National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair John Cornyn has a had a pretty tough year recruiting and protecting his candidates. They just keep running into trouble -- from Charlie Crist fleeing the Republican Party in Florida and Bob Bennett's primary loss in Utah to John McCain's Arizona primary challenge and the Kentucky Rand Paul insurgency overwhelming the GOP's chosen standard-bearer. So if you're a Republican considering a run for Senate and Cornyn says, "I told him we will do whatever it takes to help him and that's a fact," do you take that to the bank?
That's the question facing perennial Washington state GOP candidate Dino Rossi, who is mulling over a challenge to sitting Democratic Sen. Patty Murray. While Murray isn't particularly vulnerable, in a tough anti-incumbent year and with a candidate like Rossi, who has come within 133 votes of winning the state's gubenatorial seat, Republicans might have an opportunity to exploit. Except the Tea Party candidate will stay in the race no matter what happens in the primary. So will a self-funding millionaire conservative candidate. That doesn't spell an easy chance for Rossi.
Moreover, Democrats are already doing everything they can to make Rossi the next Dan Coates -- Coates, the former Indiana senator returning to run for Evan Bayh's open seat, hit early troubles by slighting his old state and with his work as a Washington lobbyist. Thus far, they've been hitting him for not paying $20,000 in back taxes and his connections to a shady bank.
Rossi has had two heartbreakingly close statewide elections in the last two cycles. Will he go for the prize once more? First he has to decide just how helpful Cornyn can be to him. Thus far, the evidence doesn't suggest he'll be able to ease Rossi's path to the seat very much.
-- Tim Fernholz
