Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska Retiring

Democratic Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska is forgoing reelection in 2012, opting instead for retirement. Read the story at Politico here.

This makes the math for the Democrats to hold the Senate exceedingly difficult. Nebraska is Republican state and there's no clear Democratic candidate other than former Senator Bob Kerrey. While Kerrey was quite popular, he has lived in New York City for the past 11 years--not exactly a plus in the Cornhusker State.

All of this means that the Montana Senate race, already one of the tightest and most important in the country for determining party control of the chamber, just became--that's right--even more important.

Hold on to your hats!

Everyone's Excited about Elizabeth...

The 2012 Senate elections look exceedingly tough for the Democrats. Maintaining their majority will be difficult largely because they are "overexposed": Democrats need to defend a total of 23 seats--six of them open because of retirements. Many of those seats are held by freshmen elected in 2006, and many are in states that are either swing or decidedly red in their political persuasions. Republicans, conversely, must hold 10 seats--and most of those seats are in fairly friendly territory.

Enter Scott Brown, he who unexpectedly defied the predictions of pundits and captured the Massachusetts Senate seat held for decades by liberal lion Ted Kennedy. If there's a seat Democrats need to pick up--and should--it's this one.

There are lots of things Democrats have going for them. Brown's victory came under unusual circumstances: it was in a special election where voter demographics tend to work in the favor of Republicans, the Democratic nominee--Martha Coakley--was particularly inept as a candidate (she refered to Red Sox pitcher and 2004 World Series hero as "another Yankee fan" and didn't seem interested in doing the spadework of retail politics), and conservative groups were able to concentrate immense amount of resources on this race. Add to this the fact that Massachusetts is--well--MASSACHUSETTS. It is one of the--if not the--bluest state in the country. Obama carried the state by 25 points (making it the sixth best state for Obama), all ten members of the House of Representative representing Massachusetts are Democrats, the Governor is a Democrat, and there are only 32 Republican state legislators in a legislature consisting of 200 representatives and senators total. Add to THAT the fact 2012 is a presidential election year, which should boost voter turnout among Democrats. Both macro- and micro-level trends seem to point to an overwhelming Democratic advantage.

Enter Elizabeth Warren, former Harvard law professor, President Obama's appointee to create a Consumer Protection Bureau, and now candidate for the U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Scott Brown. Several of my Facebook friends excitedly point to a recent poll taken less than a week after Warren announced her decision to run which shows her taking a narrow lead over Brown (see here). Liberals are thrilled--she's very popular among the base and she can raise loads of cash, according to another friend of mine. Scott Brown will be consigned to the dustbin of history, right?

Not so fast, folks. I am not convinced that Elizabeth Warren is all that and a bag of chips as a Senate candidate. To be blunt, she's an amateur--she's never held elected office, knows nothing about retail politics, and--despite her "super-star credentials"--is not what I would call a quality candidate as political scientists define the term. She's not even what I would call an ambitious amateur. She doesn't have widespread name recognition, she doesn't have (as far as I know) a huge source of personal wealth to draw upon, and she's never even run for office before. These are exactly the types of candidates that are prone to make mistakes and underwhelm the electorate once they are placed under the harsh glare of the media spotlight.

But what about candidates like Ron Johnson, who came out of nowhere to beat incumbent Senator Russ Feingold? Lightening can strike--but it does so infrequently. Feingold had never really built a deep and enduring connections to voters in Wisconsin and was highly polarizing due to his iconoclast ways. Brown has some assets, too, that are worth noting:

1. His job approval ratings are tepid, but Brown has strong favorability ratings (above 50 percent according to the PPP poll referenced above). If Brown can focus on his personal characteristics and get folks to either forget or downplay his partisan affiliation, this bodes well for him.

2. He can argue that he'll be in the majority party given the Republicans have a fair shot at retaking the majority, and Massachusetts will benefit from having a Republican senator in that majority representing them.

3. While Scott Brown is certainly to the right of the Democratic-leaning electorate in Massachusetts (see this plot of member ideology relative to state ideology at Voteview), he's certainly one--if not THE--most liberal Republican in the Senate. At least, work done by Professor Royce Carroll at Rice University using current voting records demonstrates this is the case (see this plot of Scott Brown relative to other Republicans in the Senate here).

