WASHINGTON — Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, has outraised his Democratic challenger by more than 2-1 in his re-election campaign. A 24-year veteran, he’s a mainstay of politics in Kentucky, a state President Bush easily won and that GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is expected to carry.
Yet two weeks before the election, McConnell’s re-election is in question. In a sign of the political trouble facing Republicans, Kentucky has emerged as an improbable Senate battleground — perhaps the biggest surprise of this year’s campaign.
Democrats, who control the Senate 51 to 49 with the help of two independents, have expected to gain power in the Nov. 4 election. But until recently, their hopes of capturing 60 seats, enough to head off Republican filibusters, were considered a stretch.
However, with states such as Kentucky suddenly coming into play, Democrats believe they have a chance of gaining the first filibuster-proof majority in the Senate since the Carter administration.
“If this were a normal year, the race wouldn’t be close,” said Brian Schenkenfelder, a conservative blogger in Kentucky who noted the bumper crop of “Ditch Mitch” lawn signs across the state. “But for whatever reasons, this isn’t a normal year, and the polls have tightened.”
In a year that some say is the worst for Republicans since Watergate, the once unimaginable is now possible: Democratic Sen. Barack Obama is leading McCain in presidential polls, and Democrats — who hold a 235-199 majority in the House with one vacancy — could gain another 20 to 25 seats, according to political handicappers.
For beleaguered Republicans, the Senate poses its own set of obstacles. First, Republicans must defend 23 seats, with five of their senators retiring; Democrats must defend 12, with no retirements. Second, GOP candidates must run as Bush’s approval ratings rival Richard Nixon’s.
And if that isn’t bad enough, there’s the economy.
“I don’t think that there’s any question that it’s a tough election atmosphere for Republicans,” conceded Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., who heads the Senate GOP’s campaign effort.
Still, few expected McConnell to be in a tight race against Democrat Bruce Lunsford, a health-care executive. Many political handicappers still give McConnell the edge. But Democrats believe they have a good shot at exacting revenge for the defeat of then-Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota four years ago. McConnell’s defeat would also force a leadership shake-up among Senate Republicans.
The race comes at a time when Kentucky’s unemployment rate for August was 6.8 percent, the highest in 15 years. And McConnell supported a controversial $750 billion Wall Street bailout, which the state’s other Republican senator, Jim Bunning, likened to socialism.
McConnell’s struggle is emblematic of the trouble facing Republican candidates from New Hampshire to Oregon.
Of the five seats being vacated by retiring GOP senators, Democrats are favored to win at least three: Colorado, New Mexico and Virginia. Democrats also are leading or mounting strong challenges against Republican incumbents in Georgia, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon and Mississippi, a state that has not elected a Democratic senator in a quarter-century.
A filibuster-proof Democratic majority could dramatically alter Washington’s political landscape, especially if Obama is elected president.
Sen. Charles Schumer, New York, who oversees the Senate Democrats’ campaign effort, said that reaching a filibuster-proof majority, while possible, would be difficult. “We have to win in deeply red states,”’ he said.
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