Democrat treading softly in red state
by Steve Muscatello
Townhall.com
Jan 19, 2006
Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska became the first Democrat to pledge support for Samuel Alito’s confirmation to the Supreme Court Wednesday.
While his colleagues Max Baucus (D-MT) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) were busy announcing their intentions to vote against Alito, Nelson issued a statement praising Alito’s “impeccable judicial credentials” and “strong recommendation” from the American Bar Association.
Surprising? No, not at all.
Nelson also voted to confirm Chief Justice John Roberts in 2005, a decision he touted as the capstone of his “support for more than 215 of President Bush’s nominations to the federal bench.”
As a red state Democrat running for reelection in 2006, Nelson has little choice other than to hitch his cart (at least in part) to Bush, who carried Nebraska by some 30 points in 2004. Likewise, Nelson must approach every Senate vote in 2006 as though his job depends on it because it very well may.
Election year Senate votes are scrutinized with remarkable intensity. It’s the yin to the yang of the Rose Garden Strategy: you may have the job the other guy wants, but that means you have decisions to make—read, opportunities to be pinned down—while the other guy can simply muse about changing things in Washington.
This is Nelson’s dilemma. To date, however, he is holding up well.
In a November 2005 Rasmussen poll, Nelson topped 50 percent against two Republican challengers. Nelson outpaced former Ameritrade COO Pete Ricketts 52-29 and former Nebraska GOP chairman David Kramer 57-25.
Smooth sailing, right? Not exactly.
Nelson’s most formidable opponent, Don Stenberg, who lost a tight race to Nelson in 2000, is running again in 2006 but was not included in the Rasmussen poll.
Stenberg served as Nebraska’s attorney general from 1991 to 2003, a stint that included an appearance before the U.S. Supreme Court in which he defended Nebraska’s ban on partial birth abortion.
Riding President Bush’s landslide victory in 2000, Stenberg carried 66 of Nebraska’s 93 counties, ultimately securing 318,368 votes (49 percent). But it wasn’t enough to defeat Nelson, whose less-is-more county strategy garnered 330,336 (51 percent) votes and a trip to Washington. Nelson’s 11,998 vote margin of victory can be traced to a 17,156 vote advantage in Douglas County, Nebraska’s largest county and home to Omaha, its largest city (pop. 390,000).
Replicating that huge urban voter turnout—a strategy that failed John Kerry in 2004—will determine Nelson’s reelection chances. However, Nelson must also highlight “conservative” positions such as his support for Alito and his respectable (for a Democrat) 52 percent conservative rating from the American Conservative Union. (For points of comparison, Nebraska’s senior senator Republican Chuck Hagel scored 85 percent. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) slid in at 9 percent).
The GOP must avoid a bloody three-way primary to retain any chance of unseating Nelson. Intra-party turmoil will prove particularly lethal against a decent man and relatively moderate politician like Nelson. Consider the Republican quandary in Florida.
Popular wisdom there held that Sen. Bill Nelson (no relation), another red state Democrat, would face a taxing reelection campaign. Florida is, after all, an increasingly red state with a popular Republican governor and GOP majorities in both chambers of the statehouse and in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Nevertheless, a January 5, 2006 Rasmussen poll showed Nelson running laps around Republican challenger Katherine Harris, 54-31. As Dustin Hawkins has noted, this gap can be traced to friction between Harris and the powerful National Republican Senatorial Committee, headed by Elizabeth Dole (R-NC). The NRSC has thus far refused to support Harris, believeing her involvement on behalf of President Bush in the 2000 Florida recount will haunt her in a general election.
Like Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson voted to confirm John Roberts. And despite the fact that there is now little pressure to do so, he might also vote to confirm Samuel Alito. But unlike Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson is a flat-out liberal. In fact, the ACU gave him a lifetime conservative ranking of 14 percent. The National Journal determined that Nelson voted more liberal than 82 percent of his Senate colleagues on social issues and 79 percent more liberal on economic issues.
All this and Bill Nelson has a 23-point lead in a state President Bush won by five points in 2004. It's enough to make a conservative's head spin. And to help even Ben Nelson rest easy tonight, knowing he played his Alito card perfectly. Maybe these color-coded maps are overrated after all.
Steve Muscatello is a Townhall.com columnist.
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