[W]ith their majority looking shaky for the first time this cycle, Democrats are turning to a surprising strategy to keep themselves afloat: Take the fight to the Republicans on their home soil. While trying to steal a seat deep in enemy territory is a long-standing goal of both parties, such aggression had been considered unlikely in 2014, when almost all of the Senate contests will take place in red states. (Party operatives frequently say it’s the most one-sided map they’ve ever seen.) But a pair of Republican-leaning states held by the GOP, Kentucky and Georgia, suddenly have viable Democratic contenders. “We’ve recruited strong candidates that put Kentucky and Georgia in play,” wrote the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s Guy Cecil, in a memo distributed last week. “Now the public polls are confirming we are playing offense in red states for the second consecutive cycle.”
To be successful, the two candidates who have emerged this summer, Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky and Michelle Nunn in Georgia, will have to walk a similar line. The women face different kinds of races—Nunn is running for an open seat against a potentially weak Republican opponent, while Grimes will square off against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell—but they’ll both have to distance themselves from the national Democratic Party, which is deeply unpopular in their home states. Republicans are already hard at work making sure they have no such opportunity.
Nunn, who officially declared as a candidate only this week, stands a better chance of victory. Georgia’s rapidly diversifying electorate almost made the state a target of Obama’s campaign last year, and Democrats hope the GOP’s scramble for the seat of retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss produces another Todd Akin-like nominee. (Rep. Paul Broun, who brags about calling Obama a “Marxist,” tops the Democrats’ wish list.) Nunn also has the benefit of a famous last name: Her father, the centrist Democrat Sam Nunn, served in the Senate for 24 years.
But she too could be hurt by being associated with Democratic Party policies. In an interview after her campaign announcement, Nunn backed abortion rights, calling for the procedure to be “safe, legal, and rare.”
Nunn and Grimes do share a mutual advantage: their gender. Although the “war on women” that Democrats charge the GOP is waging lacks the resonance in either Georgia or Kentucky that it has in more-liberal battlegrounds, a fresh-faced female challenger to long-standing Republican rule could pick off otherwise GOP-leaning women. When disapproval of Congress tops 80 percent, offering something different isn’t a bad gambit.
For now, the battle for the Senate majority remains focused on red states that Democrats are defending. Georgia and Kentucky sit on the second tier: competitive but not yet guaranteed to remain so through Election Day. But if Democrats manage to squeeze out an unexpected victory in either state, their majority is likely safe. And party operatives won’t be cursing Brian Schweitzer under their breath.
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