McConnell's shaky status highlights GOP's plight

Yet less than two weeks before the election, McConnell's re-election is in question. In a sign of the political trouble facing Republicans, 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, have expected to gain power in the Nov. 4 election. But until recently, their hopes of capturing 60 seats, enough to head off Republican filibusters, were considered a stretch.

However, 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 year that some say is the worst for Republicans since Watergate, the once unimaginable is now possible: 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 another 20 to 25 seats, 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 Richard Nixon's.

And if that isn'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 health-care 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 August was 6.8 percent, the highest in 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 exasperates the problem,” said blogger Schenkenfelder, adding McConnell now must overcome a political head wind. “The real question is: How strong is that head wind?”

Larry Forgy, a former Republican candidate for Kentucky governor, said 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 governor 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 at least three: Colorado, New Mexico and Virginia. 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-century.

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

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.

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

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

In Kentucky, even McConnell's supporters concede 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 will 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 in the campaign. “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 one-time Senate Majority Leader Alben 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, leafleting outside work sites, airing radio ads and sending out thousands of mailers to union households.

He has attempted to portray the 60-year-old Lunsford as a tool of outside liberals.

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 letter 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 one-time 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, Ensign, who is working furiously to minimize GOP losses, said: “We would welcome Joe.”