Senate 2002

PERSPECTIVE Handicaps the major Senate races.

By Danny Schlozman

The 2002 midterm elections present a paradox: control of both chambers of Congress lies in the balance and, two weeks out, neither party has managed to nationalize the election. The campaigns have been fought primarily over the airwaves, with candidates sanitizing themselves for mass consumption and running to the center-right as fast as they can. Despite the national media's efforts to create a marquee fight, few candidates have the gravitas to meet the high expectations. Even in an age of dreary image-driven politics, the charges and countercharges about Social Security and Medicare approach new depths of banality with every passing sound bite.

These moronic campaigns run by generally conservative Democrats and right-wing Republicans sycophantically praising the war on terror have real consequences. Even if legislatures cannot determine the great themes of our time, they shape issues from the future of Social Security to the shape of the federal judiciary to the fate of government programs across the spectrum: welfare reform, Amtrak, foreign aid, and on through the billions here and billions there. Particularly to those disadvantaged by the operation of the market, partisan control of Congress matters, and liberals ought to realize as much.

And, complain though we do about the quality of this year's theater, political junkies love the show no matter what.

What follows is an abashedly partisan, strictly subjective look at some of the closest and most interesting Senate races around the country, along with my own odds on who will emerge with the victor's laurels. For those keeping score, this analysis says that the Dems pick up one seat (Arkansas), and the GOP picks up one seat (Missouri), which leaves us again with a razor-thin Democratic majority, our only bulwark against complete rightist domination.

Arkansas: This Arkansas politician's marriage actually dissolved. Tim Hutchinson, a Bob Jones alum and first-term Republican senator with no major legislative accomplishments to his name, divorced his wife in 1999 and in 2001 married his much younger secretary. Meanwhile, Mark Pryor, son of Hutchinson's predecessor in the seat (former IOP director David Pryor) and the state attorney general, has shunned Bill Clinton, proclaimed that life's most important lessons are in the Bible, and otherwise made a successful end run to Hutchinson's right. For a state with a long reputation for sleazy politics, the race has been clean to the point of sanctimoniousness-Pryor has indicated that he will not follow J.W. Fulbright, Dale Bumpers, or his own father as a liberal Arkansan in the Senate.

5-to-3 odds on Pryor.

Colorado: The incumbent, Wayne Allard, is a veterinarian who won the nomination in 1996 by running to the right of Gale Norton, now Bush's Secretary of the Interior. In the Senate, he compiled one of the dozen most conservative records in the chamber and carried water for the mining and telecoms industries (including the disgraced Qwest). As in 1996, he faces Tom Strickland, a leading Denver lawyer and former US Attorney. Although Allard won the first face-off by five points, his lackluster record in Congress combined with withering assault from independent expenditures (particularly the League of Conservation Voters) and a more assertive Strickland have brought the polls close to even. Democrats have a fighting chance to pick up two House seats in the state and so, after getting devastated by the Christian Right and the property-rights movement in the 1990s, the pendulum may be swinging back. The undecideds are higher here than in other races, so if either candidate manages to deliver a knockout punch, he's got it.

3-to-2 odds on Allard.

Georgia: Max Cleland, a Georgia native who lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam and ran the Veterans Administration under Jimmy Carter, is finishing up his first term in the Senate. He has compiled a reasonably liberal record for a Southern Democrat, voting against John Ashcroft's nomination and the Bush tax cut, and has done serious legislative work about bioterrorism and military preparedness. Despite his personal popularity, however, Georgia is a conservative state and Cleland faces a fight. His opponent, Saxby Chambliss, is a standard-issue “Contract with America” Republican with soft spots for peanut farmers and military bases. Although no one with Max Cleland's politics will ever win Georgia in a landslide, Chambliss has suffered since he ran an attack ad with shots of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. If the Republicans throw soft money at this race, it could be a squeaker, but Cleland's advantages will probably carry him through.

3-to-2 odds on Cleland.

Iowa: When Tom Harkin, an old-fashioned union-backed, hard-charging, subsidy-loving prairie populist won in 1984, skeptics blamed the countercyclical farm economy. He is the only Democrat ever reelected to the senate from Iowa and, although he faces a tough campaign each time-bleeding-heart liberal is not the reigning ideology in these moderate counties-he'll probably triumph again. He faces four-term representative Greg Ganske, an iconoclastic moderate and a reconstructive surgeon who regularly takes trips through the Third World with Operation Smiles. Ganske had his moment last month, when the Des Moines Register revealed that Harkin's campaign manager had been snooping on Ganske meetings. The manager was fired; the tumult receded; and Harkin is breaking fifty percent in the polls. Unless any more dirt gets dug, the author of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the 2002 farm bill will have six more years to write legislation in Washington.

3-to-1 odds on Harkin.

Louisiana: Our own banana republic takes a unique approach to federal elections: all candidates, whatever their party, meet in an open primary on November 5th. If a candidate gets an absolute majority, he or she wins. If not, the two top vote getters, no matter what their party affiliation, face off in a December runoff. The Democratic incumbent, Mary Landrieu, is a popular moderate who has built bridges to the African-American, Cajun, and reformist Protestant communities. If her three weak Republican opponents can collectively keep her under 50 percent, the stage is set for a massive proxy fight that could determine control of the senate. Although none of the GOP candidates could be described as formidable, with strong arm twisting from President Bush (and an interesting first test of the new campaign finance laws) the December runoff could be quite a nail biter. More likely, however, Landrieu will win next month.

2-to-1 odds on Landrieu.

