CQ WEEKLY
– IN FOCUS
Feb. 22, 2009 – 4:36 p.m.
Senate Moderates’ Primary Concerns
By Catharine Richert, CQ Staff
Shortly after Arlen Specter and two other centrist Senate Republicans struck their deal with Democrats and the White House on the economic stimulus package, Specter was approached in the GOP cloakroom by one of his colleagues.
“ ‘Arlen, I’m proud of you,’ ” the second senator said. Specter declined to say who the lawmaker was, but he recounted the rest of their conversation this way: “‘Are you going to vote with me?’ I said. He said, ‘No, I might have a primary.’ And I said, ‘You know very well that I’m going to have a primary.’”
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That brief encounter clearly illuminated the position moderates hold in the ranks of the Senate Republicans these days — weighing their ideological inclination to find common cause with President Obama against the political risks and rewards of such dealmaking, both for themselves and for their party.
The GOP leadership, as much as the moderates themselves, are finding this balancing act particularly complicated. In response to the loss of the White House and their declining ranks at the Capitol, many top Republicans are declaring that a reversal of fortune lies in taking the party back to its conservative roots. At the same time, though, these leaders can little afford to employ any strategy that isolates the small but potentially pivotal bloc of moderates in the Senate — anchored, at least so far this year, by Pennsylvania’s Specter and Maine’s Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins , who cast the only three GOP votes for the stimulus measure Obama signed last week.
In years when they had more seats, even in the minority, Republican leaders could often appeal to party discipline — or threaten retribution — to win loyalty from the moderates, many of whom have survived politically only because they’re willing to vote with the Democrats more than once in a while. But that’s not the case now, notes Nevada’s John Ensign , who ran the party’s dismal Senate campaign last year. “So you’re upset at them,” he said of the centrists. “What are you going to do? How are you going to punish them? We’re only at 41 votes right now.”
Permitting the moderates to move as far left as they want on the GOP continuum nevertheless carries risks. These senators will continue to be relying on the party’s conservative base, and on its many conservative big-money donors, to support their campaigns financially. And they will want to ensure they don’t alienate big-name conservative Republicans who could help them survive primary challenges from the right.
Specter can be somewhat stoic about life on the moderates’ precarious perch, since he’s survived there for years. In 2004, he was challenged for renomination by Rep. Patrick J. Toomey, who was bankrolled by the fiscally conservative Club for Growth. Specter won the primary with just 51 percent, even though he outspent Toomey 3-to-1, and probably survived only because President George W. Bush and the state’s other senator at the time, the much more conservative Republican Rick Santorum, got behind Specter after concluding Toomey was too far right to win the general election.
View From Across the Aisle
For all the angst that moderates can create for GOP leaders, they are a force that the Democrats can’t ignore. Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada can generally count on 58 votes (pending the outcome of the contested Minnesota senate race) and so needs the support of at least two Republicans to close off filibusters and advance the Democratic legislative agenda.
In addition to the trio of stimulus supporters from the Northeast, several others who are developing a centrist voting record so far this year may well be ripe for recruiting offensives from Reid and his lieutenants. One of them, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski , may be positioning herself to withstand a primary challenge next year from Gov. Sarah Palin , who became a star of the conservative movement as last year’s GOP vice presidential nominee. Three others — Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, George V. Voinovich of Ohio and Mel Martinez of Florida — are retiring next year.
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In theory, Reid should have the best luck wooing these short-timers, since they are politically free to vote their ideological hearts. But none of them showed much inclination to support the $787 billion stimulus package. So Reid concentrated instead on the Northeastern trio, each of whom plans to stick around and will need to brandish their legislative achievements to independent-minded voters in future re-election bids. That’s why Collins and Snowe showcased their support for the spending cuts in the final version of the package, while Specter, despite voicing reservations about its limited tax cuts, applauded its potential to create jobs and a significant boost in health research funding.
Collins won her third term last fall and Snowe faces the voters again in 2012. Specter is seeking a sixth term next year, and, according to a Quinnipiac University Poll last month, 43 percent of Pennsylvania voters do not think he deserves re-election. As he told his cloakroom confidant, he’s anticipating another primary challenge. And it could be an even tougher fight than he had against Toomey — in part, says political scientist Christopher Borick of Muhlenberg College, because many of the moderate Republicans who are Specter’s allies switched their registration to vote in last year’s intensely contested Democratic presidential primary.
