After the overwhelming response to “10 Things Losing Candidates Say," I decided to try to turn it around and point out some common themes from winning candidates.
Of course these phrases don’t guarantee success — a candidate’s party and the partisanship of the state or district will…
You can’t rewrite history, but Republicans probably wish you could.
While two high-profile former GOP officeholders — Texas Rep. Tom DeLay and the late Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens — have now had their convictions overturned or dismissed, Republicans are still dealing with the political consequences.
It’s easy…
Political parties seem to suffer through internal battles periodically, but the current state of the GOP is much worse than what Democrats went through some 25 years ago, when organized labor and old-style liberals fought against the Democratic Leadership Council for the soul of the party.
I still…
The relationship between parents and children can be complicated, particularly when both are politicians.
On Monday, state Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger announced that he wouldn’t challenge Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan in North Carolina.
It’s August of an odd-numbered year, but the 2014 cycle is heating up. That means dozens of candidates are visiting us at The Rothenberg Political Report in anticipation of the midterm elections.
Some of them will win, but most will lose. So we’ve started taking notes on some…
Kay Hagan could run a perfect campaign and still lose re-election.
In 2008, the Democratic state senator was elected to the U.S. Senate because she was at the right place at the right time. She faced an aging politician who had lost touch with the state, and she…
The Senate playing field is starting to solidify, and the fight for the majority looks like it will be decided in about a dozen states. But even though the fields of candidates are still taking shape in some of those contests, both Republicans and Democrats are banking on some…
“The GOP needs to gain three or four seats to win control (depending on which party controls the White House), and already five Democratic-held Senate seats are no better than toss-ups. The Democratic outlook would improve markedly if the party could swipe a couple of Republican seats…
Two years ago, at the beginning of August 2011, Republicans looked poised to win back the United States Senate just four years after losing it. But by the time November of 2012 rolled around, it was clear that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s dream of becoming Majority Leader would…
ALABAMA -- Jeff Sessions (R), elected 1996 (52%), 2002 (59%) and 2008 (63%).
The last Democratic Senate nominee to win over 40 percent of the vote in Alabama was Roger Bedford in 1996 (45.5 percent). Sessions’ June 30 FEC report showed him with nearly $3 million in the…
