Let's start with Rick Santorum:
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Pennsylvania voters handed the U.S. Senate's No. 3 Republican his first political defeat Tuesday, rejecting conservative stalwart Rick Santorum in favor of Democrat Bob Casey, the mild-mannered son of a former two-term governor.
Santorum, a strong voice for conservatives in Washington, had long been a polarizing figure in Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania. Although admired for his blunt talk, he alienated voters with his harsh partisanship and his positions on an array of issues, from support of the Iraq war to his complaint that in too many households both parents work outside the home.
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With 84% of precincts reporting, Casey had 1,922,962 votes, or 59%, and Santorum had 1,338,963, or 41%.
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Santorum raised $25 million and Casey $15 million, making it the most expensive Senate race in Pennsylvania history.Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., appears before supporters in Pittsburgh to concede to Democrat Bob Casey Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
The president's Number 3 man in the Senate was stomped by the son of a former governor--and we're talking an 18-percentage point stomping here!
Santorum was an ideologue. He was against abortion, stem cell research, and gay marriage, to which he likened as a threat coming from terrorists. Santorum believed that intelligent design was a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in public schools. Santorum himself got embroiled in the intelligent design debate when he first praised Dover Area School District's decision to included intelligent design in the science curriculum, but then reversed himself after U.S. District Judge John E. Jones ruled against the school district, calling it "a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory...." And finally, who can not forget Santorum's flip-flopping regarding his residency--is Santorum a resident of Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, where he owns a $106,000 home, or a resident of Leesburg, Virginia, where he owns a $757,000 home?
Talk about a politician with enough skeletons in his closet, regarding his own controversial views and flip-flops. In one sense, Santorum makes politics fun. He is akin to a carnival sideshow within the halls of the Senate. That sideshow has now been replaced.
And then there is Katherine Harris. If Rick Santorum was the carnival sideshow for the Senate, then Katherine Harris was a three-ring circus in the political campaign for the Florida Senate seat:
ORLANDO, Fla. - U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson coasted as expected to a second term Tuesday by trouncing Republican challenger Katherine Harris, who staged a bungled, long-shot bid to unseat the popular incumbent.
Nelson touted his reputation as a moderate senator who could work across party lines. Harris, the Longboat Key congresswoman famous for her role in overseeing the Florida recount that gave George W. Bush the presidency in 2000, couldn't overcome myriad campaign problems and trailed in the polls all along.
With 99 percent of the expected vote counted, Nelson beat Harris 60 percent to 38 percent.
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The challenge for Harris had been making her message heard over the din of campaign troubles and controversy. Besides slow fundraising and initial lack of support from state GOP leaders, including Gov. Jeb Bush, Harris lost a host of campaign staffers, made questionable public statements and had to answer for her dealings with a corrupt defense contractor who admitted funneling illegal contributions to her congressional campaign.
For her part, Harris blamed the media and disgruntled former campaign workers for trying to undermine her and keep the focus off the issues.Florida Republican U.S. Senate candidate,Rep. Katherine Harris, R-Fla., left, concedes the senate race to incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., as her husband, Anders Ebbeson, right, looks on, during an election night gathering, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006, in Sarasota, Fla. (AP Photo/Steve Nesius)
The Harris campaign was a walking disaster. Harris was first embroiled in the MZM scandal, where defense contractor MZM Inc. gave Harris $50,000 in political campaign contributions, with $32,000 of those contributions bundled together illegally. Harris failed to report to the feds that MZM wanted her help in funding "a Navy counterintelligence facility in Sarasota." After that, it was all downhill. Karl Rove and the National Republican Senatorial Committee tried to talk Harris out of running for the Senate. She refused. Florida governor Jeb Bush doubted that Harris could win, and there was even GOP talk of enticing Florida House Speaker Alan Bense as a late entry into the Florida primary race to challenge Harris. Bense refused. The Harris campaign was plagued with problems. According to Time Magazine:
[The Harris] campaign has suffered from two en masse walkouts of staffers who describe her as erratic and abusive to staff and who often go on to dish insider tales to the media. Her congressional office also has seen a lot of turnover. Harris believes she has been sabotaged by former staffers and the national party, who she said were "putting knives in her back," according to the Tampa Tribune.
On August 17, Harris promoted a major campaign event at the Orlando Executive Airport hosted by top party officials including Sen. Mel Martinez and Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings. When none of the dignitaries and no elected officials showed up, Harris said they were probably lost when a tree fell on the original hangar and the event was moved. However, airport officials said no hangar had been damaged and the event was held where originally scheduled.
When newspapers aren't covering the more than two dozen staffers who have departed her campaign, her press often veers toward the salacious: her clothing choices are inappropriately tight-fitting to emphasize her bust line; she is so hooked on Starbucks coffee that she requires all Starbucks stores be mapped out on her campaign routes.
The latest headlines revolve around Harris's comments to a Florida Baptist journal that the separation of church and state is "a lie" and that if Christians are not elected, politicians will "legislate sin." She has since backtracked, claiming that she "had been speaking to a Christian audience, addressing a common misperception that people of faith should not be actively involved in government" and that her comments reflected "her deep grounding in Judeo-Christian values". Nonetheless, major newspapers around the state are endorsing 71-year-old LeRoy Collins Jr. whose biggest selling points are that he is the son of Florida's beloved 1950s Gov. LeRoy Collins, he has promised to serve only one term — and most important of all, he is not Katherine Harris.
I believe that either The Three Stooges or The Marx Brothers can run a better senatorial campaign than Katherine Harris.
In a sense, both Rick Santorum and Katherine Harris represented the ideological extremes that this Republican Party has embraced over the past six years. Santorum was the GOP poster boy. In fact, Congressional Quarterly ratings show he [Santorum] voted with his party 92 percent of the time in 2005 and with Mr. Bush 95 percent of the time...." Rick Santorum was the face of the successful, extremely ideological Republican legislator. Katherine Harris represented another part of this extremism. Harris was the loyal, ideological, GOP operative who would happily follow whatever orders were given to her. She dutifully performed her role in helping Republican George W. Bush become elected president during the 2000 Florida recount. Because of her service in providing Bush the presidency, Harris may have felt that the GOP owed her the Florida Senate seat. And yet as a result of either her own incompetence, mismanagement of her campaign, or even the stigmata of her involvement in the Florida debacle, the Republicans deserted her. You could say that the Republicans used Harris to get Bush elected in the Florida recount, and then left her as Harris cast her ambitious political eyes on the Senate. The Harris campaign shows just how little loyalty the Republican Party may have for its own members, when their own political ambitions conflict with greater GOP strategic goals. This can also be seen with the Republican Party's desertion of Connecticut Republican senatorial candidate Alan Schlesinger for Independent Joe Lieberman. And yet in the 2006 midterm elections, the American voters rejected these two Republican ideologues from the U.S. Senate. So yes, I do have a tinge of sadness as Rick Santorum and Katherine Harris take a bow, and leave the political scene.
But not that much....
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