Campaign Diaries

It will take a while for the Alaska Senate race to settle, and we still aren’t close to knowing the full repercussions of Ted Stevens’s indictment. In fact, the situation is chaotic enough that it seems unlikely we will have a better idea of where the race stands until the state primary on August 26th. Whether Mark Begich heads into the fall favored to pick-up the seat depends on who runs against him and on whether the GOP gets to field a top-tier contender. As I explained yesterday, that will depend on (1) whether Stevens wins the primary and, if he does, (2) whether he agrees to drop-out.

This puts the GOP in quite a predicament: What Republicans need is for Ted Stevens to fight on, deny the charges until August 26th, survive the primary, and then suddenly change his tune and decide he cannot continue and must withdraw from the race. This is a plausible scenario, but it would require Stevens to be willing to cooperate with the NRSC, which is certainly not a given.

For now, Stevens issued a defiant statement vowing to “continue to move full steam ahead.” The Senator also affirmed his innocence: “I am innocent of these charges and intend to prove that.” In other words, Stevens is not giving up and will be actively contesting the primary. But it is simply too early to have a sense of where things stand and whether one of the lesser-known Republican challengers could really top the 40-year incumbent. A poll released last week by Ivan Moore had Stevens leading David Cuddy 70% to 20%. Stevens will certainly fall now, but will those shifting votes not divide themselves between the other candidates, starting with Vic Vickers who is launching a $750,000 TV campaign?

Another question mark facing Alaska Republicans is who could replace Ted Stevens on the ballot if he were to win the primary and then agree to withdraw: With many GOP figures in the state tarnished by corruption scandals, who could take on Begich and make it a race? Lieutenant Governor Steve Parnell is running in the House primary against embattled Rep. Don Young. If he wins that match-up, it is unlikely that the state GOP would allow him to switch races. (Parnell must be cursing himself for having chosen to challenge Young and not Stevens.)

Governor Sarah Palin would be a strong option for the GOP. Despite recent problems of her own, she is very popular in the state (80% in a poll released yesterday!). The race would start as a toss-up at worst for Palin. But today, Palin refused to call for Stevens’ resignation and said she had no interest in leaving the governorship to run for Senate. Her statement was certainly not Shermanesque - certainly the type of statement that is easily reversed (see Udall, Tom) - and she couldn’t possibly have said anything else so soon after Stevens’s downfall.

But there are reasons to believe Palin is not bluffing. For one, she was just elected to the Governor’s mansion last year and some politicians prefer running the state executive to being one of many Senators. Second, she has young children, including a 3-month baby, so perhaps she might not want to move everything around just now. At the same time, she might not have such an opportunity again for a while. Senator Lisa Murkowski was just elected for the first time in 2004, and it looks like there will be a new Senator elected this November. When will the next open seat come along? (That’s a question members of the Massachusetts’ House delegation have been asking themselves for almost 30 years.)

In other down-the-ballot news, CO-04 is living up to the promise of past cycles. Maryln Musgrave is a very controversial House member and a very conservative Republican that has under-performed the district’s GOP bent. In 04 and 06, independent groups attacked Musgrave with some memorable advertisements (most famously this 2004 ad of a Musgrave impersonator stealing from a soldier’s pocket). Now, it looks like Musgrave will be a target again. Here is the new ad Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund is running as independent expenditure:

This group is spending $175,000 to run this ad in the district’s media market - certainly not a negligible buy. In fact, the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund appears to have already spent more than $400,000 hitting the incumbent Republican. That will go a long way towards shoring up negatives. Also, note how many ads are airing devoted to oil prices right now. All candidates are finding a way to blame their opponents for rising prices. McCain hit Obama on this, it is the subject of negative advertisement in the Kentucky Senate race, and so on.

If candidates from both parties and from all levels of government are blasting their opponents, won’t it make the attack lose all credilibility? Or will it mean that whoever wins the energy debate (whether Democrats tie the GOP closely enough to Big Oil or whether Republicans convince the public to vote on offshore drilling) can expect to gain significantly on all levels in the coming months?