Senate prospects seem brighter for Democrats

“Craig has always been on the retirement watch list so I haven’t really anticipated that he’d run,” said Jennifer Duffy, who tracks Senate races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Rep. Mike Simpson “is one possibility, but Lieutenant Gov. Jim Risch has also expressed interest. If Risch wants the nomination, it is unlikely that another credible candidate will get in his way,” Duffy said.

She added, “Of all the problems Senate Republicans have in 2008, Idaho may rank near the bottom.”

Will Craig incident spur donors?
But Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg of the New Democrat Network said “the direct impact of this is that its going to mean a couple of million dollars early” for Democratic Senate contender Larry LaRocco.

Among Democratic donors nationwide, Rosenberg said, “There’s an enormous amount of money waiting to be deployed. This race goes to the front of the pack in Democratic Senate fundraising.”

Craig’s potential trouble in Idaho draws attention to a part of the nation, the Mountain West, where the Republicans have been dominant for the past 40 years but which is turning more competitive:

• In Montana, Democrat Jon Tester was elected last year, defeating Sen. Conrad Burns, and Democratic Brian Schweitzer won the governor’s seat in 2004, even as Bush was carrying the state with 60 percent of the vote.
• In last year’s House elections Democrats picked up two seats in Arizona and one in Colorado.
• Even in the GOP bastion of Wyoming, Republican House incumbent Barbara Cubin only kept her seat with a 1,000-vote margin, or 48 percent.

Convention focus on Mountain West
Democrats will keep the focus on the Mountain West next summer by holding their presidential convention in Denver.

And Colorado has an open Senate seat that Jennifer Duffy at the Cook Political Report rates as a toss-up. Democratic contender Rep. Mark Udall had $2.5 million in cash in his campaign treasury as of the end of June, more than three times as much as Republican hopeful Bob Schaffer.

“Voters out here tend to be more culturally conservative, but also more open to economic populism and civil libertarianism,” said Denver-based Democratic strategist and blogger David Sirota. “Republicans in Washington, D.C., are now losing to Democrats on those latter two issues areas out here, which is why the region is becoming more hospitable to individual Democratic candidates.”

But, he cautioned, “You cannot run a standard-issue Democrat in many places out here. There has to be a sense of cultural solidarity between a Democrat running for office out here and the people of the given state. Schweitzer and Tester both had that cultural solidarity. But many national Democrats do not.”

That lack of “cultural solidarity” explains why “at the same time local Democrats are doing better out here, the region still largely votes against Democratic presidential candidates. But that could change with the right (presidential) nominee.”

For Sirota, a populist, anti-corporate candidate like John Edwards would be a better pull at the top of the ticket in the West than would Sen. Hillary Clinton.

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