Olympia Snowe Retiring

[DinoDoc]

That doesn't explain how he would have done worse. Just not having Palin around would have helped him.

You don't see how giving the finger to the base by taking someone like Snowe might be a problem for a ticket that already had issues appealing to them? McCain's real problem wrt his Veep choice was that he didn't vet her appropriately.

[rah]

That's my point. I think Palin was a bigger liability then Snowe would have been. Picking Snowe might have been giving the finger to the base, but Palin was giving the finger to everyone.

[-Jrabbit]

Confirming HC's statement: Olympia Snowe is extremely popular in Maine, Oerdin. She was in no danger of losing her seat. Snowe's independent/moderate stance plays very well in Maine, where she enjoyed significant support from Democrats. [Clarification: my mother-in-law is a longtime Maine resident and very active in politics. I think her perspective is at least as valid, if not moreso, than anything quoted/noted in this thread.]

I think it's a shame that one of the few GOPers willing to cross the aisle on occasion is withdrawing - almost certain to be replaced by a party-line voter, no matter which party.

Also, I guess I should apologize for bringing up the concept of Snowe for VP. The last thing I wanted was to start people talking about McCain/Palin. Jeez.

[giblets]

Not a big deal. California's gerrymandered to hell and back. His district is probably pretty safe. There's a decent turnover every year with retiring House members.

xpost

It only has a Cook score of R+3.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Snowe would not have faced significant competition.

Frankly, I buy the stated reason. She's not a woman that suffers fools well, and if you look at her voting record recently you can see that she was being pushed further and further to the right by the party. I think she was really given a choice between toeing the line and going home, and she decided to go home...I've met her many times and it fits her personality well. Even disagreeing with her on a lot of issues, I think her exit is a blow to the idea of making forward progress in the coming years.

[DaShi]

Most likely this means a Democratic pickup. However, we do need to be careful. After all, Maine elected a Tea Party backed Governor last year.

They only have 15 days to get the signatures necessary to run. Had this been any other year, they would only have 14 days. A Leap Day Miracle!

[Imran Siddiqui]

A few interesting articles that show that mayhaps the Dems are celebrating too soon (especially if indies get involved):

http://pollways.bangordailynews.com/2012/03/01/national/going-beyond-that-blue-on-maines-electoral-college-map-democrats-and-the-senate-race/

http://bangordailynews.com/2012/03/01/opinion/snowe-seat-no-one-has-a-leg-up/

[Koyaanisqatsi]

If Angus King runs, he wins. Chellie Pingree loses, and Baldacci would be pretty close for the Dems. The wildcard is Cutler, just like in the gubernatorial race...if he jumps in it's the same situation that got LePage elected, he doesn't have the support to win as an independent like King but he does have enough to sink the Democratic candidate.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Indeed. Maine is far more complicated than just Snowe drops out = Dem Senate seat.

[giblets]

Democrats Favored to Pick Up Snowe Seat

The retirement of Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine is about as damaging to a party’s electoral prospects as these things get, turning a seat that Republicans were very likely to retain into one they will probably lose.

There have been some comparable cases in the recent past, but most were on the Democratic side, in particular the retirements of Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana in 2010, and the pending retirement Senator Kent Conrad, also of North Dakota, in this cycle.

Ms. Snowe’s retirement levels the playing field a bit. When we last took an overview of the Senate in December, I gave Republicans a 15 percent chance of losing Ms. Snowe’s seat. Even that 15 percent, however, was not an estimate of Ms. Snowe’s chances of losing in a head-to-head matchup against a Democrat; she remains popular in Maine and easily won re-election there in a difficult election cycle (2006). Instead, it was a hedge against the possibility that Ms. Snowe would retire or succumb to a primary challenge, precisely because the consequences of this would be so damaging to Republicans.

Maine, while idiosyncratic, is a blue-leaning state, enough that you would expect Democrats to have an edge there in an average election cycle in a contest between “generic” opponents.

The further complication for Republicans, however, is that Democrats are likely to have the better candidate, above and beyond their partisan advantage. Especially in a small state, the most natural ascendants to the Senate are members of the United States House of Representatives. Democrats occupy both of Maine’s House seats: Representative Chellie Pingree in the downstate First Congressional District, and Representative Mike Michaud in the Second Congressional District upstate.

Maine is quite homogeneous demographically; being elected from one of the two Congressional districts (as Ms. Snowe was repeatedly from 1978 to 1992) means that one will probably pass muster with voters in the whole state. Moreover, polls find that Ms. Pingree and Mr. Michaud are both reasonably popular, and both won re-election by double-digit margins in 2010, a very challenging cycle for Democrats otherwise.

