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| Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) |
I didn't actually have anything to do with this (though if POTUS can take credit for there not being airline crashes in 2017, I suppose I can take credit for this), but Orrin Hatch has been one of my most-loathed Republicans for decades now. When I was in middle school, I would spend hours watching C-Span...which sounds sad, but keep in mind I was gay so I wasn't so much as replacing a nerdy medium to avoid talking to girls as I was using a nerdy medium because homophobia was stopping me from talking to cute boys (in college I was using the nerdy medium to not talk to cute guys). And in watching those hours and hours of C-Span, there were two Republicans I hated more than any other in the Senate: Orrin Hatch and Jeff Sessions. This wasn't entirely based in rationality (Jesse Helms was still a senator when I was in high school, so in retrospect he was certainly the worst person in the Senate), but my family knew that if they didn't change the channel within five seconds of either of these men showing up when I turned on the TV, I would launch into an insane shouting match with the monitor.
While my loathing of Sessions stemmed from his abject racism on the floor of the Senate, Hatch was different because I saw him as a delusional, cruel old man (even when I was in high school, one would question if Hatch was too old for the Senate). Hatch grew up in relative poverty, and had an early-life touched by tragedy (his brother was killed in World War II and he was so poor he once lived in a chicken coop), and while he became a millionaire after years in the Senate and a successful law career, he frequently hearkened back to those days when he gave speeches when his beliefs were criticized for being insensitive to the poor (just recently he did this to Sen. Sherrod Brown during a fiery committee hearing). Indeed, in a Senate filled with children of privilege (including many who are the children of politicians themselves), Hatch stands apart as a self-made man.
Which made his incessant need to fleece the poor and help the rich throughout his career all the more shocking. Hatch is the sort of politician who epitomizes an empty suit. While his early career one could argue he remembered some of his roots (he was, after all, the chief Republican cosponsor of the Children's Health Insurance Program which he supported alongside his friend Ted Kennedy), he never exhibited enough backbone to remember his conscience when a Republican was president, namely George W. Bush & Donald Trump. The CHIP program, what could have been his most lasting legacy, expired under his watch; while he was letting billionaires get private jet tax cuts, 9 million of America's most vulnerable youth had their insurance put in limbo. In the past year, he has watched two of Utah's national parks shrink in the face of Trump's greed, and delivered a death blow to the environment when he was one of 22 senators to urge President Trump leave the Paris Agreement. Hatch's sycophantic ass-kissing to Trump in the past year (a man he once described as "offensive and disgusting") just slung the manure onto his tenure in the Senate even further. In many ways he reminds me of Paul Ryan, though in Ryan's case I think he truly has a psychological disgust for the poor (perhaps driven by a childhood that was also affected by poverty), while Hatch was at best delusional and at worst a charlatan. I don't know who becomes the most odious member of the Senate now (McConnell? Rubio? Cruz? Inhofe...yes, it's Inhofe), but the country is better off with Orrin Hatch collecting social security...I just wish he'd done it forty years ago.
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| Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA... or apparently now UT) |
If there's a clear winner this morning, it's certainly Mitt Romney. Romney has long been considered a candidate for this office, considering his personal popularity in the Beaver State, his prominence in the Mormon Church, and the success of his tenure as head of the Salt Lake City Olympics (still well-remembered in Utah). With Hatch out of his way, and despite his advanced age, Romney seems a near certainty to run for this seat, and starts out as the prohibitive frontrunner.
This would be a surprise second act for the former presidential candidate. While recent failed presidential candidates have oftentimes stayed in the public eye or positions of prominence, most did so because they were sitting members of Congress (see the likes of John Kerry and John McCain). Romney running from citizen-to-Congress successfully would be the first failed major-party candidate to take such a route since Hubert H. Humphrey in 1970 (it's worth noting that Walter Mondale ran & failed, and that Michael Dukakis was publicly courting such a possibility as recently as 2009, however). Humphrey may represent a best-case-scenario for Romney, who ran twice for president (nearly a third time in 2016), and has clearly not let go of the possibility of being president in the future despite being 70-years-old (he's born oddly in that very small window between Donald Trump & Hillary Clinton). Humphrey never successfully won the Democratic nomination again, but was a massive presence in the 1972 and 1976 primaries, and ran in 1972 for the nomination (and likely would have won it had he had a more modernized campaign, similar to George McGovern). If there is a 2020 primary challenger to Trump, there's probably no bigger giant that could conceivably take him on than Romney, and from the perch of a US Senate seat, he'll have a national platform that other theoretical rivals like John Kasich or Jeff Flake simply won't.
