It’s hard to say what kind of senator Richard Carmona would be. But I think he has a good chance to beat Rep. Jeff Flake and become the junior senator from Arizona. Mr. Carmona served as Surgeon General under George W. Bush, and he was recruited by Republicans to run against both Gov. Janet Napolitano and Rep. Gabby Giffords. Obviously, the Republicans saw a lot of things to admire in Carmona, but he rewarded them by being highly critical of the Bush administration’s anti-scientific attitude in testimony before Congress. And then he says stuff like this:
“You know, having walked in those shoes of being hungry and being homeless — the indignities of not getting health care, or waiting in the public hospital, hoping somebody will care for you; going to sleep with a toothache because you can’t go to the dentist,” he said. “I think it was, in retrospect, almost a gift of experience to me that sensitized me to the complexity of the world that we inherit today.”
I want a senator who understands people’s struggles first-hand. And Carmona certainly meets that criteria.
We have a better idea about how Bob Kerrey would perform in the Senate because he’s been there before, serving Nebraska from 1989 to 2001. He’s a totally unorthodox guy. He’s stood up to the NRA, voted against DOMA, voted against welfare reform, and led the successful fight against the flag-burning amendment. That’s not what you would expect from a Nebraska politician. But he also voted to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act and was weak on the environment. In private life, he’s clashed with unions during a disastrous run as president of The New School in Manhattan, and served on the pathetic 9/11 Commission, where he mainly spent his time blasting the Clinton administration for not getting bin-Laden in the 1990’s. On foreign policy, he’s always been a major hawk. He also flirted with becoming a major lobbyist, almost becoming the head of the Motion Picture Association of America before Sen. Chris Dodd took the job. Most people consider him a major underdog in his race for the senate this year, but Kerrey has always been a creative and combative campaigner. He will be loaded with cash and he won’t back down from any fight. I would never bet against him. The one thing I can say about him is that he’s pretty fearless. It might be a result of leaving one of his lower legs in Vietnam.
In North Dakota, Heidi Heitkamp is running to replace the retiring chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Kent Conrad. Heitkamp was once a lawyer for the EPA. She has served as State Tax Commissioner and Attorney General in her home state, and since 2003 she has been the director of Dakota Gas.
The plant uses lignite coal to produce synthetic natural gas utilizing the coal gasification process. The plant processes 16 thousand tons of coal daily. The synthetic natural gas is piped to the Northern Border Pipeline which supplies homes and businesses in the eastern part of the United States. The Dakota Gasification Company is a subsidiary of the Basin Electric Power Cooperative which is located in Bismarck, North Dakota.
As you might know, North Dakota is rapidly becoming the Saudi Arabia of the United States. Energy jobs are abundant and the state has the lowest unemployment rate in the country (3.0%). On Heitkamp’s website, she is notably silent on any of the social issues that divide the country. She mainly talks about her record as Attorney General and her advocacy for the energy industry. Maybe that’s helping her, because she’s been leading in the polls since she announced she was running.
How would these three politicians change the U.S. Senate? It’s hard to say. Carmona would be considerably to the left of the retiring Republican Jon Kyl, as well as the libertarian Mormon Jeff Flake. But I have no idea how he would vote on a wide range of issues. Bob Kerrey would be more outspoken and hawkish than Ben Nelson. He’d probably be about the same on financial and agricultural issues. But he’d be much more liberal on social issues. Depending on what’s most important to you, he be better or worse than Nelson, but substantially better than his likely opponent, Jon Bruning. As for Heidi Heitkamp? I don’t even know if she’s pro-choice. She would probably resemble Sen. Mary Landrieu or Sen. Joe Manchin, but I don’t really know. She could fit in a with a more liberal group of Northern women from the Midwest, including Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, (hopefully) Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. The one thing I’m kind of sure about is that she won’t be a big help on climate change.
I’ll look at other senate candidates in the days ahead.
What do you think?
