Ted Stevens‘s indictment yesterday could not have occurred at a more politically inopportune time for the senator from Alaska or his fellow Republicans.
In less than a month, on Aug. 26, he has a primary contest against five opponents including a wealthy businessman who is attacking the incumbent’s ethics in television ads. Should he survive, the six-term senator probably will face his stiffest general-election challenge yet, from Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, who was leading in polls before the indictment.
Although Stevens’s spokesman said yesterday that the senator’s reelection campaign “is continuing to move full steam ahead,” some Republican strategists in Washington expressed concern that his legal troubles — and resulting political vulnerability — could move the Democrats closer to achieving a coveted 60-seat majority in the Senate.
“We’ve had nothing but challenges all the way through, so what else is new?” said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who was tapped earlier this year to serve as a lead fundraiser for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Republicans entered this election at a numerical disadvantage — 23 seats to defend compared with 12 for Democrats — and have caught almost no breaks. Five Republican senators opted to retire and one resigned office last December, including incumbents in Virginia and New Mexico, where Democrats are now strongly favored in the fall. Senate Republicans have fallen far behind their Democratic counterparts in fundraising.
That playing field emboldened Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, to openly muse to reporters last week about the prospect of winning nine seats in November, which would give Democrats a 60-seat majority in January. That number that would allow them to break Republican filibusters and exert true majority control of the legislative body.
Some Republican strategists noted yesterday that Stevens’s legal problems could also jeopardize Alaska at the presidential level. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has deployed staffers in the state, a sign that he intends to mount a serious campaign there. Political observers there cannot remember the last time a Democratic presidential candidate made a serious play for Alaska, which has not voted for a Democrat since President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
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