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Women Hold Democrats’ Keys To Control Of Senate

Women Hold Democrats’ Keys To Control Of Senate

By David Lightman, McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Women might be the Democrats’ 2014 firewall, the force that holds back a Republican wave that appears to be building toward seizing control of the Senate.

Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes and Georgia’s Michelle Nunn won primaries Tuesday and are their states’ Democratic U.S. Senate nominees, joining Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and other prominent Democratic women as competitive Senate candidates in pivotal battlegrounds.

If Grimes or Nunn could seize Senate seats now held by Republicans, it would greatly help the Democrats offset expected losses elsewhere and perhaps stop the GOP from gaining the net six seats it needs to win majority control.

And if Hagan can fight off a GOP challenge to hold her seat in one of the nation’s most hotly contested races, it would further boost Democratic prospects in what otherwise still looks like a challenging year for the party.

As many as 11 seats now held by Democrats are in play. The primary wins Tuesday by Nunn and Grimes at least allow Democrats to play offense, since both women seek Republican-held seats. They also make it easier for the party and sympathetic interest groups to promote a national, women-oriented message that fires up that important base of support.

The battle for women is emerging on several fronts. Hagan has already made mobilizing women the centerpiece of her re-election strategy, and she’s getting lots of help.

Planned Parenthood Votes plans to focus on North Carolina with a $3.3 million budget of TV ads, canvassing and other outreach. “We’ve run the numbers, and we know how to reach the voters who will help ensure that women’s health champions remain in office,” the group said in a fact sheet on its plans.

In Kentucky, Grimes is expected to wage a strong challenge to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell as he seeks a sixth term.

Part of the dynamic there might be driven by contrasts in resume and style. McConnell, 72, is a dour tactician, not known for his warmth. Grimes, 35, come across as more energetic.

In Georgia, Nunn will face the winner of a Republican runoff July 22 between businessman David Perdue and Rep. Jack Kingston.

Nunn, 48, has a long resume as a volunteer organization executive. Perdue was the chief executive officer of Reebok and later Dollar General. Kingston, 59, is an 11-term congressional veteran comfortable among chamber of commerce types.

As a backdrop, Democrats are making a dogged push to turn out votes from women. Unmarried women were one-fourth of the 2012 electorate, and they voted 2 to 1 for President Barack Obama. Eleven women won Senate seats, 10 of them Democrats.

Turnout is expected to be lower this year, and Democratic strategists worry that they’ll lose a lot of loyal voters in November.

A memo from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a Democratic firm, and Page Gardner, the president of the Voter Participation Center, an advocacy group, warned last month that women “are unlikely to vote, and less likely to give Democrats big margins, if Democrats are not laser focused on the issues that matter most to them.”

Senate Democrats got the message, pushing for votes on the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would give employees new tools to fight wage discrimination, and a higher minimum wage, which Democrats argue that women disproportionately need.

In an introductory video, Grimes appears with her grandmothers at a dining room table and calls them “two of the strongest women I’ve ever known.” She criticizes McConnell for opposing a minimum wage increase “over and over again, while you became a multimillionaire in public office.”

McConnell counters by having his wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, as an important campaign surrogate. Last year, she cut a 30-second ad in which she looks directly into the camera with a slight smile.

“Mitch works his heart out to protect Kentucky from Washington’s bad ideas because Mitch loves Kentucky — we love Kentucky,” she says.

In Georgia, Nunn, the daughter of former Sen. Sam Nunn, says in a video that while “I’ve had a lot of people to look up to in my life, at the very top of my list is my grandmother.”

The Kentucky and Georgia races will turn on a long list of factors: loyalty to Obama, disdain for anyone with ties to Washington, views of the Affordable Care Act. But creating a bandwagon for Democratic women might make a big difference — and make it harder for Republicans to win Senate control.

“They just have to get that base excited,” said Kyle Kondik, analyst at Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia.

Democrats are not alone in nominating women.

Four Republicans are regarded as strong candidates for Senate seats: Terri Lynn Land in Michigan, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito in West Virginia, Monica Wehby in Oregon and incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in Maine.

