The American Spectator

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On the Prowl

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Republicans concerned about maintaining a workable minority in the Senate believe that several seats have been saved or strengthened with the addition of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Those seats include Oregon, Minnesota, and New Hampshire.

“We may be a bit more competitive in Colorado, but that is a much tougher race,” says a GOP political consultant based in California.

That Colorado seat features Democrat Mark Udall against Republican Bob Schaffer. Udall has been heavily favored. “Palin, though, makes Colorado more competitive nationally with her appeal to rural voters and women,” says the consultant. “We may lose the seat, but we may hold the state for the presidential.”

A similar state may be Virginia, where Democrat Mark Warner is expected to defeat former Gov. Jim Gilmore. But as of mid- September, the McCain-Palin ticket appeared to be turning the once rock-ribbed red state back from purple to red. “Palin, assuming she holds up, has really transformed the map,” says the consultant. “The Obama team has to be pulling out their hair. States like Ohio and even Michigan are now more in play if the Republicans can rally rural voters. You’re even seeing places like upstate New York in play.”

Bad Experience

In selecting Sen. Joseph Biden as his running mate, Sen. Barack Obama may have made the safe pick, but according to several campaign insiders, Biden wasn’t necessarily his first or even his personal choice. “He really wanted [Kansas Gov. Kathleen] Sebelius,” says one Obama insider with knowledge of the Democratic candidate’s vetting process. “And if our European tour had played better here at home, she might have been the pick.”

But, says the insider, the campaign’s internal polling indicated what the public polling indicated— that Obama failed in his European sojourn to build out his foreign policy credentials. “We needed the foreign policy on the bottom of the ticket more than we want to admit,” says the insider. Sebelius would have helped Obama in several other ways domestically, particularly in the Midwest, where her success as a moderate governor in a borderline red state would have perhaps diluted his extreme leftist tendencies.

But beyond his failure to create the impression that he had any foreign policy experience, Obama’s polling also indicated that Sebelius’s presence on the ticket probably further damaged his relationship with Hillary Clinton supporters. “We have enough problems with them as it is. Putting Sebelius on the bottom of the ticket would have been another stick in the eye,” says another adviser.