GOP senators running scared

Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, has out-raised his Democratic challenger by more than 2 to 1 in his reelection campaign. A 23-year veteran, he’s a mainstay of politics in Kentucky, a state that President Bush easily won and that GOP presidential nominee John McCain is expected to carry.

Yet two weeks before the election, McConnell’s reelection is in question. In a political environment that some say is the worst for Republicans since Watergate, Kentucky has emerged as an improbable Senate battleground -- perhaps the biggest surprise of this year’s campaign.

Democrats, who control the Senate 51 to 49 with the help of two independents, expect to gain seats in the Nov. 4 election. But now the once unimaginable -- their hopes of capturing 60 seats, enough to head off Republican filibusters -- no longer seems a stretch.

With states like Kentucky suddenly coming into play, Democrats believe they have a chance of gaining the first filibuster-proof majority in the Senate since the Carter administration.

“If this were a normal year, the race wouldn’t be close,” said Brian Schenkenfelder, a conservative blogger in Kentucky, who noted the bumper crop of “Ditch Mitch” lawn signs across the state. “But for whatever reasons, this isn’t a normal year, and the polls have tightened.”

In a sign of the political trouble facing Republicans, Democrat Barack Obama is leading McCain in presidential polls, and Democrats -- who hold a 235-199 majority in the House, with one vacancy -- could gain 20 to 25 seats there, according to political handicappers.

For beleaguered Republicans, the Senate poses its own set of obstacles. First, Republicans must defend 23 seats, with five of their senators retiring; Democrats must defend 12, with no retirements. Second, GOP candidates must run as Bush’s approval ratings rival President Nixon’s.

And, as if that weren’t bad enough, there’s the economy.

“I don’t think that there’s any question that it’s a tough election atmosphere for Republicans,” conceded Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), who heads the Senate GOP’s campaign effort.

Still, few expected McConnell to be in a tight race against Democrat Bruce Lunsford, a healthcare executive. Many political handicappers still give McConnell the edge.

But Democrats believe they have a good shot at exacting revenge for the defeat of then-Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota four years ago.

McConnell’s defeat would also force a leadership shake-up among Senate Republicans.

The race comes at a time when Kentucky’s unemployment rate for September was 7.1%, the highest in at least 15 years. And McConnell supported a controversial $700-billion Wall Street bailout, which the state’s other Republican senator, Jim Bunning, likened to socialism.

“The latest Wall Street bailout just exacerbates the problem,” said blogger Schenkenfelder, adding that McConnell now must overcome a political head wind. “The real question is: How strong is that head wind?”

Republican Larry Forgy, once a Kentucky gubernatorial candidate, said that McConnell is in “serious trouble,” partly because of his support for the Wall Street bailout -- “which was about as popular as the bubonic plague down here.”

McConnell’s vote for the bailout helped prompt Billy Harper, another former GOP candidate for Kentucky’s governorship and a McCain supporter, to abandon McConnell this year after backing him in every previous race.

McConnell’s struggle is emblematic of the trouble facing Republican candidates from New Hampshire to Oregon.

Of the five seats being vacated by retiring GOP senators, Democrats are favored to win two, New Mexico and Virginia, and may take Colorado as well. Democrats also are leading or mounting strong challenges against Republican incumbents in Georgia, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon and Mississippi, a state that has not elected a Democratic senator in a quarter of a century.

And in Alaska, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich stands a good chance of defeating Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator, who is on trial on corruption charges.

A filibuster-proof Democratic majority could dramatically alter Washington’s political landscape, especially if Obama is elected president.

Just last month, a Democratic effort to pass a second economic stimulus measure was blocked by a Republican-led filibuster. Senate Republicans also have killed measures to make it easier for workers to form unions and to repeal oil industry tax breaks.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, who oversees the Senate Democrats’ campaign effort, said that reaching a filibuster-proof majority, while possible, would be difficult. “We have to win in deeply red states,” he said.

Ensign said Democrats would gain considerable power even if they only had 57 or 58 seats, because they often are able to peel off a few Republican votes on select issues.

In Kentucky, even McConnell’s supporters concede that the senator is in a tough contest.

“It’s going to be a closer race than anyone would have thought six months ago,” said H. Lawson Walker II, a Kentucky attorney and McConnell supporter. But he believes McConnell will win, expressing doubt that voters would choose a “rookie” over the Senate minority leader.

Lunsford, a thoroughbred racehorse owner who has put more than $5.5 million of his own fortune into the campaign, has highlighted the Wall Street bailout.

“A $700-billion bailout for Wall Street. How did we get into this mess?” a Lunsford ad says. “Career politicians like Mitch McConnell.”

Lunsford, a former state commerce secretary who twice ran unsuccessfully for governor, has sought to tie McConnell to the unpopular Bush. McConnell has been a usually reliable vote for the president; moreover, his wife, Elaine Chao, is the president’s Labor secretary and the longest-serving Bush Cabinet member.

McConnell, who has led his party in the Senate since the Democrats gained the majority in 2006, has touted his ability as the only Kentuckian since onetime Senate Majority Leader Alben W. Barkley, later President Truman’s vice president, to become a Senate leader and deliver millions of federal dollars to the state.

In a sign of the tightening race, the AFL-CIO is stepping up its efforts on behalf of Lunsford, distributing leaflets outside work sites, airing radio ads and sending thousands of mailers to union households.

McConnell, a soft-spoken 66-year-old who overcame polio as a child, is a shrewd politician who first won election to the Senate by defeating a Democratic incumbent.

He has attempted to portray the 60-year-old Lunsford as a tool of outside liberals. One TV ad shows a picture of Schumer while an announcer with a New York accent describes him as “the far-left senator from New York” who wants to pick Kentucky’s next U.S. senator.

For Democrats, still bitter over Daschle’s 2004 defeat, the race is an opportunity for political payback. Former Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, then the Republican leader, made an unusual foray into South Dakota that year to help defeat Daschle.

Until then, it was considered rare, even a breach of Senate courtesy, for one party leader to campaign against another.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has no plans to travel to Kentucky to campaign against McConnell. But Reid has contributed $10,000 from his political action committee to Lunsford’s campaign. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), meanwhile, has sent out a fundraising e-mail on behalf of Democratic Senate candidates declaring: “Sixty is the magic number. . . . With Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the White House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish.”

Some Democrats believe they can expand their Senate ranks to the point where they don’t need Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) to advance their agenda. If that happens, some party activists hope the onetime Democratic vice presidential nominee will be stripped of his committee chairmanship as punishment for speaking at the Republican National Convention in support of McCain.

If that happened, said Ensign, who is working furiously to minimize GOP losses: “We would welcome Joe.”

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richard.simon@latimes.com