Unpredictable 2016

Senators brace for unpredictable 2016 elections

Those up for reelection are building their voting records and campaigns, knowing all the while how little control they have over presidential-year politics.

By Kevin Robillard and Burgess Everett

Endangered senators like Pat Toomey and Kelly Ayotte, two Republicans up for reelection in 2016, have diligently spent this year preparing for the next one. At the same time, they’ve received a stark lesson in just how little control they have over their own fates.

While the senators followed the time-honored swing state playbook — moving to the middle on key issues like gun control or the environment to highlight bipartisanship, shoring up swing constituencies back home, building critical campaign infrastructure early — they also watched Donald Trump swoop in and dominate the headlines, terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino inflame Americans’ growing sense of insecurity, and the most powerful Republican in the House of Representatives suddenly disappear from the political scene.

And on top of that, most senators facing tough 2016 races know they will also have the presidential campaign raging at full volume in their battleground states, drowning them out with media attention and super PAC ads. It is a sobering thought for individuals who wield considerable power in their day-to-day lives and are now confronted with stronger forces at work.

“How could anyone know that?” said Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), who’s gearing up for a stiff challenge from Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan — but, like any political observer, is watching and waiting to see just how their race develops. “How do you know what the issues are when we’re a lifetime away from an election right now?”

Senate Republicans know their central issue, just like those running for president, has to be defeating Hillary Clinton in next year’s election. Senate results are tightly tied with the presidential vote, but the senators themselves have little control over the outcome of their nominating process.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has counseled his colleagues to do only what they can do: focus on their own jobs, he said in an interview with POLITICO this month.

“Ultimately, the presidential election sure is going to have an impact, but most of us here in the Senate except those who are seeking the presidency aren’t going to have much to do with who the nominee becomes,” McConnell said. “So in the meantime we want to accomplish as much as we can for the country that we can achieve with this president.“

Yet even a senator’s day-to-day job is filled with perils. Toomey supported new gun background checks in a vote this past fall but let Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) spearhead the effort. Meanwhile, Toomey has boasted of his work to confirm Pennsylvania judges, yet the glacial advance of those nominations has made the obscure judicial confirmation process a growing issue in the Republican’s reelection campaign against Democrats Katie McGinty and former Rep. Joe Sestak.

And behind the scenes, Senate Republican operatives are preparing for every scenario. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has prepared memos outlining strategies for running on a ticket with every potential presidential nominee. Trump is the obvious headline-grabber, with Democrats eager to note every occasion when GOP senators offered even faint praise of the GOP polling leader, whose list of insulting comments about women and minorities grows by the week.

It’s Trump’s 2015 performance in particular that has Senate Democrats so bullish about taking on the GOP next year.

“The Democrats are doing well at the presidential level and Republicans are doing poorly," said New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the caucus’ presumptive leader in 2017. “We have a good map, and when middle class incomes decline, voters favor us.”

Yet some Republican strategists have also started to worry that running with Ted Cruz, who has clashed repeatedly with incumbents like Ayotte and John McCain, could be even worse. Marco Rubio seems to be the preference of most Senate-focused operatives, who believe his youth and charisma provide the best contrast against Clinton — and that Rubio would lift candidates running down-ballot with him.

And while it is out of Republicans’ hands whether or not the 2016 election is a national security election, it is the issue of the moment, and much of their current preparation reflects that. While Democrats and their field of challengers have preferred to home in on jobs and emphasizing the improving economy, the GOP has united behind a brawny security posture — as well as opposition to Obamacare, President Barack Obama himself and Clinton — as its main early message in the half-dozen races that will decide control of the Senate.

In Wisconsin, Sen. Ron Johnson has been particularly eager to focus on national security. When Johnson ran in 2010 and defeated Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold, he did it on his record as a successful businessman and an unyielding small-government philosophy. Now, as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Johnson is focusing on his work on immigration issues and combating terrorism.

“What this campaign will hinge on is called security,” Johnson said. “But it’s across the board, whether it’s income security or job security or retirement security or healthcare security. And what’s really come to the fore right now is national security.”

Johnson's campaign also hopes to target Feingold’s record on national security. The Democrat was once the only senator to vote against the PATRIOT Act.

“Sen. Feingold’s been weak,” Johnson said. “He’s just weak. He’s weak on national defense, he’s weak on intelligence gathering, which is our first line of defense against Islamic terrorists. We have to have an effective intelligence-gathering capability combined with robust oversight and continuous monitoring.”

Feingold allies note that he won reelection in 2004 after the PATRIOT Act vote and say Johnson’s aggressive approach, which includes advocating ground troops to fight the Islamic State, could backfire.

“Russ Feingold has laid out an aggressive and comprehensive plan to defeat ISIS — utilizing our military, financial, intelligence, and diplomatic resources,” Feingold campaign manager Tom Russell shot back in a statement. “Incumbent Senator Johnson has presented no plan, taken several different positions on a massive ground invasion, and continues to refuse his responsibility in Congress to pass an authorization for the use of military force. The people of Wisconsin know that protecting the United States is a cause beyond politics, and they are clearly already rejecting Senator Johnson’s inaction and name-calling.”

National security is already becoming a theme beyond Wisconsin. Nearly one-third of voters said terrorism, national security or foreign affairs were now the biggest problem facing the United States in a Pew Research Center poll conducted this month, compared to just 23 percent who said economic issues. Last December, 34 percent cited economic issues, while just 9 percent pointed to security worries.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has already run multiple ads in Nevada attacking Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto for supporting the Iran nuclear deal. In Missouri, Democrat Jason Kander, a veteran of the Afghanistan war, has attacked GOP Sen. Roy Blunt for siding with the tourism industry and backing legislation that would expand the visa waiver program. In New Hampshire, Hassan has attacked Ayotte for opposing legislation that would bar people on terrorism watch lists from buying guns, though Hassan was a also prominent Democratic voice asking for a pause in new refugee settlements from the Middle East.

“Some of the most vulnerable Republican Senate incumbents and candidates voted against a commonsense bill to prevent suspected terrorists from buying guns,” Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokeswoman Sadie Weiner said in a statement, “showing that they're more concerned with blind loyalty to special interest groups than protecting our communities.”

Democrats are also highlighting their candidates’ experience on national security, from Feingold’s time on the Foreign Relations Committee to Illinois Rep. Tammy Duckworth’s military service.

Yet despite all this preparation, events between now and November 2016 could turn that election into anything but a national security race. The huge shift in the Pew poll, for example, could easily swing back as quickly as it shifted in the previous year.

Both parties got a preview two years ago, when Senate Republicans were battered and bruised: They’d just reopened the government after a fruitless shutdown fight over Obamacare. Voters’ opinion of the GOP was in the toilet.

But as 2014 progressed, the year brought a new set of unexpected concerns: the rise of ISIL, a flood of child migrants on the southwestern border, even an Ebola scare just weeks before the election. Republicans seized on each issue and were able to send five incumbent Democrats packing while claiming four open seats. The issues had been turned on their head in just a matter of months: Striking post-shutdown polls that showed a wounded Republican Party were reversed and public sympathy for expanded health care coverage and an improving economy never swung Democrats’ way.

The national headwinds will be even stronger in 2016 — for whichever party can catch them. For now, all senators can do is prepare for that day.