Saturday, February 14, 2009

❄ Senators Up in 2010

Class III - Senators Whose Terms of Service Expire in 2011 [Note 1]

After the near-unanimous Republican refusal to support the White House’s stimulus package, Helen and I were wondering which Republican senators’ terms expire in 2010. Eighteen Republican Senators who voted against the stimulus package must either retire or stand for re-election in 2010.

The final vote on the conference report took place on Thursday afternoon, February 13th. [Note 2] The parties had agreed that 60 votes were necessary to pass the legislation. [Note 3] The vote was held up, The New York Times reporting that a “peculiar 5-hour 17-minute process was required because Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, had to return to Washington from his home state after attending a funeral home visitation for his mother, who died Feb. 2.” to supply the required 60th vote. Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts, undergoing treatment for brain cancer, was not present. Three Republicans, Senators Snowe and Collins of Maine and Specter of Pennsylvania, voted ‘yea’. But of the 38 Republicans who voted ‘nay’ not one had the courtesy to extend an ‘aye’ as a gesture of respect to Senators Brown and Kennedy. That is the state of the Republican Party. Indecent.

Frank Rich writes in his New York Times column that:

“Republicans will also be judged by the voters. If they want to obstruct and filibuster while the economy is in free fall, the president should call their bluff and let them go at it. In the first four years after F.D.R. took over from Hoover, the already decimated ranks of Republicans in Congress fell from 36 to 16 in the Senate and from 117 to 88 in the House. The G.O.P. is so insistent that the New Deal was a mirage it may well have convinced itself that its own sorry record back then didn’t happen either.” [Note 4]

The new chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Robert Menendez (D-NJ), is optimistic about prospects for 2010, but Adam Nagourney’s caution that much can happen between now and then is well taken. [Note 5]

NOTES

[1] http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/reference/two_column_table/Class_III.htm, seen 2009.02.14. Note that the list had not been updated to show Barack Obama’s election to the Presidency. The Senate posts lists of Senators by Class. It is Class III Senators whose terms expire in 2011. You can also find this list by Googling on [Senate 2011 expire], which is easy to remember.
[2] http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=1&vote=00064
[3] David M. Herszenhorn, “Recovery Bill Gets Final Approval.”, The New York Times, 2009.02.13. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/us/politics/14web-stim.html
[4] Frank Rich, “They Sure Showed Obama,” The New York Times, 14 February 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/opinion/15rich.html
[5] Adam Nagourney, “ON POLITICS A Leader in the Senate Sees Sunny Skies for Democrats,” New York Times, 2009.02.17. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/us/politics/17web-nagourney.html

[Bruce Larkin’s Blog 2009.02.14. Revision, adding Rich quote: 2009.02.15. Adding Nagourney cite: 2009.02.17. Post B02. http://www.learnworld.com/blog/blog.html]