Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) has finally announced that she is a candidate for governor. Jonathan Singer at MyDD makes an excellent observation.
It’s presumed that Hutchison will resign the Senate at some point during her gubernatorial run. The logic behind such a move seems crystal clear: her votes today have the potential to hurt her tomorrow. To take one example, if she votes to filibuster Sonia Sotomayor, she has the potential to ingratiate herself with the Republican base in Texas, whom she needs to win over in order to wrest her party’s nomination from the incumbent GOP Governor Rick Perry, but she also has the very real potential of turning off Hispanic voters, who very well could determine whether she can win a general election. Flip that vote around and you get the opposite situation — a less happy base but a slightly better shot in November (if, and that’s a big if, she can get through a primary).
Hutchison would be well-advised to resign her seat before the Sotomayor vote. I don’t know if she will, as that vote is coming up fairly soon. But we could be seeing some changes in the makeup of the Senate soon. Sen. Robert Byrd has been in the hospital for weeks and rumors abound about his successor. One West Virginia newspaper inadvertently published his obituary online Friday. If Byrd cannot serve through 2010, possible placeholder replacements include West Virginia Democratic Chair Nick Casey and former Gov. Gaston Caperton.
It can’t be too long before Al Franken gets his ruling from the Minnesota Supreme Court. Hopefully, it won’t be too long after that that he is sworn in and gives the Democrats a technical sixty members in the Senate. Other possible changes include Mel Martinez (R-FL) who has announced his retirement and seems eager to get out of DC. Teddy Kennedy (D-MA) is pacing himself as he deals with what must be a difficult cancer treatment regimen and tries to pass a health care bill at the same time. And, with Roland Burris (D-IL), who knows what will happen. An Ethics Committee investigation is moving along, as well as an Illinois investigation into possible perjury at Blagojevich’s impeachment trial.
By some semi-miraculous twist of fate, none of these potential vacancies threaten to change the partisan make-up of the Senate. Only the addition of Franken would do that. But the Democrats are definitely operating below full strength. And, if anyone knows why Jay Rockefeller has been missing so many votes lately, please let me know in the comments.