Potential candidates to succeed Ms. Snowe face a tight deadline for doing so — they must gather enough signatures by March 15 to appear on the ballot. Both Ms. Pingree and Mr. Michaud have already begun doing so, according to the Bangor Daily News — as has a third Democrat, the former governor and U.S. Representative John Baldacci.

That certainly raises the prospect of a nasty primary fight: Senate seats haven’t come up often in Maine historically, and the state’s other senator, Susan Collins, a Republican, is fairly young and has survived previous attempts by candidates like Ms. Pingree to unseat her.

However, that is a good problem for Democrats to have compared to the one that Republicans face. Their potential candidates include the Maine secretary of state, Charlie Summers, and the state senate president, Kevin Raye. But they have less statewide stature than the Democrats do. Mr. Raye, for instance, had planned to run against Mr. Michaud in the Second District, but was thought by most observers to have only an outside chance of defeating him. The same presumably holds if that contest takes place over the whole state rather than just half of it.

A third Republican, Scott D’Amboise, was already on the ballot in a challenge to Ms. Snowe, but his Tea Party-inspired policy positions are probably too conservative for the state as a whole. Maine elected a Tea Party-backed Republican governor, Paul R. LePage, in 2010, but did so with only 38 percent of the vote in a four-candidate race. Mr. LePage’s approval ratings have wobbled between poor and average, however, and 2012 is unlikely to be a cycle as fruitful for the Tea Party as 2010 was.

One could argue, in fact, that Republicans should take their relatively stronger candidates in Maine, like Mr. Raye, and run them for the House; those seats could be more competitive if vacated by Ms. Pingree and Mr. Michaud, offering a lower reward but a considerably higher chance of success.

There is also the prospect that an independent candidate could be a factor in Maine, as they often are in the state. An independent, Eliot Cutler, nearly won the governorship there in 2010, and another independent, Angus King, was governor of the state before Mr. Baldacci and Mr. LePage. In some ways, Ms. Snowe was as much an independent as a Republican, with one of the most moderate voting records in the Senate; she cited the increased partisan rancor in the chamber as her reason to leave it.

Conceived as a two-candidate race, however, Democrats are heavily favored in Maine, perhaps having an 80 percent chance of picking up the seat in a head-to-head race against one of the Republicans. We will have an analysis of the effect this might have on the overall Senate math later this week.

[Dinner]

In her announcement, Snowe — a noted moderate — cited the "partisanship of recent years in the Senate" to explain why she was suddenly throwing in the towel. Given that her staff didn't even know about her retirement until the day she announced it, I have a hunch there's something else at play here, but that's neither here nor there — the loss of a moderate, who blames nasty partisanship for her demise, is catnip for much of the Beltway press.

http://www.npr.org/2012/03/01/147715579/the-nation-snowe-falls-on-moderate-republicans

It seems I'm not the only one who has a hard time believing she's retiring because of "partisanship". It just stinks like an excuse like all those scandal plagued politicians who suddenly decide they "want to spend more time with my family". There is dirt here. I can smell it.

[Dinner]

Not a big deal. California's gerrymandered to hell and back. His district is probably pretty safe. There's a decent turnover every year with retiring House members.

xpost

His district was about 70-30 red but the new redistricting laws take effect in 2012 so his district was going to become a whole lot less safe. The new law requires districts to be as compact as possible, to stay with in one county when possible, to combine/stay with in one geographic area when possible, and for geographic boundries to be district boundries when possible (rivers, mountain ridgelines, etc...). Supposedly they can't take past voting patterns or population make up into account (other then making sure every district has as equal population as possible) so a whole lot of districts will suddenly go from 90-10 splits to more competitive 60-40 splits or less. No more of having a dem district in the inner city while Republicans carve out a district only covering the wealthy suburbs; now where possible the whole city needs to be in one district.

The new rules generally favor dems in that most of the population here are dems but the districts will be a lot closer then before and no more snake shaped districts where politicians choose their voters rather than voters choosing the politician. All in all we should see more moderates out of California though probably more dems over all.

[Felch]

The GOP losing Snowe's seat is like the Dems losing Zell Miller's. You'll hardly notice the difference.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Interesting.

http://bangordailynews.com/2012/03/02/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-the-senate/

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Looks like Angus will be running, and endorsed by Cutler so no division of that vote...that will add an interesting dynamic to the Senate.