Pollster Scott Rasmussen reports that California Senator Barbara Boxer leads possible Republican challenger Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard CEO and 2008 campaigner for John McCain, by only 45%-41%. That’s a pretty stunning result. The only other public poll conducted pairing these two, conducted by Field in February, showed Boxer leading 55%-25%. That looks a lot like Boxer’s 2004 58%-38% victory over Republican Bill Jones. The Rasmussen result looks more like Boxer’s 1992 48%-43% victory over Republican Bruce Herschensohn or her California colleague Dianne Feinstein’s 1994 47%-45% victory over Michael Huffington.
Caveats should be entered. This is only one poll. Others may come along showing Boxer way ahead. Rasmussen, as I noted in my July 26 Examiner column, interviews only likely voters, which means that his screen excludes from his sample many of those who voted for the first time out of enthusiasm for Barack Obama in November 2008. That may or may not reflect actual turnout in November 2010. People aren’t yet focused on the race. Issues have yet to play out: Boxer, as Chairman of the Environment Committee, has said she’ll push for a cap-and-trade bill in September, and that move, whether successful or not, may be popular in California which has supported economically expensive limits on pollution since the 1950s. Boxer will undoubtedly have a well-financed campaign. Fiorina may not run. The Republican nominee may turn out to be a little-know conservative legislator or county supervisor with no chance to win.
And yet the result is in line with the way the 2010 Senate races have been shaping up so far in the cycle. The 2004 cycle was a good one—the last good one—for Republicans, and as of last November they had 19 seats at risk to 15 for the Democrats. Five of the Republican seats are in states carried by Barack Obama (FL, IA, NH, NC, OH); only two of the Democratic seats are in states carried by John McCain (AR, ND). More Republican incumbents are retiring, including three in Obama states (FL, NH, OH) and one in a state Obama nearly carried (MO), which certainly would have been contested a la Florida if it had made the difference in the Electoral College.
But the balance started to shift with Obama’s Cabinet choices. His appointment of Ken Salazar as Interior Secretary left the Colorado seat in the hands of a little-known appointee, Michael Bennet. His appointment of Hillary Clinton put the New York seat up this year instead of 2012, with appointee Kirsten Gillibrand facing a primary challenge from Manhattan Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. His appointment of Kathleen Sebelius as Health and Human Services Secretary removed the one serious Democratic candidate for the Kansas seat being vacated by Sam Brownback. As a result of these appointments, plus Arlen Specter’s party switch, both parties now have 18 seats up. (Another Republican seat may come up if Kay Bailey Hutchison beats Governor Rick Perry in the Texas gubernatorial primary in March 2010 and resigns her seat before fall.)
Today, with the Democratic brand in some trouble (though the Republican brand remains tarnished), candidate recruitment is starting to work in Republicans’ favor. Jim Bunning has bowed to party pressure and is retiring from the seat he barely held in 2004; this spares the Republicans a messy primary between incumbent and challenger. Mark Kirk, after some hesitation, is running in Illinois. Christopher Dodd’s ad buys in Connecticut have not repaired his dreadful number and he is running well behind Republican Rob Simmons. Majority Leader Harry Reid continues to have terrible numbers in Nevada, where as many as half the 2010 voters will never have seen his name on a ballot before. Congressman-at-Large Mike Castle, leading Attorney General Beau Biden in polls in Delaware, seems to be leaning toward making the race. Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter has a primary challenger and runs only even with the man who nearly beat him in the 2004 Republican primary, Pat Toomey. Appointees Bennet and Gillibrand are far from safe in Colorado and New York, although neither seems to have a strong Republican opponent yet. That is also true of Arkansas’s Blanche Lincoln.
Even so, I count nine of the 18 Democratic seats as being in some kind of jeopardy, with two more possible if, as seems unlikely, Byron Dorgan and Russ Feingold attract strong opponents in North Dakota and Wisconsin. I count seven of the 18 Republican seats as being in some kind of jeopardy, though Florida will probably fall off that list if Governor Charlie Crist wins the September 2010 primary with former Speaker Marco Rubio (and if Rubio wins, he would likely be very competitive). Interestingly, all of the Republican-held states that voted for Obama voted at least once for George W. Bush; in only one of them, Iowa, was Obama’s margin robust, and there Charles Grassley seems unbeatable.
Every Republican candidate will have, now that Democrats have 60 seats in the Senate, one argument that is likely to be strong: don’t let the Democrats control everything. That argument looks a lot stronger now than it did six months ago. It may look even stronger—or it may look weaker—15 months from now. But it’s likely to be stronger than the corresponding Democratic argument—don’t let the Republicans get control—because voters will likely assume that Democrats will continue to control the House and they will know that Barack Obama will remain president. This cycle is beginning to look a little more like 1994 and a little less like 2006 or 2008. But, I hasten to add, so far just a little.
The good news for Republicans is that they can find, and seem to be finding, candidates who can adapt to terrain, who can exploit particular incumbents’ particular weaknesses. They don’t seem likely to be plagued by primary campaigns between candidates with clashing views on cultural issues. The bad news for Republicans is that, even if they overcome the odds that seemed so strong last winter and win some seats, they will have done little to establish themselves as a plausible governing party in preparation for 2012.
And then there’s some practical bad news. The Democratic seats I have counted as being in some jeopardy include some very large and expensive states (CA, IL, NY, PA). So do the Republican seats I have counted as being in some jeopardy (FL, NC, OH). Senate Democrats have been outraising Senate Republicans for several cycles now. Republicans have recruited far fewer self-financers than Democrats in recent cycles. Which poses the interesting question: Is Carly Fiorina rich enough to self-finance a California race, as Michael Huffington did in 1994?
