Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Jim Ellis
The fast-approaching Dec. 12 special election in Alabama has now become the gateway to which party will control the next Senate majority. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, but GOP nominee Roy Moore’s collapse after being accused of sexual impropriety 38 years ago has opened the door for Democratic nominee Doug Jones to steal what should be a rock-solid Republican seat.
Before the Moore implosion, the Republicans were a lock to retain Senate control. The election cycle favors them to the point that Democrats must protect 25 of the 33 regular Class I seats, and only two of the eight GOP defense states are even realistically vulnerable. Therefore, before Alabama, if the Democrats converted both the seat of Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., the now-open Arizona position held by Jeff Flake, a Republican who’s retiring, while protecting all 25 of their defensive states, the best they could do was to force Republicans into a 50-50 tie. In that scenario, Vice President Mike Pence would cast the tie-breaking vote, thus keeping his party in the majority.
Should Moore lose Alabama, the equation dramatically changes. Democrats gaining this seat with a Jones victory would create a path to the Senate majority and put the once secure Republican chamber within reach. With Alabama in the Democratic column — and being there through the 2020 election — converting Arizona and Nevada would be enough to give the liberal party a 51-49 edge, and thus majority control.
With so much at stake, it is surprising to see Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., seemingly so willing to cast Alabama away. Once the sexual impropriety allegations were made against the former Alabama state Supreme Court chief justice, McConnell and other Republican senators wasted little time running to microphones and cameras to denounce him, and announcing they were pulling his national party support. The leadership is still hurting from losing the party nomination battle to Moore, as their candidate, appointed Sen. Luther Strange, badly failed to inspire a majority of Republican primary and run-off voters.
Alabama Republican officials and rank-and-file party activists along with President Donald Trump, by and large, reacted differently and remain generally supportive of Moore. McConnell’s actions are even more curious when looking at the polls. Before the allegations became public, Moore held a consistent double-digit lead. After the stories broke, the numbers almost reversed with Jones moving in front by an 8 percentage point mean average. Now, however, the race could actually be moving back toward Moore. Three mid-November large-sample surveys suggest that the former judge has rebounded to a small lead despite having little in the way of campaign funding.
As the candidates turn for the political finish line, the Democrats and Jones have the resources to dominate message delivery. But they must walk a fine line in order to convince the Alabama electorate that having a Democrat represent them isn’t as bad as electing the morally questionable Moore.
The party leaders have been very quiet, as have rank-and-file Democratic senators. None have gone public to bash Moore, leaving that to Republicans since the latter group has once again morphed into self-destruct mode. Both sides know that outside influence from Washington would likely hamper the candidate the D.C. crowd supports, so we’ve seen little in the way of Super PAC or national party activity from either side.
Understanding this background, Alabama voters will be left to decide the ultimate fate of the two candidates in a special election. What happens is really anybody’s guess. Polling is fickle in the specials because turnout is typically low, and often underestimates the rural hard-core conservative support, e.g., how Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, etc., performed for President Trump.
If a similar dynamic is again present in Alabama, the former judge could still win, and McConnell will then face having Roy Moore in the Senate and part of his party conference, apparently a nightmare he dreads more than losing the Republican majority.
Should the urban and suburban voters, along with a large African-American participation, vote in strong numbers and score the upset for Jones, the Democrats would position themselves to do what was once thought unthinkable: taking the Senate majority in 2018.
Their task is formidable even against a wounded candidate, however. Looking at the turnout in the Republican primary and run-off versus that of the Democrats, for example, we saw more than 481,000 people vote in the GOP run-off, a turnout higher than what was present in the original primary, versus just 165,006 individuals who chose the Democratic Party. This means a high number of Republican voters must be persuaded to pick the Democrat in this election.
Regardless of how the Senate cycle ends, the path to maintaining or capturing the new majority begins in this Alabama special election almost a year before the regular mid-term vote. The stakes are high, and though Republicans appear to be handing them this seat on a silver platter, questions abound as to whether the Democrats can actually claim the prize.
The House Judiciary Committee just voted to make it impossible for a state to always keep people convicted of violent offenses from carrying concealed weapons. That was just a detail in a very long day and really dreadful debate about the right to bear arms. In a normal world it might be the talk of the dinner table, but really, this week hardly anyone noticed.
On the one hand you had Garrison Keillor and Matt Lauer getting canned for sexual harassment. On the other there’s the president of the United States circulating a picture of a Muslim beating up a statue of the Blessed Virgin. About which, the presidential spokeswoman said, “Whether it’s a real video, the threat is real.”
And I haven’t even gotten to the tax bill. Or North Korea. Good grief.
But still, guns. Attention must be paid. If you count every gun crime that involves four or more victims as a mass shooting, we’ve had 397 so far this year, including the ungodly tragedies in Las Vegas and the small Texas church. You’d think the National Rifle Association would go away and be quiet for a month or two. But no, its minions in the House of Representatives were busy Wednesday getting committee approval for a bill that would make it impossible for states to impose their rules about carrying concealed weapons on people who are visiting from someplace else.
Instead, we’re supposed to respect the judgment of the state whence they came. People, do you have this kind of confidence? We are having this conversation two weeks after Wisconsin eliminated the age limit for hunting licenses. So far, there are 1,800 happy Wisconsinites under the age of 10 with the right to put their little fingers on the trigger, several less than a year old.
The bill’s opponents, all Democrats, lost every argument, but you had to give them credit for spunk. They dragged the fight on for more than six hours, dividing their time between pointing out that the gun murder rate in America is 297 times higher than in Japan, and offering amendments that attempted to make it clear how crazy the whole bill is.
All of which, including on violent misdemeanors and domestic abuse, were defeated. Another would have allowed states to at least enforce their own laws aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of people convicted of assaulting a police officer. No dice. “Once the exceptions start they will have no end,” said Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas.
As you know, there is absolutely no national consensus when it comes to the right to carry a concealed weapon in public places. You have Missouri, where you can just buy a gun and put it in your pocket. You have places like California, where people are carefully screened, trained and tested before they can get a gun and permit.
The NRA yearns for a federal law that would allow Missourians to tote their guns around California, no questions asked. And here it is! The bill, known to its friends as “concealed carry,” could almost certainly pass the House. Even in this miserable year it probably couldn’t make the 60-vote mark in the Senate.
However, it could mess up an actual piece of gun reform that is so simple and sensible that even this Congress might be capable of approving it. A bipartisan group of senators, including Republican John Cornyn of Texas and Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut, are working on a bill that would make the current deeply flawed background check system a little more efficient.
“My worry is the House tries to get cute and combines the two,” Murphy said.
The Judiciary Committee debate was long and depressing in the extreme — at one point, Rep. Steven King of Iowa claimed a proposal to tighten a background check loophole on gun show sales would ruin “Christmas at the Kings’.”
The Republicans argued that people need to be able to carry guns — even in states where it’s against the law — because it just makes you safer. There’s an extremely popular vision of the average citizen drawing his concealed weapon and shooting a crazed gunman. This almost never happens in the real world.
But the myth lives on. Gun fans in Congress still talk about the shooting at a baseball practice that seriously wounded one of their colleagues as if it could have been avoided, if only all the lawmakers had gone to the game armed. During the committee meeting, Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia and his followers suggested giving members of Congress the automatic right to carry concealed weapons, even if their home state wouldn’t permit it. Just to be safe. “I remember where I was the day I got the news that Gabby Giffords had been shot,” mused King.
It was indeed terrible. And Giffords responded by starting a national campaign for stricter gun regulation. Some people fix problems. Some just impose them on everybody else. Depends on the year.