Democrats Running to Right in Many Tight Senate Races

Democrats face an uphill climb in their campaign to regain control of the Senate. If they have a fighting chance, it’s because some of their candidates are sounding like Republicans.

The Democratic candidate in Alaska supports President Bush’s call to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. The Democrat running in South Carolina supports Bush’s call for a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage, and the Democratic candidate in Oklahoma is in favor of repealing the District of Columbia’s tough gun control law.

The strategy reflects the fact that Democrats must win several states carried by President Bush in the 2000 election.

The battle is important because the party that controls the Senate could influence the success of the next president’s legislative agenda. It may decide whether to confirm one or more Supreme Court nominees.

But the math is against the Democrats.

Republicans hold a narrow majority in the Senate, which has 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats and one independent who typically votes with the Democrats. But of the 34 seats up for election this year, Democrats must defend 19 -- including Barbara Boxer’s in California -- and Republicans only 15.

Of the eight “open” seats -- those without an incumbent seeking reelection -- five are Democratic and three Republican. These are generally the easiest to capture from another party.

The South presents the Democrats’ greatest challenge. The five Democratic open seats are all in the South, in states that Bush carried in 2000. But Democrats believe they stand a good chance of holding onto four of the seats, in Florida, Louisiana, and North and South Carolina. They are reconciled only to losing the Georgia seat Zell Miller is vacating.

Offsetting the loss in Georgia is the Democrats’ expected gain in Illinois, where state Sen. Barack Obama is far ahead of Alan Keyes to fill the seat that Republican Peter Fitzgerald is vacating. Democrats believe they could also capture two other Republican-held seats, in Colorado and Oklahoma, and unseat Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska, a state that has not elected a Democratic senator since 1974.

“The latest developments in Senate races around the country have all accrued to the benefit of the Democrats,” Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.), head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, told reporters recently. “The race for control of the Senate remains a tossup.”

Some of the Democratic candidates have sought to distance themselves from the party’s presidential nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.

“The main reason you’re hearing Democratic candidates talk like Republicans is that most of the highly competitive Senate races this year are taking place on GOP turf,” said Andrew Taylor, a political scientist at North Carolina State University.

No state was more Republican in 2000 than Alaska, which cast 59% of its ballots for Bush. Tony Knowles, the former two-term governor who is campaigning to unseat Murkowski, supported the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban. Kerry supported extending the ban, which expired last month.

Like Knowles, two other Democratic candidates who hail from energy-producing states -- Reps. Brad Carson in Oklahoma and Christopher John in Louisiana -- have supported Bush’s call to allow oil drilling in the Arctic refuge. Kerry has helped lead Senate filibusters to block the drilling.

Carson and John also voted last week for the constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage. Bush backs the measure. Kerry does not.

“We need more Democrats in the Senate willing to work across the political aisle,” explained Carson, who has given out fliers reading “not your typical Democrat.” He has sided with Bush in supporting legislation to shield gun makers and sellers from lawsuits and banning a later-term abortion procedure.

Even Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, who faces a tough challenge in South Dakota from former Rep. John Thune, has run a TV ad showing a glimpse of him and Bush hugging. The Republican National Committee asked the Daschle campaign to stop using the video image, which was taken immediately after Bush’s address to Congress after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

A Daschle campaign spokesman, Dan Pfeiffer, said Daschle is “a leader who will work with Bush when he is right and stand up to him when he is wrong.”

In the Oklahoma Senate race, the Republican National Committee sent Carson a letter asking him to stop running TV ads picturing himself with Bush. Separately, former Rep. Tom Coburn, an obstetrician who is the Republican candidate in Oklahoma, is embroiled in charges that he involuntarily sterilized a patient.

In South Carolina, Adam Kovacevich, a spokesman for Democratic Senate candidate Inez Tenenbaum, the state superintendent of education, said, “People are looking for a senator who puts the state first and is not a partisan rubber stamp.”

Republicans predict they will not only hold onto their majority but expand it, possibly ousting Daschle -- especially if Bush wins big in the states in play.

“I’m confident we’ll maintain the majority,” said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who took the unusual step this year of visiting South Dakota to campaign against his Democratic counterpart.

Republicans are trying not to let the Democrats get away with their strategy.

In the Oklahoma race, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is running a TV ad assailing Carson as “a big-time liberal” who has voted against the president’s agenda “more than Hillary Clinton or John Kerry.” In Alaska, the committee has run a TV ad attempting to link Knowles to Kerry and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

“Try as they might to run from their records as well as their national party, Democrats will learn once again that the voters know that there is no substitute for the real thing when it comes to President Bush and our Republican candidates,” said Dan Allen, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He added: “Bush is going to run strong in a lot of these states, and the top of the ticket is definitely going to help our guys.”

William Lunch,, an Oregon State University political scientist, is not so sure. He said some voters who favor Bush might vote for a Democratic Senate candidate for “political insurance.”

In one way, a Bush victory would help Republicans retain Senate control. If the new Senate is split 50 to 50, the vice president will break the tie. So the Democrats would have to add two new seats if Dick Cheney is still the vice president, but only one if Kerry wins and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards, becomes the vice president.

Either way, political analysts say the Democrats face long odds in their quest to regain control. And in any scenario, the Democrats would clearly welcome a Republican defection. Some hope that Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island -- who said last month that he does not plan to vote for President Bush on Nov. 2 -- may eventually find enough in common with Democrats to make the switch. Chafee has described himself as a “pro-choice, antiwar, antideficit Republican,” but also said he has no plans to change his affiliation.

“Democrats do have a chance to recapture the Senate, but it is still less than a 50-50 chance,” said Norman Ornstein, a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, a predominantly conservative research organization in Washington.

“It obviously improves if Kerry wins, not the least reason being that they would then need a net gain of only one,” he continued. “And it might mean a larger mood for change that could give them some coattail effect. But still it will be tough for them to win more than three of the five Southern seats.”

Which party controls the Senate may not be known until December. If no candidate captures a majority in the Nov. 2 vote in Louisiana, the top two vote-getters will meet in a runoff Dec. 4.

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Chamber in the balance

Democrats will attempt to regain control of the Senate, defending 19 seats of the 34 up for election this year. Of the eight open seats -- those without an incumbent seeking reelection -- five are Democratic and three are Republican.

The Senate in the balance Republicans Senate total: 51 Seats up in 2004: 15 Seats open in 2004: 3

Democrats Senate total: 48 Seats up in 2004: 19 Seats open in 2004: 5

Independent Senate total: 1

(This is a portion of the graphic; see full graphic for all information.)