President Obama has more to worry about in 2012 than his own re-election. While he is busy crisscrossing the country and selling himself for a second term in office, his Democratic Party will be fighting to maintain control of at least one chamber of Congress.
Roughly a dozen Senate seats will be up for grabs next November, opening the door for Republicans — who handily won control of the House during the 2010 elections — to increase their clout on Capitol Hill.
Even if Obama is re-elected, a Republican takeover in the Senate could effectively cripple the president’s agenda.
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has already signed up for the challenge.
“This campaign cannot be only about the presidency,” Gingrich, a former House Speaker, said in New Hampshire on Monday. “We need to pick up at least 12 seats in the U.S. Senate and 30 or 40 more seats in the House, because if you are serious about repealing Obamacare, you have to be serious about building a big enough majority in the legislative branch that you could actually, in the first 90 days, pass the legislation.”
With the Republican Party aiming to turn the 2012 election into a referendum on Obama, the quest for the Senate could become just as critical as the race for the White House, political strategists say.
Democratic congressional candidates will have the benefit of using the president’s well-organized, well-established campaign network, said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor of the Cook Political Report.
But the president’s time and money will be too limited to share generously with other candidates.
“Right now it looks like President Obama is going to be spending virtually all of his time worrying about re-electing President Obama,” said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report.
“Unless the election takes a dramatically different turn, he’s going to have to worry about himself first, and Democratic candidates are going to have to fend for themselves or use him whenever he happens to be in their state,” he said.
The candidates who stand to benefit the most from Obama’s help are white Democrats campaigning in districts with large black populations, said Martin Frost, a Democratic strategist and former congressman from Texas.
Obama still has enormous power in driving blacks to the polls, he said.
But Obama will be advised to keep his distance from most House races, according to longtime Democratic adviser Doug Schoen.
“He has to run against Congress as part of his message, and he simply does not have the luxury of trying to do anything but get himself re-elected,” he said. “And that means positioning himself against D.C. in general, and the House in particular.”
