By Bob Benenson CQ Staff
Published: 12-12-08
There sure doesn’t seem to be any rest for weary Senate Republican strategists who are trying to plot a comeback in 2010 for their party after two consecutive miserable election cycles.
They can take some consolation in the fact that the GOP will not have the kind of steeply slanted playing field it had to deal with this year. In the flip side of the party’s successes in its better times of 2002 the Republicans ended up defending 23 seats to the Democrats’ 12. That would have made it hard for them to hold their ground even if the overall political atmosphere had not been so toxic.
The slate of regularly scheduled 2010 races gives the Republicans another defensive chore though it was not nearly as big: 19 Republican-held seats are scheduled to be up that year to 15 Democratic-held seats. Special elections will narrow the margin further to 19-17 because of picks President-elect Barack Obama has made for his White House team from among his former Democratic Senate colleagues.
But GOP officials already got their first jolt for the next Senate campaign cycle on Tuesday morning. First-term Florida Republican Sen. Mel Martinez seen as likely to be one of the Democrats’ top targets for the elections two years hence announced that he would not seek re-election. That leaves his party with the early prospect of a competitive and predictably expensive race to defend an open seat in nation’s fourth most-populous state.
The news came less than a month after the Nov. 4 elections in which Democrats greatly expanded their Senate majority with a punishing gain of at least seven Republican seats with two other Democratic takeover bids still undecided at the time of Martinez’ announcement. That was on top of the six-seat gain in 2006 that enabled the Democrats to leap-frog into the narrow majority they held for the past two years.
Martinez coincidentally made his announcement just hours before the Republicans celebrated one of their few pieces of good news in a year that saw them lose the White House to Obama and cede serious ground again in both the Senate and the House.
One of the undecided races the Senate runoff in Georgia produced a clear-cut victory for Republican Sen. Saxby Chamblissin his bid for a second term. Chambliss who had fallen short of the majority vote needed to win outright in the Nov. 4 general election scored a comfortable 57 percent to 43 percent runoff victory over Democrat Jim Martin a former state representative who had lost a campaign for lieutenant governor in 2006.
Chambliss’ win meant that the Democrats will not reach the lofty goal they set for themselves in the 2008 campaign: a majority of 60 seats often described — though somewhat misleadingly — as “filibuster-proof” since a three-fifths vote is needed in the Senate to end parliamentary stalling tactics and allow legislation to proceed to an up-or-down vote.
But one last 2008 race is still in the balance the Minnesota cliffhanger between first-term Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken the well-known comic entertainer and longtime party activist. While Coleman has hung on to a razor-thin lead as a mandatory recount winds down the final outcome — which will determine whether the Democrats end up with 59 seats or “only” 58 — may be weeks away as both candidates are challenging the status of thousands of ballots.
The Rocky Road Ahead
The Georgia runoff ended the competitive phase of the 2008 elections and the Minnesota outcome is now in the hands of party lawyers rather than campaign operatives. So GOP planners can turn their attentions to what awaits them in 2010.
Special elections will be held in November 2010 to fill the remaining unexpired terms of Delaware Democrat Joseph R. Biden Jr. who has traded his seat for the vice-presidency and New York’s Hillary Rodham Clinton who will seat assuming her nomination to be Obama’s secretary of State is confirmed.
The GOP has at least some prospect of competing for these seats since they will be filled by interim Democratic replacements for the powerhouse incumbents who moved on to the executive branch. The same is true about the regularly scheduled 2010 election for the Illinois seat Obama has vacated to focus on his presidential transition.
Yet Illinois Delaware and New York are strongly Democratic-leaning states where Obama exceeded 60 percent of the vote in his victory over Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain .
In fact of the 16 states where Democratic Senate seats will be on the line in 2010 (including New York where both seats will be up) Obama won with ease in 13 of them — California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Hawaii Illinois Maryland Nevada New York Oregon Vermont Washington and Wisconsin. He scored a more narrow but historic victory in Indiana which had gone Republican in 10 consecutive presidential elections dating to 1968. The only two McCain states in which Democratic incumbents are up in 2010 are Arkansas and North Dakota.
