Also In This Issue Senators At Risk

By Ronald Brownstein, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, Oct. 19, 2007

In 2006, the battle for Senate control pivoted on whether Democrats could overcome the Republican advantages in red states that the GOP had dominated under President Bush. In 2008, the struggle for the Senate is likely to turn on whether Democrats can consolidate their advantages in states that have trended away from the GOP under Bush.

While last year's key Senate contests were concentrated in states such as Missouri, Montana, Ohio, and Tennessee that Bush carried in both presidential elections, next year the GOP must defend seven seats in states that either voted against Bush twice or have seen the Democrats demonstrably gain strength as Bush's popularity has waned since 2004.

That geography adds to the risk that Republicans face at a time when they must defend 22 seats overall to the Democrats' 12, deal with five GOP Senate retirements, and overcome the public's continuing dissatisfaction with Bush's performance, the country's direction, and the Iraq war. In 2006, the competition for the Senate was shaped by the tension between a public opinion climate that favored the Democrats and a battlefield of states in play that favored the Republicans. Next year, Republicans face the danger that both the climate and the playing field will tilt toward the Democrats.

"Last time, we had a conflict between the overall environment and political geography," said veteran Democratic pollster Mark Mellman. "This time, the political geography and the political environment lean in the same direction."

The influence of geography, as opposed to environment, on the outcome of Senate elections appears to have grown in recent decades. Since the 1970s, the share of voters who split their tickets between presidential candidates of one party and Senate (or House) candidates of the other has declined, according to the University of Michigan's biennial election polling. That makes it tougher for either party to elect Senate candidates behind enemy lines -- that is, in states that usually support the other party's presidential nominee.

Graphic: Trending Democratic Next year, Republicans will try to defend Senate seats in seven states trending Democratic. Democrats have been dealt a favorable hand, but can they play their hand right and capitalize on a weakened GOP?

This trend intensified amid the extremely polarizing emotions that Bush's presidency has provoked. In the three elections from 2000 through 2004, Republicans gained Senate seats in the 29 states that twice voted for Bush and lost them in the 18 blue states that twice voted against him. After the 2004 election, Republicans held 44 of the 58 Senate seats in the states that twice supported Bush -- a greater percentage (76 percent) than Republicans held after 1984 in the 44 states that twice voted for Ronald Reagan (only 55 percent), or Democrats held after 1996 (67 percent) in the 29 states that twice voted for Bill Clinton. Meanwhile, after 2004, Democrats held 29 of the 36 Senate seats in the 18 blue states, which at 81 percent was a slightly greater share than Republicans controlled in the red states. (Republicans held four of the six Senate seats in the trio of states that voted for one party's presidential nominee in 2000 and the other's in 2004.)

Republicans began the 2006 election cycle hoping to expand their red-state Senate advantage by defeating Democratic incumbents in Nebraska, North Dakota, and West Virginia -- states that emphatically supported Bush in 2004 -- and in Florida, which also went for Bush. But, amid the nationwide erosion of Bush's support, each of those four veteran Democrats won re-election easily.

What's more, Democrats reversed their own red-state retreat, ousting Republican senators in four states that had twice voted for Bush -- Missouri, Montana, Ohio, and Virginia. Democrats also unseated two of the three blue-state Republican senators on the ballot last year: Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island and Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania. (The third, Maine's Olympia Snowe, ran without significant opposition.)

Those results left Democrats holding a striking 31 of the 36 Senate seats (86 percent) in the states that twice voted against Bush (including those of Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, independents who caucus with Democrats) and narrowed the GOP advantage in the red states to 40 of 58 seats (69 percent).

Heading into 2008, each party is eyeing opportunities in red-state Senate races. Republicans are optimistic about challenging Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu, a perennial target, and perhaps Tim Johnson in South Dakota. Democrats see potential red-state opportunities in Nebraska, where Republican Chuck Hagel is retiring, and, more distantly, in Kentucky, where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is running for re-election, and North Carolina, where Elizabeth Dole is seeking a second term.

But most analysts on both sides agree that the Democrats' chances of expanding their Senate majority are likely to depend primarily on whether they can make further gains in states that have moved away from the GOP.

Next year, the GOP must defend three of its five remaining blue-state Senate seats, with moderates Susan Collins of Maine, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, and Gordon Smith of Oregon facing re-election. The party also faces difficult contests in two of the three states that split their presidential votes between 2000 and 2004: New Mexico, where the retirement of GOP Sen. Pete Domenici creates an open seat, and New Hampshire, where first-term Sen. John Sununu faces a rematch with former Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, whom he defeated in 2002. Finally, the GOP must defend open Republican Senate seats against formidable Democratic challengers in Colorado and Virginia (Rep. Mark Udall and former Gov. Mark Warner, respectively), two states transitioning from reliably Republican red to precariously purple in this decade.

Indeed, across these seven states, Republicans face a current that generally has flowed toward Democrats in recent years. In Colorado, for instance, Democrats in 2004 elected Ken Salazar to the Senate and won control of both chambers of the state Legislature; last year, they expanded their state legislative majorities and elected Bill Ritter as governor in a landslide. In Virginia, though Republicans still control most U.S. House seats and both chambers of the state Legislature, Democrats won the governorship in 2001 and 2005, and saw Jim Webb oust GOP incumbent George Allen in the 2006 cliffhanger that shifted control of the Senate to the Democrats. In New Hampshire, Democrats last year seized control of both chambers of the state Legislature, ousted both Republican U.S. House members, and re-elected Gov. John Lynch with nearly three-fourths of the vote. In Minnesota, Democrats kept a Senate seat, added a U.S. House seat, and seized control of the state House while expanding their margin in the state Senate.

