Top seed
Sen. Dick Durbin, currently deputy majority
leader, has his eye on the top Senate job after the November
elections. Quietly, the senior senator from Illinois has seeded the
Obama campaign (his junior counterpart’s) with former staffers and
advisers, with an eye toward having built-in support for his
usurpation of current majority leader Harry
Reid.
“[Durbin] has people close to Obama, and he is very focused on
seeding K Street with lobbyists to build up support from businesses
and special interest groups,” says a Democratic National Committee
fundraiser. “He thinks his time has come and Reid’s is over.”
Speculation about Reid’s future has been an ongoing discussion
in Washington, with speculation focused mostly on Sens.
Hillary Clinton and Chuck
Schumer, particularly Schumer. But Durbin, some observers
say, has played the political chess match better than either,
helped by the fact that he already has the No. 2 slot in
leadership, ahead of Schumer.
“He has sat back and been patient, the good soldier,” says a
Senate leadership aide. “And while Schumer has raised more money
for his colleagues, Durbin has been just as supportive and in some
ways more collegial. When people were frustrated with Reid’s
leadership he listened. Schumer didn’t.”
The seeding of Durbin acolytes along K Street leaves his GOP
colleagues chagrined. “This is a guy who lives to bash businesses
and for the chance to screw them and make them into political
punching bags,” says a Senate Republican leadership aide. “And now
he’s setting himself up to be their best friend. And in a new
Congress, it won’t matter that he won’t be. He won’t, but won’t
matter. He’ll be in charge.”
Fanny, Freddie, and Obama
When President George W. Bush nominated
Henry Paulson to serve as Treasury Secretary,
Republicans raised a red flag that Paulson, who, along with his
wife, has strong ties to the Democratic Party, would not be an
honest broker with Republicans. That seems to have been borne out,
with sources inside Treasury reporting that Paulson briefed Sen.
Barack Obama and his campaign advisers on the
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout plan before offering such a
briefing to the McCain campaign.
Republicans now intend to press to anchor Obama’s campaign to
the federal bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the home
mortgage collapse. While the Democrats and Obama have tried to tie
economic fears to the Republicans, Obama finds himself in the
middle of a potential backlash due to his personal and political
ties to leaders of both Fannie and Freddie.
As it stands, Obama was the leading receiver of
lobbyist/fundraiser dollars from both quasigovernmental agencies,
according to FEC documents. This might explain why the Obama
campaign was so keen on getting advance word about the bailout.
“They have a huge problem with the mortgage and housing market
story, and everyone is missing it,” says a Republican political
media consultant with ties to the Obama campaign due to the
bipartisan nature of the firm he works with. “You look at Obama’s
economic advisers, the guys he has counted on from day one and who
have raised him a ton—and I mean a ton—of money: Franklin
Raines and Jim Johnson, both of them are
waist- to neck-deep in the mortgage debacle.”
Both Raines and Johnson have served as CEO of Fannie Mae, with
Raines taking over from Johnson. Both are key political and
economic advisers to Obama. “How can Obama go out with a straight
face and say it was Republicans who made this mess, when it is his
key advisers who ran the agencies that made the big mess what it
is?” says a Democratic House member who supported Sen.
Hillary Clinton. “It’s his people who are
responsible for what may well be the single largest government
bailout in history. And every single one of them made millions off
the collapse that are lining Obama’s campaign coffers. If the
McCain campaign let’s this one go, they deserve to lose.”
It isn’t just Fannie Mae where Obama has a problem. Another
close political adviser, in fact the one man responsible for
rallying support for Obama early on among congressional Democrats,
is Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who served on the board of
directors for Freddie Mac after leaving the Clinton White House.
According to Freddie Mac insiders, Emanuel during his time on the
board opposed every reform proposed by the Bush administration that
would have impacted Freddie and Fannie Mae. Emanuel claimed to be
neutral in the primary race between the wife of his old boss and
his longtime Chicago acquaintance Obama. But the chairman of the
House Democratic Caucus, who would be first in line for the vacated
Senate seat of Obama should he win the presidency, quickly dumped
Clinton when it was clear Obama had a head of steam for the
nomination.
“We ought to be able to— rightly—hang the Fannie and Freddie
scandal around the neck of Obama, if they can get out in front,”
says a House Republican. “Middle-class folks’ mortgages are
probably safe, but the American taxpayer will also be paying for
this scandal for years to come.”
Palin Power
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.
