Republicans Seek Entrant in Must-Win Bayou Battle
By Greg Giroux | 1:05 PM; Aug. 16, 2007 | Email This Article
Republicans need a minimal gain to retake the Senate, but they have relatively few ripe targets. So unseating a moderate Democrat in a conservative-leaning state seems to be a necessity. Then why does Mary Landrieu look fairly secure thus far?
Democrats effectively control the Senate by a razor-thin 51-49 margin that suggests their majority is precarious. But that small edge belies the significant disadvantages that face Republicans, who are still smarting from the election last year that ended their majority — and who have nearly twice as many Senate seats to defend next year.
But what if the political winds become more favorable for the GOP? If they are to have any chance of reclaiming the Senate, they almost surely will have to end the career of Louisiana Democrat Mary L. Landrieu after a dozen years.
Landrieu has long expected a more competitive race than most, if not all, of her 11 Democratic colleagues who are up for re-election next year. Louisiana backed President Bush's campaign in 2004 by a 15 percentage point margin. Five years ago, Landrieu won her second term underwhelmingly — she failed to win a majority of votes in the unique, all-party November primary the state had at that time, and so she needed a December runoff election to dispatch, with just 52 percent of the vote, a second-tier Republican opponent. (Louisiana has since established the sort of separate party primaries used for federal elections in the rest of the country.)
And hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which battered Louisiana two years ago, spawned population dislocations, particularly among the overwhelmingly Democratic black electorate in New Orleans, adding to the apparent political limitations of Democrats.
Yet Landrieu enters her campaign in a stronger position than she might have expected just a year ago. She has good approval ratings, a robust treasury and a less liberal voting record than nearly all her Democratic Senate colleagues. Moreover, for the moment at least, she has no announced Republican challenger.
Landrieu has staked out centrist positions and has been concentrating on issues that lack a defined partisan slant, such as securing federal money for coastal restoration.
On Senate votes this year that have pitted most Democrats against most Republicans, Landrieu has sided with her party's majority four out of five times; only one other Democrat, Nebraska's Ben Nelson, has a lower "party unity" score. Among her more prominent recent breaks with her party, she opposed an energy tax package that she said would hurt her state's oil and gas industries and was one of just 15 Democrats who effectively voted to kill an overhaul of immigration laws that, she said, would have been too friendly to illegal immigrants.
Republican strategists say Landrieu is adjusting her voting behavior to recognize the political realities of running for re-election in a conservative-leaning state. In part because of her support for abortion rights and opposition to a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, Landrieu's voting record by and large is less conservative than the two most recent Democratic senators from the state: John B. Breaux, who retired in 2004 after three terms, or J. Bennett Johnston Jr., whom Landrieu succeeded in 1996.
The senator's other challenges are the political effects of the post-hurricane population displacement — though 2006 returns suggested that it may not hurt Landrieu as much as originally anticipated — and the possibility of sharing a 2008 ticket with a Democratic presidential candidate, like New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who would be more likely than not to lose Louisiana.
GOP officials promise a strong challenger who probably will begin campaigning in earnest after the Oct. 20 gubernatorial election. Republicans say that a likely victory in that race by Rep. Bobby Jindal will embolden the party as it prepares to take on Landrieu. Recent speculation has focused on Secretary of State Jay Dardenne and Treasurer John Kennedy. Kennedy, a conservative Democrat who placed third in a 2004 Senate primary that Republican David Vitter won, would switch parties to run.
As she awaits an opponent, Landrieu has been raising money as if she already had one: As July began, she had in her campaign account $2.8 million, substantially more than the $1.6 million she banked at this point six years ago.
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