Now on the Senate Floor…

A poignant Senate tradition occurs about this time every two years, when outgoing senators deliver their farewell speeches on the floor of the Senate chamber before they adjourn for the year.  It’s difficult for all who do it, but it can be almost humiliating for lawmakers if they’ve lost their Senate seat in an election.
As [...]

Happy Birthday, Ted Stevens!

Ted Stevens celebrates his 85th birthday today, and as a special present, or maybe it’s just a lucky coincidence, the Senate Republican caucus postponed today’s vote to remove him from their ranks.  Although his colleagues remain nonplussed by the senator’s seven recent felony convictions, Sen. Jim DeMint agreed to put off the decision until the [...]

Update on CJP’s Top 10 Senate Races

Wondering what the final outcome was of those ten most interesting Senate races that we wrote about for the last couple weeks? Here’s a quick update:
10. Alaska: Some remote parts of the state are still reporting votes, so it’s too close to call between Ted Stevens and Democratic challenger Mark Begich.
9. Georgia: Remember how Georgia [...]

Top Ten Senate Races to Watch- #2: Minnesota

The Minnesota Senate race has turned into a three-way brawl between incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman (a Republican), Dean Barkley, an Independent, and SNL alum and Minnesota native, Al Franken, the Democrat.  
After a bruising year of campaigning, the rhetoric between the two has gotten so harsh that the Coleman campaign recently sued the Franken campaign [...]

Top Ten Senate Races to Watch: #3: Mississippi

If anyone had told us a Democrat had a fighting chance of winning a Senate race in Mississippi six months ago, we would have said, “Say whah??”  But in our #3 Senate Race to Watch, a series of unusual events has produced an unexpectedly competitive race in the Deep South state, which hasn’t sent a [...]

Top Ten Senate Races: #4- New Hampshire

If there’s anything we regret about this election season, it’s the fact that the presidential race has sucked up so much oxygen from the otherwise incredible dynamic in the battle for the Senate. More than one dozen battles royales are playing themselves out across the country, where Republican retirements have opened up five seats, and [...]

Top 10 Senate Races: #5: Oregon

Our #5 race features Oregon’s two-term Republican senator, Gordon Smith, defending his seat against the State Speaker of the House, Jeff Merkley.    CQ currently rates this race a toss-up, even though Smith won his 2002 reelection with 56% of the vote.
The Iraq War has wreaked havoc on Smith’s political fortunes in the state, where [...]

Top Ten Senate Races to Watch- #6: Colorado

As we mentioned before, the Udalls, a family that has become the stuff of political legend in the West, has two candidates for Senate this year. We already profiled the New Mexico race in which Tom Udall is running, and now we’ve reached race #6: the open seat in Colorado. Up on the Democratic side [...]