Clock is ticking on D’s chances of retaining control of Senate.
Texas Insider Report: WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senate Democrats may be raising a king’s ransom to hold on to Congress’ upper chamber — but despite the big fundraising hauls, 14 different races can (and likely will) be affected by President Barack Obama’s decision whether or not to permit the Keystone Pipeline to move forward. Democratic senators are placed squarely in the middle of an issue where their constituencies strongly disagree with their leaders.
And, those up for re-election are looking for national leaders to close a critical policy gap between party leaders and the voters. The best example of a policy gap is found in the president’s decision whether to grant TransCanada a permit to build the Keystone XL Pipeline.
A Pew Research poll taken in fall 2012 found that Americans support the pipeline’s construction by a 2-to-1 margin, with strong majority support among both Republicans and Democrats.
The national support translates into interesting Senate politics, where the clock is ticking for Democrats chances of retaining control in:
Open seats in Georgia- Iowa
- Michigan
- Montana
- Nebraska
- South Dakota and
- West Virginia, combined with states where incumbent Democrats running for re-election have voted to support the pipeline in
- Alaska
- Arkansas
- Delaware
- Louisiana
- North Carolina and
- Virginia
A decision by the president to reject TransCanada’s second application for a permit to build the pipeline (their first was rejected in 2012) will lead to a vote in Congress on legislation approving the pipeline — a vote that would place all of these Democratic senators squarely in the middle of an issue where their constituencies strongly disagree with their leaders.
A survey of the senators who up are for re-election in 2014 is very telling:
- 25 of the 35 Senator seats up for grabs in 2014 have voted to build Keystone XL.
- 11 of the 20 seats that Democrats are defending are held by Keystone XL supporters.
- 8 of the 11 Democrats that have voted in support of Keystone XL are seeking re-election.
- Keystone’s pipeline has a 60%-plus approval rating in states with open races.
Senate Democrats know rejecting Keystone XL will hurt their chances:
Mark Begich of Alaska- Mary Landrieu of Louisiana (right)
- Mark Pryor of Arkansas and
- Kay Hagan of North Carolina — all of whom are up for re-election in 2014 —
- recently joined retiring Sen. Max Baucus of Montana in signing a bipartisan letter urging Obama to sign off on the pipeline.
All five senators represent states that Obama lost to Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election.
The politics goes beyond senators. Labor leaders are giving a strong backing because they believe Keystone XL will create 9,000 new good-paying construction jobs. Nine thousand is an accurate number, because that is exactly the number of construction workers it took to build the phase Obama approved in 2012 and will start delivering shipments to Cushing, Okla., this month.
The AFL-CIO said: “[T]he privately-financed Keystone XL pipeline project is projected to create tens of thousands of U.S. jobs in construction and manufacturing … workers from all over the United States would benefit from the project.”
No wonder other Senate Democrats are pressuring the president on the issue. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota took the president to task over the State Department’s foot-dragging, saying
“The Keystone Pipeline decision has taken longer than it took us to defeat Hitler” and has threatened congressional veto to override the administration’s decision. - Joe Manchin of West Virginia told USA Today that approval for the pipeline is a “no brainer.”
The clock is ticking, and although granting the permit will certainly infuriate the president’s green base, facing Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate will seriously remove any chance he might have to enact any part of his agenda during his last two years in the White House.
