Source: Politics<\/p>\n
The list of what threatens to end the Democrats\u2019 control of the Senate is familiar: History says the White House\u2019s party usually loses seats in midterms. The president\u2019s low approval ratings in battleground states \u2014 even lower than his weak national ratings \u2014 portend trouble. Voters now say they prefer Republican control of Congress. And in several states, Republicans have made it harder to vote and are placing partisans in control of the vote-counting. <\/p>\n
All of those threaten to put the GOP in charge of the Senate after the 2022 election, ending the Democratic majority after only two years. But because of the fragility of that majority even now \u2014 a 50-50 tie, broken only by Kamala Harris\u2019 deciding vote as VP \u2014 the end of Democratic control could also come earlier. Much earlier.<\/p>\n
For one, the tension between West Virginia\u2019s Joe Manchin and the more progressive elements of his party carries with it the possibility of his defection from the ranks, even as he dismisses such a move. Those with long memories can recall what happened in an evenly divided Senate in 2001: Vermont\u2019s Jim Jeffords, angered by the Bush administration\u2019s tax plans, announced he would become an independent and caucus with the Democrats, suddenly flipping control of the Senate and making Tom Daschle the majority leader until the 2002 midterms. Manchin wouldn\u2019t even have to cross the aisle; if he simply left the Democratic caucus, the Republicans would suddenly have a governing majority.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s another possibility that should also have the Democrats reaching for the Maalox: A random act of fate could turn the Senate over to the Republicans not next January, but next summer, or next month, or next week. An illness or death could well trigger a political earthquake \u2014 by almost instantly switching control of the nation\u2019s top legislative body.<\/p>\n
States have a range of laws about replacing a departed senator, but the large majority \u2014 37 \u2014 call on the governor to pick a successor. Of those, only seven require the governor to pick someone in the same party. So there are 30 states where the governor can pick whatever new senator he or she wants.<\/p>\n
What that adds up to, in practical terms, is that in nine states (as of Jan. 15), a Republican governor has the authority to replace either one or two Democratic senators. If a single Democratic senator in any of those states had to leave office, the Republican governor of that state could appoint a GOP replacement that would immediately give the party a 51-49 Senate majority.<\/p>\n
When Glenn Youngkin becomes Virginia\u2019s governor later this month, he will join a group of GOP governors from states with two Democratic senators: Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maryland, Georgia and Arizona.<\/p>\n
Two other states, Ohio and Montana, have one Democratic senator and a Republican governor. (There\u2019s another set of states, of course, with the opposite dynamic: Louisiana, North Carolina, Kentucky and Kansas all have a Democratic governor and two Republican senators; three others, Maine, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, have a single Republican senator with Democratic governors. Of the aforementioned states, only in Maryland, Arizona, North Carolina and Kentucky are the parties assured of holding their seats under state law.)<\/p>\n
There was a brief flutter of concern about senatorial succession last January, when 80-year-old Vermont Democrat Pat Leahy went into the hospital. If health forced him out of office, who would Republican governor Phil Scott name? Scott\u2019s about as \u201cun-Republican\u201d a Republican figure as any, and Leahy recovered quickly. But the broader issue, uncomfortable as it may be to contemplate, remains.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s an issue magnified by the erosion of collegiality and comity that once defined much of how the Senate operated. In an earlier era, an evenly divided body dealt with an unstable balance of power by sharing it, or making accommodations. Today, such prospects seem more like a pastoral fantasy.<\/p>\n
It might seem morbid to think too concretely about what happens when a senator dies or is compelled by illness to leave office. But in a way it\u2019s irresponsible not to. While only three senators have died in office in the last decade, the actuarial reality \u2014 26 senators are 70 years old or more \u2014 deserves attention. (Fate, of course, is no respecter of age; Robert Kennedy was 42 when he was assassinated; Paul Wellstone was 58 when he died in a plane crash). Moreover, there have been times when the Senate has lost a remarkable number of its members. In 1953, the 83rd Congress began with 48 Republicans, 47 Democrats, and one independent, representing the 48 states that then formed the Union. Over the course of the session, no fewer than nine senators died in office, and another resigned.<\/p>\n
With such a close vote to start with at the time, what happened? On several occasions, the appointed senator indeed came from the other party. But the Senate was a very different place then \u2014 and effectively its power didn\u2019t really change hands.<\/p>\n
When Ohio Republican Robert Taft died in office in July 1953, Ohio Gov. Frank Lausche replaced him with Democrat Thomas Burke. This gave Democrats a 48-47 majority \u2014 but the independent, Sen. Wayne Morse, who\u2019d left the GOP out of his antipathy toward Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy, voted to keep the GOP in control of the chamber for the sake of comity and continuity.<\/p>\n
Other deaths during the session would again give Democrats a single-vote majority, but Democratic leader Lyndon Johnson never pressed the issue. Why not? In the first place, Johnson was acutely aware of President Dwight Eisenhower\u2019s popularity, and he wanted to position his party as cooperative. Indeed, he was savvy enough to see that some of Ike\u2019s most fervent opposition in the Senate was coming not from Democrats, but from more conservative Republicans. Second, the filibuster rule and the Republican in the White House would have essentially stopped Johnson from enacting anything like a Democratic legislative agenda. As for power over judicial confirmations, the process back in the \u201950s had none of the partisan implications it has today. Finally, the relative collegiality of Washington meant that in an evenly divided Senate, Johnson could gain concessions on issues like committee assignments in return for not challenging the Republicans\u2019 organizational control.<\/p>\n