Conversely 13 of the 19 states where Republican seats are up next time were carried by McCain including his home state of Arizona while six or nearly a third were Obama states: Florida Iowa New Hampshire North Carolina Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The Martinez retirement announcement also raises the specter that the Republicans will again have more difficulty keeping their incumbents on the ballot than the Democrats. Another Republican whose seat is up in 2010 Sam Brownback of Kansas long ago stated he would not seek re-election though he is considered a likely candidate for governor that year.
The fact that seats left open are harder to protect than those defended by incumbents was borne out this year when the Republicans had five open seats to none for the Democrats.
Three of the five open seats or 60 percent went Democratic. Even in a banner year for the Democrats just four of the 17 Republican incumbents in decided races were defeated or 24 percent a figure that would kick up to 28 percent were the final Minnesota count to go against Coleman. All 12 of the Democratic incumbents who sought re-election won their contests greatly reducing the overall rate of unseated incumbents.
The Republicans can be expected to put up a strong fight to defend the Florida seat left open by Martinez. The name of popular retired two-term Gov. Jeb Bush brother of far less-popular retiring President Bush was on the tips of many Republicans’ tongues in the wake of Martinez’ announcement.
And a Republican surge in Florida which began in the mid-1990s and lasted for about a decade leaves the party with numerous experienced officeholders to choose from should Bush decide not to run for the Senate seat. But the Democrats certainly will make a run for the seat Jeb or no Jeb emboldened by Obama’s 3 percentage-point win for the state’s 27 electoral votes.
The other open seat so far is in Kansas a traditional Republican stronghold where the party has won every Senate election since 1936. A Senate bid by Kathleen Sebelius the popular two-term Democratic governor could be a game changer but the Democrats would have a much harder time competing for this one with any other candidate on the ballot.
Of course the chances for a Republican comeback — or additional Democratic gains — of any significance in 2010 depends greatly on how Obama and the Democratic congressional majority stand with the voting public at midterm.
The Democrats may be able to avoid the “midterm jinx” that often has plagued the party holding the White House if they are seen as making progress in addressing the myriad domestic and foreign problems that sank the public approval ratings of Bush and his Republican Party. If Obama is seen as not delivering on his 2008 campaign theme of “change” then Republicans will have a much stronger argument to make in the 2010 elections.
Though the Democrats will not make it all the way to 60 seats when the 111th Congress is sworn in next month it is misleading to say that the Democrats will not be able to overcome Republican filibusters without that super-majority.
Democrats it’s true will not have enough votes among their own members to break filibusters. But they certainly have gotten close enough to do so if they can win over the votes of some Republican members from among the small group of bona fide moderates and the larger group of conservatives who nonetheless have shown some tendency to work across the aisle.
Though coalitions would vary from issue to issue this group includes Republicans who are up for election in 2010 including Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania George V. Voinovich of Ohio Judd Gregg of New Hampshire Charles E. Grassley of Iowa Johnny Isakson of Georgia and yes John McCain who predicated his presidential campaign this year on his image as a political maverick who has often bucked Republican orthodoxy.
On the other hand the idea of a 60-seat Democratic majority as “filibuster-proof” was also overrated. To break filibusters even under those circumstances the Democrats would have had to hold the votes of all 60 senators who caucused with the party. That would have required cooperation on all issues even from the more centrist and conservative Senate Democrats including 2010 election incumbents such as Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas Ken Salazar of Colorado and Evan Bayh of Indiana.
The term “filibuster-proof” was really more of a marketing tool than a reflection of how the Senate really works. The Democrats used the prospect of rolling over Republican “obstructionists” as an enticement to rally their voters and raise campaign funds. The Republicans worked to energize their base by portraying the possibility of 60 Democratic seats as a threat with the GOP’s runoff campaign in Georgia centered on an argument that Chambliss would be a “firewall” against total Democratic domination of the Senate.
In the real world “filibuster-proofing” is always going to require some degree of political compromise both with the majority party and between the parties.
