Democrats are playing defense in some key U.S. Senate races that should otherwise be considered safe.
Historically, Senate incumbents already tend to be a bit less safe than House incumbents simply because one cannot gerrymander a state. House lines are often drawn and redrawn to protect incumbents, while states don’t change borders without something major…like a war. Even in that revolutionary year of 1994, 92% of House members seeking re-election won, while 90% of Senators won.
A review of the position some incumbent Democrat Senators find themselves in shows a level of vulnerability that is out of the ordinary, and certainly a far cry from the last two election cycles which saw heavy Democrat gains.
We’ve already discussed on these pages how Sen. Barbara Boxer is barely clinging to 50% re-election support in a state that went heavily for Obama and she’s represented for 17 years in the Senate alone, plus the House. But a look at some other states shows she is not the only Democrat incumbent with concerns.
Take, for example, Sen. Christopher Dodd. A long term incumbent from Connecticut, Dodd represents a state in a region that has been trending heavily toward the Democrats. In fact, there is not a single Republican House member from all of New England today.
Yet, Dodd is called “vulnerable” in this morning’s CQ story on his race. Shira Toeplitz writes, “Sen. Christopher J. Dodd will get a boost from a $1,000-per-person Connecticut fundraiser next week headlined by President Obama — a bonus that will give the vulnerable Democrat a leg up on what promises to be a tough re-election campaign.”
A vulnerable Democrat? A tough re-election campaign? In Connecticut?
Ok, maybe the whole Countrywide relationship causes Dodd some special trouble. No doubt that’s how the Democrat spin-meisters in DC will try to explain it away. But Barbara Boxer doesn’t have a Countrywide problem, so what’s the explanation there? She’s not REALLY in trouble, the spin goes. Yet everyone who’s completed a 100-level Poli Sci class knows that any incumbent polling at or near 50% has to be concerned about re-election.
How about Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader? A Las Vegas Review Journal poll out this weekend has Reid down 10 points in matchups against two different and far lesser known Republican opponents.
“Although Reid is likely to raise millions and get a helping hand from national Democrats, Nevadans appear to have an overall negative opinion of their senior senator, who doesn’t have much wiggle room to improve his image. Nearly 100 percent of Nevada voters know who Reid is, and 50 percent of them hold an unfavorable view of the Democrat. Just 38 percent have a favorable opinion,” reports CNN.
Well respected analyst Charlie Cook rates Reid’s re-election chances a “toss up.”
Overall, Cook sees roughly the same number of seats safe or leaning toward each party, with 9 “toss ups.” Yet, seeing incumbents in Democrat-leaning Connecticut, California and Nevada anything other than “safe” further shows it will be an interesting election in 2010.