In a competitive state that is increasingly Republican, Mary Landrieu (D-LA) lost a tough re-election battle for her Senate seat and observers might want to reflect back on the career of one of her predecessors, Samuel Douglas McEnery for some perspective on the role of racial and pork barrel politics in Louisiana.
My research assistant, Jenna Ray, and I wrote a comparison of former U.S. Senator Kay Hagan to one of her long ago predecessors, Senator Matt Ransom (D-NC) who served in the age of indirect election where state legislatures elected U.S. Senators rather than the people directly. What we found is that even after changing the U.S.
One Senate seat that the Democratic Party was never worried about this year was Rhode Island where Jack Reed was running for his 4th term as U.S. Senator. In this case study, my research assistant Nhat-Dang Do and I examine the state of Rhode Island, and chart the course of Senator Nelson W. Aldrich (R), who served in the Senate from 1881 to 1911, and Jack Reed. Comparing the two U.S. Senators, elected more than 100 years apart, allows us to explore if and how the path to office has changed at all, regardless of the mode of election.
One of the most closely watched Senate races in 2014 happened in Kentucky, where long serving Republican Mitch McConnell, who was the minority leader of the Senate, was in a very close contest against his Democratic challenger, Alison Grimes. The stakes were enormous in this election, not just for McConnell but for the national Republican Party which had a chance to take majority control of the Senate after 8 years in the minority.