“The fact is that these men don’t understand this struggle and have no idea what a war on women really is,” Land says of Obama and her Democratic rival, Rep. Gary Peters. “I’m a woman. Of course I support equal pay for equal work.”

Photo: Third Way via Flickr

Billionaire Steyer To Spend $50 Million To Make Climate Change An Issue In Battleground States

Billionaire Steyer To Spend $50 Million To Make Climate Change An Issue In Battleground States

By Evan Halper, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — One of President Barack Obama’s wealthiest supporters is pledging to spend at least $50 million in a bid to make climate change the central issue in hotly contested elections in New Hampshire, Florida, Michigan and a few other battleground states.

A group run by California billionaire Tom Steyer unveiled plans to aggressively target Republicans in seven states who have been skeptics of global warming. Among the Republicans are Florida Gov. Rick Scott and former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who hopes to win a Senate seat from New Hampshire.

The group plans to spend at least $100 million — half of it Steyer’s money, the rest raised from other environmentalists — on campaigns that will include micro-targeting voters, branding climate skeptics as deniers of basic science and highlighting the hardships climate change is already causing.

“We are not going to be talking about polar bears and butterflies,” said Chris Lehane, Steyer’s lead political strategist. “We are going to be talking about how this issue of climate impacts people in their backyards, in their states, in their communities.”

Steyer, who has emerged as a liberal counterpoint to the conservative Koch brothers, has been working aggressively over the last few years to make climate change — long an abstraction in campaigns — a pivotal issue on which elections can be won or lost. His advisers contend there are legions of voters who can be motivated to come to the polls on the matter, despite surveys that have shown climate change to be a relatively low priority for most Americans.

Steyer’s group, NextGen Climate, will probably represent the largest independent spending by liberals in the election. Its effort, though, is expected to be dwarfed by that of the Kochs, whose organization, Americans for Prosperity, has poured millions of dollars into races around the country, mostly focused on attacking Obama’s health care law.

NextGen’s plan suggests Steyer’s political reach is growing. Until now, the billionaire has kept his campaign activities narrowly focused. Last year, he spent more than $8 million to help Democrat Terry McAuliffe win his campaign for governor of Virginia against former state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican who had been long despised by climate change activists. Steyer also inserted himself into the Senate race in Massachusetts, attacking one candidate’s support for the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Steyer’s most notable victories, however, have not been in battleground-state gubernatorial or congressional campaigns, but ballot initiatives in California. He bankrolled a successful effort in 2012 to persuade Californians to raise taxes on out-of-state businesses by $1 billion a year, half of which will be spent on energy-efficiency programs. He also served as co-chairman of the successful effort in 2010 to defeat Proposition 23, which would have rolled back the state’s landmark global warming law.

In the upcoming election, NextGen faces a much tougher landscape. The president’s approval ratings continue to be tepid, and Democratic strategists are concerned that voters who traditionally support the party will stay home. Steyer’s advisers are hoping to use the climate issue to drive those voters to the polls in seven states.

In Florida, NextGen plans to seize on Scott’s musings that he is unconvinced that climate change is man-made, as well as his initial reluctance to join litigation against BP after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The campaign will link the extreme weather events that are disrupting life in the state to climate change, and seek to track down concerned voters who might otherwise stay home.

“We are not a traditional ‘super PAC’ where we are going to spend some money on television and leave,” said Sky Gallegos, NextGen political director.

“We are looking at creating a long-term conversation with voters,” Gallegos said. “We want to talk to them and make a real connection of how climate hits them at the household level.”

In Iowa, NextGen will raise the issue of climate change in the context of the drought that has hit the state and its agriculture. The campaign will highlight the reluctance of Republicans running for Senate there to embrace the warnings of climatologists and will warn that the policies those candidates favor will result in even more extreme heat and water shortages on ranches and farms in the future.

In New Hampshire, NextGen will seek to redefine Brown, who has a reputation as a moderate. It will charge that he is cozy with big oil. NextGen will also go on the attack in races in Colorado, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Maine.

“The political tectonic plates are shifting,” Lehane said. “The issue of climate has become far less abstract … to folks on an everyday basis.”

AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski