The Democratic Takeover Up Close: The Senate (CQPolitics.com)

[Ron Burgundy]

CQPolitics - Part one of three.

The Democrats accomplished their stunning takeover of both chambers of Congress by netting six Senate seats — exactly what they needed for a 51-49 majority, including Democratic-aligned Vermont Independent Bernard Sanders and self-described Independent Democrat Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut — and by nearly doubling the 15-seat net gain they needed to claim control of the House.

The following are for-the-record summaries, written by the CQPolitics.com reporters who followed these races all year, of how the Democrats captured six of the 15 Republican Senate seats that were up for election. The Democrats accomplished this while losing none of their own 18 seats that were up for election this year.

Roundups of the Democrats’ defeats of House incumbents and of the party’s takeovers of open House seats formerly held by the Republicans, will be published later this week by CQPolitics.com.

Missouri Senate (Democratic state Auditor Claire McCaskill unseated Republican Sen. Jim Talent (news, bio, voting record), 49.5 percent to 47.4 percent)

Missouri has historically been closely divided between Democrats and Republicans, and its tendency to reflect national partisan trends gave it a long-running reputation as a “bellwether” state. The early part of the decade saw Republicans gain a bit of an edge over the Democrats, with George W. Bush carrying the state in both his presidential bids, and the GOP holding both Senate seats and the governorship entering the 2006 election cycle.

But the victory by Democrat McCaskill over Republican incumbent Talent — two years after she narrowly lost the state’s race for governor to Republican Matt Blunt — returned Missouri to its status of political harbinger.

It was the purest test of the Democrats’ national wave, said University of Missouri-St. Louis political science professor Dave Robertson, as Talent — who ousted interim Democratic Sen. Jean Carnahan by 1 percentage point in a 2002 special election — fell to an anti-incumbent, anti-Republican national mood. Much of McCaskill’s campaign effort was aimed at tying Talent closely to Bush, whose depressed presidential job approval ratings were a burden to Republicans across the nation.

McCaskill’s narrow majority among the state’s suburban voters was crucial, Robertson said, as votes from the strongly Democratic central cities balanced out with those from rural areas and small cities where Talent, like many Missouri Republicans, ran strongest.

Robertson noted that this was not a phenomenon exclusive to Missouri, pointing to the key role suburban voters played in another vital Democratic victory in Virginia, where former Navy Secretary Jim Webb ousted Republican Sen. George Allen (news, bio, voting record). — Lauren Phillips

Montana Senate (Democratic state Senate President Jon Tester unseated Republican Sen. Conrad Burns (news, bio, voting record), 49.1 percent to 48.4 percent)

Burns’ defeat was a perfect storm of voter dissent over the sizable campaign contributions Burns received in the past from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and the senator’s uncanny ability to commit verbal gaffes.

Montana Democrats scored bonus points when Tester won the June 6 primary over state Auditor John Morrison. A lawyer with an urbane manner, Morrison might have had a hard time offsetting former farm broadcaster Burns’ claims that he was the only “real” Montanan in the race.

Not so for Tester, a crewcut-wearing, big-bellied organic farmer who works the land his grandfather homesteaded in the early 20th century and freely showed off the fact that he lost three fingers years ago in a meat grinder accident.

Tester kept his campaign mainly positive, withstood a barrage of ads by Burns and GOP allies aimed at portraying him as too liberal, and let Burns do himself in with self-inflicted controversies — such his statement there was a cadre of taxi drivers who moonlight as assassins in their off-hours, and his public scolding of Virginia firefighters whose efforts to put out wildfires in Montana were deemed insufficient by Burns.

One interesting aspect of the Montana race is that it was much less affected by Bush’s national unpopularity than most of the Republican defeats. While the president, according to the SurveyUSA polling company, had a big job approval deficit in all of the other states where Democrats gained Senate seats, he had a narrow 50 percent to 48 percent advantage in Montana just prior to the Nov. 7 election. In fact, a late campaign appearance in Montana by Bush appeared to help Burns narrow Tester’s lead in “horserace” polls. — Marie Horrigan

Ohio Senate (Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown (news, bio, voting record) unseated Republican Sen. Mike DeWine (news, bio, voting record), 55.9 percent to 44.1 percent)

The situation was quite opposite in Ohio, where SurveyUSA showed Bush with a 61 percent disapproval rating in October.

For much of the campaign, Republican incumbent DeWine remained competitive by distancing himself somewhat from Bush while blasting Democratic challenger Brown’s House record as way too liberal for the swing state’s voters. But the national Republican Party’s mounting problems sent DeWine into a free fall from which he never escaped.

DeWine, among the defeated Republicans, carried an extra burden because of voters’ revulsion with the scandal-plagued Ohio Republican establishment, including Gov. Bob Taft, who last year pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of failing to report gifts, and Rep. Bob Ney (news, bio, voting record), who was convicted of felony corruption changes in the Abramoff lobbying scandal.

Although DeWine himself was not embroiled in any controversy, many Ohio voters soured on the one-party Republican rule that has prevailed in Ohio for many years. The political environment in Ohio was so bad for Republicans that DeWine and his GOP allies couldn’t make inroads in attacking Brown’s record on taxes and national security issues.

Brown, meanwhile, was adept at portraying himself as a “progressive” populist who would work to curb the outsourcing of American jobs overseas and raise the federal minimum wage. Many Ohioans have not seen the fruits of a supposedly robust national economy, and Brown spoke to voters’ concerns on this question.

Brown trounced DeWine by 12 percentage points and about 450,000 votes, comfortably winning the counties in and around Cleveland and Columbus and also in the industrial northeastern reaches of the state. — Greg Giroux

Pennsylvania Senate (Democratic state Treasurer Bob Casey unseated Sen. Rick Santorum (news, bio, voting record), 58.7 percent to 41.3 percent)

An outspoken conservative over his two terms in the Senate, Santorum was seen from the start of his 2006 race as one of the most vulnerable GOP incumbents: His strongly ideological approach was highly risky in Pennsylvania, a politically competitive state where Democrats have won the past four contests for president.

Still, the landslide defeat of Santorum, by a margin of more than 17 percentage-points, exceeded expectations, reflecting a combination of the controversial nature of the incumbent’s positioning, the unpopularity of President Bush (63 percent disapproval in the October SurveyUSA polling) and the inherent strength of Democratic challenger Casey, a statewide elected official in his own right and namesake son of a popular former governor.

When Casey announced in March 2005 that he would challenge Santorum this year, it was widely anticipated that the race would be a titanic and ultimately close contest.

It never turned out that way. Santorum had won his two previous Senate elections in a favorable political environment (1994) and against an underfinanced opponent (2000). But neither circumstance was available to Santorum this year, as Casey raised plenty of money and was well-placed to win in a strongly Democratic year.

Casey also took away a typical line of GOP attack because his views on social issues, including abortion, are relatively conservative for a major Democratic Party figure.

Santorum and fellow Republicans ridiculed the low-key Casey as noncommital on important issues, weak on fighting terrorism and dealing with illegal immigration, and unwilling to meet the energetic Santorum in a long series of debates. But the fact that Santorum was so eager to debate — something rarely evidenced by incumbents who are confident of victory — was widely seen as symbolic of his underdog status.

The final result was lopsided, with Casey prevailing by about 700,000 votes. Even more telling was that Casey led Santorum even outside the state’s traditional Democratic bastions of Philadelphia and Allegheny County (Pittsburgh). — Greg Giroux

Rhode Island Senate (Democratic former state Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse unseated Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee (news, bio, voting record), 53.5 percent to 46.5 percent)

There probably was no Republican Senate incumbent with a better argument than Chafee to be exempted from the national turn against his party. No GOP senator had been more contrary to and critical of Bush’s presidency than centrist Chafee, who often criticized the administration over the war in Iraq, environmental protection, social issues and fiscal priorities.

But as the Republican incumbent from a state that usually is one of the nation’s premier Democratic strongholds, Chafee just could not escape Bush’s unpopularity in a state in which the president had a 75 percent disapproval rating in October.

Democratic challenger Whitehouse, a solid contender in his own right, pounded home a message that Rhode Islanders — even those sympathetic to Chafee’s moderate demeanor — had to vote Democratic if they wanted change and to send Bush a message.

And his effort to persuade voters that Chafee wasn’t as much of a maverick as he seemed received an unintentional assist — from Chafee.

This came during the campaign for the Sept. 12 primary, in which Chafee faced a serious challenge from conservative Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey. Although Laffey contended he is a truer Republican than Chafee, national GOP strategists determined the incumbent was far more “electable” and went all out to help him combat Laffey’s challenge.

This gave Chafee short-term gain, as the national party’s help played a big role in his primary victory. But it gave Whitehouse and fellow Democrats ammunition to portray Chafee as beholden to national Republican leaders. — Marie Horrigan

Virginia Senate (Democrat Jim Webb, an author and former Navy secretary, unseated Republican Sen. George Allen, 49.6 percent to 49.2 percent)

Ending a contest that was one of the Democratic Party’s unlikeliest pickups of the 2006 elections, Allen’s concession on Nov. 9 clinched a 51st seat in the 110th Congress — and a Senate majority — for the Democrats.

Less than a year ago, political analysts were speculating about an upcoming Allen race for the White House in 2008; his election for a second term in the Senate appeared a given. Although the Republicans’ iron grip on Virginia politics had eroded a bit because of population growth in the Washington, D.C., suburbs of Northern Virginia, Allen’s strongly conservative record appeared to mainly fit the state. And the 2005 decision by popular outgoing Democratic Gov. Mark Warner to forgo a challenge to Allen left his party without an experienced and well-known candidate.

Webb’s decision to run took care of the well-known part. His name was recognized in the heavily military-oriented state for his tenure a couple of decades ago as Navy secretary and because he authored some best-selling books, most with military-related themes.

His status as a first-time candidate — and a Republican until he split off because of his opposition to the Iraq war — created skepticism among Democratic voters, who gave him just a narrow victory in the June 13 primary over technology association executive Harris Miller. Webb, however, gained his footing as a campaigner, persisting in tying Allen to Bush, especially on the Iraq war.

That said, it appears highly unlikely that Webb could have squeezed out his razor-thin win over Allen without help from a series of political wounds inflicted on the incumbent, mainly by himself.

These included the now-famous incident in which he ridiculed an Indian-American Webb supporter by calling him “macaca;” Allen’s awkward handling of the surprise late campaign revelation that his mother is Jewish; and the last-ditch effort by Allen’s campaign to publicize racy passages from Webb’s novels, a tactic many saw as desperate.

The final returns showed that Allen lost overwhelmingly to Webb in liberal-leaning college and university towns and in the northern Virginia suburbs. — Greg Giroux