Senate races could reshape politics on Capitol Hill

WASHINGTON —

Looking for Election Night drama?

Don't stop at the historic presidential contest at the top of the ticket. A dozen Senate races could reshape politics on Capitol Hill.

"Democrats have a realistic shot at getting a supermajority of 60 seats," Republican pollster Neil Newhouse said. "Races we never really dreamed would become competitive are now within the margin of error."

Even "red state" strongholds such as Georgia and Kentucky are in play.

Blame it on President Bush. The president has been deeply unpopular for the past two years, and the public is downbeat about where the country is headed. The financial crisis was the equivalent of a roundhouse right, and opposition to the Iraq war remains strong.

Republicans have known for months that they were going to lose Senate seats. Some have said dropping only five or six Tuesday would be a "good night."

The outlook in the House isn't much better. Congress watchers predict Democrats could add two dozen to three dozen seats to their 36-seat majority.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain's struggles in a number of reliably GOP regions are further complicating the tenuous prospects of some congressional Republicans, according to strategists in both parties and analysts.

Particularly difficult for Republican prospects is that McCain appears to be trailing badly in several moderate suburban districts in the Midwest and New England, while he is doing worse than Bush did in rural conservative districts.

"McCain is just running so poorly now. He's collapsed in some districts. It's brutal out there for Republicans," said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the independent Rothenberg Political Report.

Rothenberg's predictions: Democrats will pick up 27 to 33 House seats and six to nine Senate seats.

"The GOP motto is, 'If we didn't have bad luck, we wouldn't have no luck at all,' " said Jennifer Duffy, a Senate analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. "What has gone right for them? There's just a lot of throwing up of hands right now."

Cook's estimates: Democrats will net 23 to 28 House seats and seven to nine Senate seats.

Such results would give Democrats larger majorities than they held in 1994, on the eve of the Republican "revolution," which led to 12 years of GOP dominance on Capitol Hill.

The big question is how many Senate seats will flip?

Democrats now control 51 seats, including two independents who caucus with them. However, one is Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, the Democrats' 2000 vice-presidential nominee and now its bête noire.

His former colleagues are nursing a grudge because he has campaigned vigorously for McCain and attacked Democrat Barack Obama at the Republican convention. Many Democrats are looking for payback.

If Democrats reach 60 seats, that would give them — on paper, anyway — a filibuster-proof majority. They then could parry the Republicans' weapon of choice, which has stymied some of their agenda over the past two years.

That would take a nine-seat rout, however, a tall order even in a Democratic-leaning season. It has been three decades since one party held that many seats: Democrats in 1978-79, with 61 seats.

"As for 60, it is possible," New York Sen. Charles Schumer, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, told the National Press Club last week. "But given the red terrain we're fighting in, it's very difficult. And I don't want people to get such high expectations, because it's hard to win in states like Georgia or Mississippi."

Not impossible, however.

Senate Democrats started with an advantage. They have to defend only a dozen of 35 seats, and most Democratic seats are viewed as safe, according to most analysts.

Meanwhile, Republicans are circling the wagons. At least eight of their members are vulnerable.

In Alaska, Sen. Ted Stevens' chances for re-election were suspect even before his conviction on corruption charges.

Colleagues Saxby Chambliss in Georgia, Norm Coleman in Minnesota, Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina, Gordon Smith in Oregon, John Sununu in New Hampshire and Roger Wicker in Mississippi are in either close or tossup races.

Polls also find that Democrats have a chance of knocking off Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who's in a tight race in Kentucky.

Democrats also are expected to pick up Republican seats in open contests in Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico, where all three incumbents are retiring.

"I don't think that there's any question that it's a tough election atmosphere for Republicans," said Nevada Sen. John Ensign, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "That's just as honest as I can put it."

When McCain clinched the nomination, GOP leaders in Congress hailed him as the best possible standard-bearer because he had crafted an image independent of Bush. Leaders urged incumbents and challengers alike to lash themselves to McCain's brand.

Instead, the dynamics of the presidential race have created opportunities for Democrats that even they were not anticipating, particularly after the financial meltdown began in mid-September.

McCain implicitly acknowledges the GOP's pending collapse in congressional elections by suggesting a vote for him is a check against unbridled Democratic power. On Monday in Cleveland, he called Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a "dangerous threesome."

House and Senate Republicans, meanwhile, are arguing that it is they, rather than McCain, who are the only check against Democrats. "Without a strong conservative leader," McConnell wrote to supporters, "the Obama/Pelosi/Reid machine will steamroll a host of new taxes and left-wing social policy across the Senate floor. There'd be an effective 'gag order' on independents and conservatives."

"It's kind of a perfect storm," Rep. Joe Knollenberg, R-Mich., said last week while campaigning in his suburban Detroit district.

Knollenberg, a 15-year incumbent who faces an uphill battle against a former state senator, has no support from the top of the ticket since the McCain campaign abandoned Michigan a month ago. The NRCC announced last week it would not finance ads there in the final days before the elections.