In all, Democrats now control the governorships in each of these seven states, except Minnesota (where Republican Tim Pawlenty won re-election by just 1 percentage point last year); both chambers of the state Legislature in all except Virginia; a majority of the congressional delegations in five of the seven; and the other U.S. Senate seat in five as well.

The quality of the Democratic candidates varies across these seven battlegrounds. The party recruited its preferred candidates in Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, and Virginia, but it faces more-uncertain situations in Minnesota, New Mexico, and Oregon.

Yet, regardless of the Democratic opponent, in most of these states Republicans face a common challenge: disillusionment with Bush and their party, largely but not exclusively over the Iraq war, among generally upscale, socially moderate voters in suburban and even exurban communities -- whether in Northern Virginia, southern New Hampshire, or the suburbs of Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul.

"Right now in a lot of these suburbs, especially the affluent suburbs, the Republican brand, which used to be the brand of choice, has become radioactive," said GOP Rep. Tom Davis, who represents an affluent swing district in Northern Virginia and is considering a bid for the Senate seat being vacated by Republican Sen. John Warner. "And Bush has done that."

One of the most pressing questions for GOP strategists is how much this discontent with Bush will shape next year's Senate contests. In almost all of the most competitive 2006 Senate races -- including those in Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia -- exit polls showed that at least 82 percent of voters who disapproved of Bush's job performance voted Democratic, while comparable percentages of those who approved of him voted Republican. On balance, Bush hurt the GOP in each of those states, because more voters disapproved than approved of his performance.

That pattern will threaten the GOP even more if it persists next year. In 2006, many of the most hotly contested races were in states (such as Missouri, Montana, and Tennessee) where Bush's approval ratings, though below 50 percent, exceeded his national average. But the 2008 competition centers on states where Bush's popularity stands at or below his national average, which itself is lower than in 2006. Recent public polls have put Bush's approval ratings at just 29 percent in New Hampshire, 30 percent in Minnesota, 35 percent in Virginia, and 36 percent in Colorado (but at just 22 percent among that state's often decisive unaffiliated voters).

Early polling has showed the relationship continuing between attitudes toward Bush and his party's Senate candidate. In the latest University of New Hampshire survey [PDF], for instance, Sununu attracts more than three-fourths of the voters who approve of Bush's performance. But he still trails Shaheen by double digits because she wins about three-fourths of those who disapprove of Bush -- a group that outnumbers his supporters by more than 2-to-1. An early-October Washington Post survey in Virginia similarly found Mark Warner leading Davis statewide by a crushing ratio of more than 2-to-1.

The reason: Although Davis led among the 35 percent of Virginians who approve of Bush's performance, more than three-fifths of the state's voters disapprove -- and they prefer Warner over Davis nearly 7-to-1.

Likewise, in a Colorado survey that found Udall and potential GOP Senate nominee Bob Schaffer running closely overall, independent pollster Floyd Ciruli reported that unaffiliated voters who disapprove of Bush prefer the Democrat 7-to-1, a trend, Ciruli notes, that portends trouble for the GOP, given Bush's unpopularity with those critical swing voters. "Unaffiliated voters are sending messages as opposed to voting on individuals," Ciruli said. "They are unhappy with the war, unhappy with the administration in Washington. And they are going to be very hard [for Republicans] to move."

Despite such initial poll results, GOP strategists express cautious optimism that Republican Senate candidates can separate their races from the national climate in 2008 more effectively than they did in 2006. Republican pollster David Hill, who is advising Schaffer, says he thinks "people have closed the book on Bush" and that Senate races will turn more on which candidate can better embody change. Likewise, Terry Nelson, a GOP consultant who ran the Republican National Committee's Senate independent-expenditure program last year, said he expects the powerful connection between attitudes toward Bush and preferences in the Senate races to "dissipate as voters begin to focus" on the parties' 2008 presidential nominees. "There will be two new personalities dominating the landscape for each party," says Nelson, who served as John McCain's presidential campaign manager earlier this year.

But that prospect, Nelson continues, increases the premium on the GOP's finding a nominee who can compete for voters outside its base. While much attention has focused on whether the Democratic nominee -- particularly if it's Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York -- will hurt the Democratic Party's down-ballot candidates in red states, the more relevant question in the Senate competition may be whether the GOP nominee can rehabilitate the party's battered image in blue and swing states.

Davis, the Virginia congressman contemplating a Senate race, worries that in the competition to attract conservative primary voters almost all of the GOP presidential contenders are losing sight of that general election challenge. Among the leading candidates, Davis believes, only former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, with his more moderate views on social issues, offers much prospect of improving the party's standing in states that have been trending Democratic.

"You've got to make the Republican brand respectable again," Davis said. "Hillary: People love her or hate her. But certainly Republicans need more than running against Hillary to win. They need someone who can compete for those swing votes against her.... You cannot win almost anywhere in 2008 running as Bush III."