http://www.bostonherald.com/news/us_pol ... ion=recentOlympia Snowe: Birthday led to reflection, ’very tough decision’
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Olympia Snowe says she didn’t make up her mind not to seek re-election until Tuesday, the day she made her shocking announcement.
"It was back and forth in my head," Snowe said in a phone interview Wednesday night. "I didn’t make the final decision until literally yesterday."
After months of activity gearing up her campaign to run for a fourth term, her 65th birthday, on Feb. 21, helped her realize that perhaps she didn’t want another six years in a Senate that she had come to regard as paralyzed by partisanship, said Snowe, a Republican.
"My birthday last week really focused me on that," she said. "I didn’t have many moments to reflect at all during this last year and a half when I started working on this whole (re-election) process. I have been going full tilt.... Then I started to think about the picture in its entirety in the context of my life."
Only three or four people knew that she was grappling with the idea of retiring after 34 years on Capitol Hill, first as a House member before she won her Senate seat in 1994.
Snowe said she told family members about her decision Tuesday, before notifying Republican Senate leaders and other lawmakers she is close to -- then making it public late in the afternoon.
Snowe reiterated Wednesday that she believed she was on a path to re-election. Independent political analysts rated her as a safe bet to win in November.
That's a seat we were certain to hold, that we will now almost certainly lose. We have a better chance of holding on to Scott Brown's seat in Massachusetts the we do of holding this one without Snowe. (Before someone points out that a Conservative was able to win election as Governor in Maine in 2010, let me point out that, A: 2012 is not 2010 and B: it took a three way vote split for him to win.)
And whammy number 2:
This isn't quite as bad as the Snowe retirement, (Kerry hasn't run in the state since '94 and Nebraska is obviously much more conservative than Maine) but it moves what should have been a sure pick up into the toss up category, at least for now.Bob Kerrey running for Senate in Nebraska
Climbing down from the fence, Democrat Bob Kerrey said Wednesday that he will run for his old Senate seat from Nebraska, soon to be vacated by retiring Sen. Ben Nelson and a major target for Republicans who hope to win control of the chamber in November.
The decision comes on the heels of Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe’s surprise announcement Tuesday to not seek re-election in Maine. And the twin events breathe new life into Democratic hopes of holding onto the Senate.
In Kerrey’s case, the decision to run follows weeks of uncertainty in which he first ruled out a return and then began rethinking his decision over the weekend with the encouragement of his family. As late as Monday night, flying back to Nebraska, he was still skittish in private conversations, but was decidedly more confident Wednesday after time in the state and met with Nebraska reporters to formally announce his intentions.
“It was a difficult process but I feel good about the decision,” he told POLITICO. “I look forward to the race.”
Kerrey, who was Nebraska’s governor before serving in the Senate from 1989 to 2001, faces an uphill fight, going back to a state where he hasn’t run since 1994 and one which has moved more to the right in the years since. As such, he will surely pay a political price for having spent most of his post-Senate career in New York City as a university president at The New School. But he has resisted opportunities to cash in on lobbying posts, and given his Vietnam War record and colorful history in the Senate itself, the 68-year-old still brings a spark that few candidates can match.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/02 ... z1ns6cjcS2
Of course even with these negative developments, the math for a GOP take over of the Senate, (regardless of who wins the Presidency, except in the unlikely event of an Obama landslide) remains pretty good, with the Dems defending 23 of the 33 seats that are up and the Republicans only needing a net pick up of four.
(Edited to correct state name)