4. If Scott Brown is so vulnerable, one might wonder why so many other experienced and capable Democratic politicians with actual records took a pass on the Brown race. This includes the entire congressional delegation with such capable individuals like Barney Frank, Stephen Lynch, John Tierney, Ed Markey, and Michael Capuano. And don't forget Congresswoman Nicki Tsongas, who has the valuable asset of a well-known and respected last name in addition to her own work in Congress since she was elected in 2006.

Scott Brown is an experienced politician who's run for office before, understands how to put together a successful campaign, and has defied the odds before. He should not be written off. I am not convinced that Elizabeth Warren is the formidable candidate some claim she is. Her "surge" in the polls is likely attributed to the fact that she has a "D" after her name and simply reflect the partisan advantage any Democratic candidate in a state as blue as Massachusetts would enjoy. Once the campaign begins in earnest, we'll see whether she's truly the top-tier recruit national Democrats would have us believe.

Rehberg and Tester: They Ain't Legislators

On Friday, both Senator Tester and Congressman Rehberg's March 31 Quarterly fundraising numbers were released and discussed in the media. Check out the article from the Helena Independent Record here.

Long story short: Both candidates had good quarters. The long story will have to wait until the reports are posted online at the FEC. Once that I have those numbers, I can dig into them more deeply to figure out how each campaign is doing.

In the meantime, I'd like to explore an issue raised by Senator Tester in some recent remarks he made here in Montana. Last month at a fundraising dinner in Helena, Senator Tester ripped Congressman Rehberg for his relatively slim record of legislative accomplishment. Tester said that Congressman Rehberg's record consists of naming a few post offices, and that's about it. The article can be read here.

The bigger point is how should we, as voters, evaluate the jobs that both Tester and Rehberg have done while in Congress. Should we evaluate them by their legislative accomplishments? If so, the record is pretty slim indeed for both candidates.

Using both THOMAS and the Congressional Bills Project, I examined the number of bills Tester and Rehberg have sponsored while serving in the Senate and House, respectively. I also looked to see if those bills passed their respective chambers and was eventually signed into law. For this analysis, I only looked at the bills where Tester and Rehberg were the primary sponsor. The analysis is in the chart below:



Neither candidate is what one might call a stellar legislator. None of Tester's sponsored legislation has signed by the president, and of the 77 bills sponsored by Congressman Rehberg, only four have (and yes, two of those bills are renaming post offices).

Of course, these data need to be placed into some broader context. Using the 110th Congress as a baseline, I looked at the total number of bills sponsored in each chamber and then broke out the average number of bills introduced by member and their success at passing legislation into law.



As one can plainly see, most legislation goes to Congress to die. Very few bills become law, and the average number of bills sponsored becoming law is only 1 in the Senate (close to 2 if you just look at the Democratic majority in the Senate), and less than 1 in the House. The mean number of bills sponsored in the Senate is 36 and only 16 in the House.

If we use these numbers as a guide, both Congressman Rehberg and Senator Tester are less active than the average member in terms of bill sponsorship (although Congressman Rehberg approaches the mean in the 11th Congress). Their inability to pass any of their preferred legislation into law is not surprising either. If you look who was the MOST successful legislators in the 110th Congress, they tended to be more senior, more seasoned, and holders of key instituitonal positions such as committee chairmanships. They also, surprise surprise, tend to come from the majority party. Senator Kennedy successfully sheparded 13 bills to passage in the 110th Congress, followed by Senator Leahy (8), and Senators Biden, Feinstein, and Harkin (7 each). In the House, Congressmen Oberstar and Berman got 8 and 7 of their bills passed, followed by Congressmen Conyers and Kildee (6 each). As you look at those names, the amount of seniority is clear--and this is not surprising at all. The literature on congressional careers (see Hibbing in particular) shows that legislative productivity increases over a member's term in office.

Neither Senator Tester or Congressman Rehberg are particularly senior, and Congressman Rehberg has only now achieved a leadership post as chairman of one of appropriations subcommittees. Evaluting their accomplishments as sponsors of legislation is perhaps not the best approach to figuring out who is doing a better job for Montana. Quite simply, neither are particularly distinguished legislators but we should not expect them to be given their career stage.