Minnesota: Two-term incumbent Paul Wellstone, the most liberal member of the Senate and the only major-party candidate to oppose war with Iraq, once again plays the underdog. This time, his opponent is Norm Coleman, the former mayor of Saint Paul. Coleman was first elected as a Democrat and endorsed Wellstone in 1996, but has swung to the tax-cutting, anti-abortion right; still, his consensus-building tenure as mayor will help him among swing voters in the Twin Cities' outer suburbs. Wellstone, however, is a dogged campaigner with a first-rate field organization and deep labor backing. Add a Green and a Ventura clone to the mix, and you have one of the few really interesting races out there.

5-to-4 odds on Wellstone.

Missouri: If Governor Mel Carnahan had not died in a plane crash, John Ashcroft might still be in the Senate-with Republicans still in control of the chamber and our civil liberties less imperiled. As it happened, his widow, Jean Carnahan, was appointed to fill the first two years of his term, and Missourians now get the chance to elect a senator for the remaining four years. Carnahan offers sensible thoughts on education policy, has homespun grandmotherly appeal, and will poll well in rural Missouri, but former Representative Jim Talent, the near-miss 2000 GOP gubernatorial nominee, has run a more disciplined campaign and has more than twice as much cash on hand. Assuming that Talent still has a small edge in the polls before Election Day, the question is whether strong turnout and a lingering sympathy vote will push Carnahan over the top.

5-to-4 odds on Talent.

New Hampshire: Jeanne Shaheen, a moderate Democrat and governor since 1996, faces John Sununu, Congressman since 1996 and a slick conservative (but not a fire-breathing Republican). Shaheen has won thrice statewide and has the benefit of extraordinary 97 percent name recognition; she also has the liability of supporting a broad-based state tax in the land of “Live Free or Die.” Despite prattle about the New New Hampshire, this remains a rock-ribbed conservative bastion, and so Shaheen will need a break-but there are ways she could get one. Diehard supporters of Bob Smith, the right-wing wacko incumbent whom Sununu beat in the primary, have pledged to write in Smith's name; needless to say, this effort hurts Sununu. Finally, Sununu, who is of Lebanese descent, has a long paper trail of nasty remarks about Israel. AIPAC money or clever advertising could yet bring him down.

6-to-5 odds on Sununu.

New Jersey: Bob “The Torch” Torricelli, the incumbent Democrat, is a bulldog blessed with preternatural fundraising prowess. Torricelli, alas, overplayed his hand when he accepted scores of illegal gifts from Dennis Chong, a shady lobbyist with ties to North Korea. So, facing defeat at the hands of an empty suit named Doug Forrester (former state government hack, mid-size business owner), the Torch pulled the plug. Meanwhile, his erstwhile colleague Frank Lautenberg, 78, a likable liberal who amassed a fortune in data processing, had grown tired of life outside the millionaire's club, and wanted to return to the fray. And so the state Democratic Central Committee made the switch. Although Republicans tried to take the matter to the courts, no Bush v. Gore repeat materialized; Lautenberg's name appears on the ballot; and the only rationale for Forrester's candidacy-that he's not Bob Torricelli-disappeared. Barring any further legal action, this is a done deal.

3-to-1 odds on Lautenberg

North Carolina: After thirty venomous years in the Senate, Jesse Helms is heading home. From her vantage point at the Watergate, Elizabeth Dole-North Carolina native, Duke homecoming queen, Transportation and Labor Secretaries, beneficiary of Bob's recent medication-felt the siren song of the Tarheel State. She has taken her small-time celebrity and Oprah-style chitchat across the state, and worked hard to inoculate herself against carpetbagger charges. Meanwhile, the Democrats nominated Erskine Bowles, Clinton's Chief of Staff from 1996 to 1998 and a wealthy businessman. Bowles isn't as wooden on the stump as some had feared, and he has forced Dole onto the defensive about her lobbying work and time out of state. That said, Dan Blue, who won most of the black vote in the Democratic primary, has offered only grudging praise for Bowles, and Democrats can't afford division in this conservative state.

3-to-1 odds on Dole.

South Dakota: The marquee proxy fight-although hardly the marquee fight-of the season is taking place between the GOP and Tom Daschle, the state's senior senator. Like Daschle, first-term senator Tim Johnson is a Democratic prairie populist who wins Republican votes by supporting exorbitant agricultural subsidies. Unlike Daschle, he's a lousy politician. His opponent, Representative John Thune, has already won statewide-and by margins that put Johnson's to shame-in the at-large House district. The candidates are attending coffees in far-flung hamlets and talking about convincing South Dakota youth to stay on the prairie; the national party committees are scaremongering. Whichever way the national trends break (and if Iraq stays in the headlines, that's good news for the GOP), South Dakota will break with them.

6-to-5 odds on Johnson.

Texas: Should he reclaim Lyndon Johnson's now-open seat (the odious Phil Gramm is retiring) for the Democrats, Ron Kirk would be the first African-American elected to the senate from the Confederacy. He faces an uphill battle. Although Kirk was a widely acclaimed mayor of Dallas, earning praise from large segments of the business community not accustomed to praising people like Ron Kirk, Texas is Bush country. The President's man, John Cornyn, is the silver-maned state attorney general, who has argued in favor of prayer before football games and against condoms in schools. More than 20 percent of voters in most surveys say that they are undecided; these voters tend to go GOP, but Kirk has the money to win them over if he persuades them that, like the President, he's a uniter not a divider. Yet even if the horse race remains tied on election eve, black politicians running in mixed-race contests never outperform opinion poll numbers.

2-to-1 odds on Cornyn.

Questions? Comments? Please contact perspy@hcs.harvard.edu