the state. He did little to counter the idea that, at 80, his
time to retire had come.
Did it help that he had voted for TARP and
proudly touted his support for the DREAM Act? Or that as recently as Monday he was on the campaign trail defending the practice of
earmarking? Absolutely not.
But, ultimately the lesson to take from Lugar’s
loss is not that the tea party won another one over the establishment. Rather,
it’s that governing and campaigning are two very different things. Lugar had
clearly distinguished himself in the former category and thought that would
take care of the latter.
It didn’t. Perhaps the most amazing piece of
data from the poll conducted late last week by Matthews and Democratic pollster
Fred Yang was that, when voters were asked which of the two men “will get
things done” in the Senate, Lugar and Mourdock each took 38 percent.
“To think that, after a much-praised political
career that started in 1967 and a Senate career that started in 1977, Richard
Lugar would be tied on ‘effectiveness’ probably is the most telling result of
this campaign,” wrote Yang in a column in the Howey Political Report on the poll data.
Lugar assumed, wrongly, that voters knew all
they needed to know about him — and that all of the shots Mourdock and his allies
were taking wouldn’t erode his connection to the state’s Republicans. But that
connection was far more tenuous than he thought.
Arizona Sen. John
McCain, who himself beat back a potentially serious primary challenge
in 2010, put it succinctly when asked about Lugar’s loss on Tuesday night.
“The moral of the story is: Don’t play defense,
play offense,” said McCain “[It’s] one of the most fundamental rules of
elections.
Republicans deal with fallout: Lugar had some very tough words for Mourdock after
Tuesday’s primary.
“If Mr. Mourdock is elected, I want him to be a
good senator,” Lugar said in a prepared statement issued alongside his spoken
remarks. “But that will require him to revise his stated goal of bringing more
partisanship to Washington .”
Lugar also said: “He and I share many positions,
but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my
philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers
in the Senate.”
And this: “And he will find that unless he
modifies his approach, he will achieve little as a legislator.”
Pretty strong stuff.
The Indiana GOP announced late Tuesday that it
would hold a unity event at 9:15 this
morning, featuring Mourdock with Lugar-supporting Gov. Mitch Daniels and Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman.
Notably absent from the list of scheduled guests is Lugar.
In Wisconsin , Milwaukee Mayor Tom
Barrett beat out labor-backed
former Dane County
In North Carolina , Democrats picked Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton over former congressman Bobby Etheridge for the state’s governor’s race. Dalton will now face former Charlotte mayor Pat
McCrory in a
tough race for Democrats. (Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue is retiring.)
Also in that state, state Sen. David Rouzer won a GOP primary to face Rep. Mike McIntyre (D) — a break for national Republicans
who preferred Rouzer to 2010 nominee Ilario
Pantano — and
former U.S. attorney George
Holding won the
Republican nomination for retiring Rep. Brad
Miller’s (D) seat, where he will be heavy favorite in November.
The other two major GOP primaries in the Tar
Heel State will go to runoffs after no candidate reached 40 percent of the
vote. In the race to face Rep. Larry
Kissell (D),
former congressional aide Richard
Hudson and dentist Scott Keadle will face off. And in retiring Rep. Heath Shuler’s (D)
district, his former chief of staff Hayden
Rogers (D) will face
either of two GOP businessman — Mark
Meadows or Vance Patterson.
In Indiana, Iraq veteran Brendan Mullen (D) and former state
representative Jackie
Walorski (R) won
their primaries for Senate candidate Rep. Joe
Donnelly’s (D) battleground seat, and freshman Rep. Larry Bucshon (R) won his primary with just
58 percent of the vote. He will face former state representative Dave Crooks in a race Democrats hope to
make competitive.
Governor’s race matchups are also set in Indiana and Wisconsin , where the primaries weren’t competitive. In Indiana , Rep. Mike
Pence (R) will be
the favorite against former state House speaker John Gregg (D), and in West Virginia , businessman Bill
Maloney (R) will
again challenge Gov. Earl
Ray Tomblin (D).
Fixbits:
Sen. Scott
Brown (R-Mass.)
is going up with his first TV ad in the Massachusetts Senate race. The title: “independent.”
Sen. Claire
McCaskill (D-Mo.) gets more security after
a tea party supporter says, “We have to kill the Claire Bear...” And Capitol
Police are investigating. Meanwhile, potential GOP opponent Sarah Steelman says she supports that man’s
right to “right to express his views.”
A snag in the prosecution’s case against John Edwards: A
government witness called Edwards “evil” in
an e-mail to another witness.
Lt. Gov David
Dewhurst leads Ted Cruz 51 percent to 16 percent in a
new Texas GOP Senate primary poll conducted for a group that supports
Dewhurst.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) says he has “no control over” the Young Guns Action Fund, a PAC that
drew criticism for supporting one House incumbent over another in Illinois and
then spending $100,000 to help Lugar.
Must-reads:
“Mitt
Romney’s new hero: Bill Clinton” — Reid Epstein, Politico
“Is Obama’s gay marriage stance all about suburban voters?”
— Domenico Montanaro, MSNBC
“Liberal Donors’ Plan Worries Top Democrats” — Jeff
Zeleny, New York Times