Keeping an Eye on the Senate Races

In an attempt to be vigilant, I participated in a Club for Growth conference call this morning. If you are unfamiliar with the Club for Growth, take a look at their website: http://www.clubforgrowth.org/. The Club for Growth (as in economic growth) is a PAC committed to the promotion of economic prosperity and economic freedom. When I put my money where my mouth is, I do so through the Club for Growth.

During the call, club president Pat Toomey provided a briefing of the election results and their policy implications. John Fund also provided his analysis of the election outcome.

The biggest take-away message for me was what I consider the answer to the question, “What can WE do?” As you know, in these next two years, the strongest way Republicans will be able to prohibit the worst policies from being enacted is to employ the filibuster. OUR responsibility will be to insist of those in the Senate (and House) to have spines. We will need to keep an eye on who might be wavering when important votes come up, and then make the phone calls to the offices of these key players, regardless of whether or not we are in their district.

There are a few key races which warrant our attention right now. The way things stand currently, the Democrats will have 55 seats in the Senate. They will also count on Independent Senators Sanders and Lieberman to caucus with them, giving them 57 of the 60 they would need to block a filibuster. There are three seats still up for grabs. The first is Alaska Senator Ted Stevens’ seat. While it looks like Alaskans voted for him to be able to hold his Republican seat, the Senate can oust him, or Stevens could deny them that pleasure by resigning. If either happens, one likely scenario is that Governor Sarah Palin (ever hear of her?) would then appoint Alaska Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell on a temporary basis until a special election would take place in the spring. At that time, the contest would probably be between Parnell and Mark Begich (Stevens’ current challenger) and Parnell would most likely win that election. So, the first of the three undetermined seats looks okay, provided the ballot count remains in Stevens’ favor.

The second Senate seat still up for grabs is the one in Minnesota between incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and liberal comedian Al Franken. In this tight race, Coleman has more votes, but Franken is pulling a Gore and is requesting a recount. I’m optimistic Coleman will emerge the victor and that seat will remain Republican. If not, I would have to speculate that God has a very warped sense of humor indeed.

The third race is that of Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss vs. Jim Martin. In Georgia, if the leading candidate does not have more than 50% of the vote, a run-off election is held within the next month between the top two candidates. Provided this happens, Chambliss should have the edge for a couple of reasons: 1) It's likely he would pick up most of the votes which went to Libertarian Allen Buckley (who got roughly 3% -- see why it never pays to vote for a third-party candidate?) and 2) There may be a lower voter turn-out among Democrats for the run-off election compared to the turn-out sparked by Obama’s candidacy. However, this is an important race to keep an eye on and it may behoove us to contribute financially to Chambliss’ campaign to assure his win in a run-off election. If my calculations are correct, the election would take place December 4, 2008. With so much at stake in regard to a Senate being filibuster-proof, you can bet your bippy Obama will be in Georgia doing all he can to assure a win for Martin. Therefore, we can not take holding this seat for granted. With “Republicans” like Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe, who aren’t exactly known for their loyalty to the Republican party and who certainly will enjoy the attention of wooing Dems persuading them to help make the Senate filibuster-proof, the Saxby race is a very important race.