Republican Senate leaders aren’t yet measuring the drapes in Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Capitol office, but it is looking more likely that the GOP could have a real shot at taking over the majority in the 2012 elections as key incumbents retire and other Democratic lawmakers up for re-election begin to look vulnerable. The upcoming election cycle will include contests for 23 Senate seats held by Democrats and 10 seats held by Republicans.
Of those races, top election analysts believe nine Democrats are in jeopardy of losing to Republicans, while just two GOP Senate seats, held by John Ensign of Nevada and Scott Brown of Massachusetts, are considered vulnerable to Democratic takeover. Republicans are a mere four seats away from commanding the majority in the Senate.
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Virginia’s open Senate seat is at the top of the list of possible GOP gains. The seat is held by Sen. Jim Webb, a moderate Democrat who announced earlier this month that he will not seek a second term. Republican George Allen, the state’s former governor and one-term senator, is the favored GOP candidate to win back the job he lost to Webb in 2006. But Democrats believe they can hang onto the seat if Democratic National Committee chairman and former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine is their candidate.
The trouble is, Kaine doesn’t really want the job and according to Democratic sources is only “reconsidering” an earlier decision not to run because President Obama has implored him to jump into the race.
“I think it’s really right on the edge and that’s the way it’s been described to me,” University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato told The Washington Examiner. “He could go either way.”
Beyond Virginia, Senate Republicans are looking to the west to win the majority. The recent announcement of five-term Democrat Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico that he will not seek re-election pushed his seat into the “tossup” category in the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which analyzes the election outlook. Bingaman’s announcement came just a few weeks after Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., decided not to seek a fifth term, leaving his once-safely Democratic seat extremely vulnerable.
“Democrats got handed three retirements that make things more difficult for them,” said Cook Political Report senior editor Jennifer Duffy, adding that a GOP takeover of the Senate, “looks more likely today than it did two weeks ago,” before Bingaman and Webb said they would not run.
Duffy and other political analysts believe the GOP has a good shot at winning seats held by Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Jon Tester, D-Mont. Both lawmakers are trailing potential challengers in the polls and are considered vulnerable because they supported some of Obama’s key initiatives, including the health care reform law.
Other vulnerable, but slightly safer Democrats up for re-election next year include Sens. Claire McCaskill, of Missouri, and Bill Nelson, of Florida, who in one poll was trailing former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush by eight points in a hypothetical matchup.