As Mayhew (2000) points out, legislating is only half of what members of Congress do. Members of Congress investigate, they take stands, they oppose presidents, they engage in foreign policy discussions, and they attempt to affect the flow of public discourse more generally. In the words of Richard Fenno, members of Congress are not just policy experts. They are constituent servants and they strive to demonstrate to voters that they are in touch or "one of us". Members can chose which aspects of their jobs to highlight to constituents. Perhaps the most useful way to evaluate both Tester and Rehberg is less on their legislative accomplishments, and more on their work as constituent servants and how close they are to the voters of Montana in terms of policy positions. Do they listen? Are they responsive? Do they successfully help Montanans navigate the federal system? And what are they doing to make sure the needs of Montanans are address? All of these questions can and often do have very little to do with legislation.

Recruiting Quality Challengers

MSNBC is reporting that incumbent Democratic Senator, Jim Webb, will not be running for reelection.

For all the attention paid by the media to the Tea Party and the election of newcomers during the 2010 cycle, the candidates who have the best chance to win election to Congress are those with previous electoral office experience. And the best chance for a party to keep a seat is by running an incumbent, unless they are scandal-ridden or have serious health problems.

One sure bet is that quality challengers and incumbents pay close attention to shifts in the political winds affecting their election prospects. And one good way to gauge party prospects is by looking at the decisions made by quality challengers and incumbents to run or not.

Democrats had good years in 2006 and 2008, in part, because they congressional committees recruited excellent challengers who saw the prospects of the Democratic Party on the rise. In the same vein, a number of Democratic incumbents in the Senate and the House chose retirement in 2010 knowing the political winds where blowing fast in the other direction.

Congressman's Rehberg's decision to run against Jon Tester and today's announcement by Senator Webb to return to the private sector are two indicators of each party's prospects going into the 2012 cycle. The Republicans have recruited perhaps the best possible challenger for Tester, and Democrats have lost their conservative incumbent in Virginia. Both states have moved in the red direction and represent excellent pick up opportunities for the Republicans. With the electoral math already stacked against them with so many Democratic incumbents up for reelection, both of these developments bode ill for Democratic prospects to retain the Senate.
Republican prospects, on the other side of the coin, look particular bright at this moment.

Watch closely the decision of incumbents and quality challengers in both parties. Good recruitment coups are signs that the party is doing well, while retirements suggest the opposite.

The 2012 Montana Senate Election: It's ON.

Attended Steve Daines' announcement for the U.S. Senate today to help the local television with commentary. Daines is a native Montanan, and co-founder of RightNow technologies--one of Bozeman's major employers. In reviewing Daines' materials, it's the standard "I'm an outsider, government is too big, and I've created jobs" that one might expect, especially after the success of this type of message in the 2010 midterm elections. In many ways, I suspect the campaign will be similar to Ron Johnson's successful campaign in Wisconsin. Johnson ran against, and defeated, three-term incumbent Russ Feingold.

I was asked if Daines has a chance. Well, of course he does--the question is whether that chance is substantial. In political science, we term challengers as quality or not. Quality is generally defined as having experience in elected office. These candidates generally have the best chance of beating an incumbent--which is a tall order indeed. However, some candidates without elected office experience are classified as "ambitious amateurs" (see Canon 1990). These candidates may not have elected office experience, but they behave strategically like experienced candidates. They generally have decent name recognition and financial resources, and they make the decision to run strategically.

The incumbent senator, Jon Tester, is running in his first reelection campaign. The best chance of beating an incumbent is when they run in their first reelection campaign. So, if Tester is to beaten, this is the time to do it. Daines is acting strategically by choosing to take Tester on now. And, he's acting early enough to get his name out there and to clear the field of other prospective challengers.

Daines narrative is might compelling in an environment with high unemployment and discontent with incumbents. He's certainly taps into the Tea Party skepticism of larger and bigger government. Tester, of course, can be tagged with some unpopular votes.

Tester, however, has other advantages that should not be dismissed. He is the incumbent. He is a native Montanan. He is a rancher and a farmer. He is pro-gun and a conservative Democrat. It will be hard, methinks, to paint him as an Obama/Pelosi Democrat. And the election is two years away. The economy might improve--and the electorate voting in 2012 will be very different from the one turning out in 2010. All of things bode well for Tester in defending his seat.

Nevertheless, if Daines is the nominee, we can expect a lot of money to be spent by both sides in 2012. Lots of television ads, lots of voter outreach--a rich information environment to help reduce the costs of voting and get more people involved/interested. I can't wait to watch this unfold.