Living on the margins of his party is nothing new to Specter, and it’s a persona he’s likely to cultivate throughout the 111th Congress; on health care, labor and some spending issues, there’s a good chance he’ll be voting with the majority.
Murkowski similarly plans to remind both the caucus and home-state constituents of her value as an independent voice as she prepares to seek a second full term. She was part of the bipartisan negotiations over the stimulus legislation but ultimately voted against it, citing her concerns over the scope of its spending.
Such a close calibration on the stimulus plan foreshadows her plan for the year ahead. “Whether it’s good or not for my state is not going to change just because I’m in cycle,” Murkowski said.
“Good for the state” is the operative phrase, said Gerald McBeath, a political science professor at University of Alaska-Fairbanks. If Democrats want Murkowski on board, she’ll be more likely to support bills that include specific provisions for Alaska; those earmarks will look good on Murkowski’s r??sum?? not only for the general election, but also in a potential primary, particularly if Palin is her opponent then.
Murkowski “obviously has to look carefully at high-stakes votes,” McBeath said. “If they don’t have a definite positive impact on Alaska, she’ll have to worry about how they will be interpreted by the competition.”
Bipartisanship presents no hurdles for the political futures of Collins and Snowe; indeed, it remains a calling card for both of them. “Maine people don’t want left-wing and right-wing, they want solutions,” said Chris Potholm, a professor of government at Bowdoin College.
Keeping Things National
These variable state-to-state calculations highlight another mission for Senate GOP leaders: maintaining a transregional appeal for a party with a shrinking base of support. In January, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky warned members of the Republican National Committee against becoming a party without a national identity. “Every House member from New England is a Democrat,” he said. “You can walk from Canada to Mexico and from Maine to Arizona without ever leaving a state with a Democratic governor. . . . In politics, there’s a name for a regional party: It’s called a minority party.”
Embracing the party’s moderate wing may be the only way to regain influence throughout the country, says John Cornyn of Texas, who will be running the Senate GOP campaign operation for 2010. “I don’t think one way to make an impact is to shrink in size,” said Cornyn, one of the chamber’s more outspoken conservatives. “I think growing the majority is the best way for us to control the agenda.”
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But there’s another view, that culling the ideologically weakest members of the party will help the party reclaim its core values. “It’s hard for the Republican Party as a whole to talk about fiscal conservatism and limited government when you have Republicans running around yelling, ‘No, no, let’s spend more,’” said the Club for Growth’s spokeswoman, Nachama Soloveichik.
Indeed, voting against the party could come back to haunt vulnerable moderates when it comes to collecting campaign cash, Soloveichik added. “When people are angry, it’s good for fundraising” on behalf of primary opponents, she said.
Although Specter has never had too much trouble tapping high-profile donors, he’s started to husband his money in anticipation of a tough and costly race. At the start of this year, he had $5.8 million in his campaign bank account; unlike almost all other GOP senators, he gave nothing to other candidates in the 2008 campaign.
Meanwhile, in the all-important other tally — the number of Senate Republicans joining the Democrats on big votes — the moderates say their support should not be taken for granted. “I’m going to support the president when I think he’s right, and I’m going to oppose him when I think he’s wrong,” said Collins. “I’m not an automatic for either side.”
As for Specter, he’s acknowledged that the stimulus vote may be one in a long line that puts his political aspirations in peril. But he hasn’t ruled out the prospect of giving Reid more assists in the future. “I would feel less uncomfortable being the 61st vote,” he said. “And even better about being the 67th. I’ll take them one at a time.”
FOR FURTHER READING: Stimulus law (PL 111-5), CQ Weekly, p. 352; McConnell’s challenges, p. 176; Senate moderates, 2008 CQ Weekly, p. 2044.
Comments
Spector should consider switching his affiliation to independent or Democrat, a la Sanders and Lieberman. The current Republican Party -- of right wing hard cores -- is not the party he joined.
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