That means that the biggest loser today is Donald Trump (perhaps why he's threatening nuclear war right now...or perhaps he read a piece about South Korea making progress with North Korea and wanted to throw a temper tantrum). Either way, this is a big political loss for President Trump. He had begged Hatch, who was one of his closest allies on Capitol Hill, to run for another term, and now has an opening for arguably the Republican who has been most critical to his administration. While it's wishful thinking to assume Romney will be a moderating voice on the seat (he's still a conservative Republican), he'll certainly be a major jab in Trump's side, and Hatch's willingness to refuse the president's request shows that Trump's political capital is relatively cheap.
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| Chief of Staff Boyd Matheson (R-UT) |
While Mitt Romney has sky-high approval ratings in Utah (he's more popular in Utah than Trump is in literally any state), that doesn't mean that he'll coast to the nomination, particularly if Steve Bannon has anything to say about it. While Bannon's credentials were weakened by Roy Moore's recent loss, he still managed to get Moore through the primary, which could be a headache for Romney. After all, men more popular than he have lost in primaries (Tom Osborne in 2006, anyone?), and he's hardly a great campaigner (worth noting he's only won two competitive elections, and lost three, so his batting average is 40%, pretty abysmal in politics). It's hard to imagine that Bannon will let Trump's biggest GOP threat in 2020 (and his most famous Republican critic) win without a fight.
The question is who will Bannon go for? Utah is not a state that is a fan of Donald Trump (it went from Romney getting 73% in 2012 to Trump getting 46% four years later, the largest swing of any state in either direction). People like Evan McMullin and Rep. Chris Stewart seem like stretches to be on Bannon's side considering their criticisms of Donald Trump last year, and Jon Huntsman is a sitting ambassador (and a recently placed one at that). Jason Chaffetz just left Congress, so a return seems unlikely, and Derek Miller has been critical of Trump's trade policies. That leaves Bannon with (probably) Boyd Matheson, the Chief of Staff to Sen. Mike Lee, as his most-likely candidate. Matheson is a hard-right conservative, one who probably would gain the endorsement of Lee (another Utah power-broker), and might be able to do to Romney what Lee did to Robert Bennett in 2010. Matheson had seemingly deferred to the popular Romney in the state, but I suspect that if Trump & Bannon both come calling with endorsements and an enviable campaign operation, he might reconsider. After all, if Trump/Bannon can land him the primary, Utah's conservative tilt can win him the Senate seat. Watch his name in the next few weeks as Trump seeks out a candidate to oppose Romney.
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| Salt Lake County Councilwoman Jenny Wilson (D-UT) |
In the land of Doug Jones & endless possibility, the mantra "contest every seat" is probably a good one. And it's worth mentioning that the Democrats have a surprisingly good candidate in Salt Lake City Councilwoman Jenny Wilson. But the similarities to Alabama end there.
For starters, Utah is actually more conservative than Alabama (the latter having a more natural Democratic base in the African-American communities in Birmingham & Mobile), and Mitt Romney, while awkward, is no Roy Moore. Romney has a marriage ready-made for a Hallmark movie, and won't fall into some of the verbal pitfalls that came for Moore. Plus, he's run for president, so unless he has some random skeleton in the past five years, everything we could ever know about him has already come to light, and not of it is damning for a Republican nominee in Utah.
Wilson's best bet would be if Romney loses the primary to someone like Matheson, and he (or McMullin or Huntsman) want to stick it to Steve Bannon and assume they can pull a Lisa Murkowski. It sounds far-fetched, but it's pretty easy to see how it would happen. Bannon gets Romney below 40% in the convention by recruiting ultra-right delegates. Utah has a bizarre election law that says if you can clear 60% of the delegates at the convention, the primary doesn't take place and the victor at the convention becomes the nominee; these strange conventions are what allowed Mike Lee to beat the very popular incumbent Sen. Robert Bennett in 2010. If a Bannon-backed candidate (let's say Matheson) were to do this, eliminating Romney before the voters got to weigh in, Romney could run as a write-in (particularly if he saw the polls that show he would win a three-way race), and jump in, splitting the conservative vote. An angry Trump stumping for Matheson (he's not going to be in demand in swingier states, so this would be a natural spot for him to campaign), Bannon's machine, and straight-ticket balloting ends up proving Romney wasn't as strong as he expected, and Wilson gets an opening by reaching 34-38% in a state without a runoff. Far-fetched? Absolutely. Impossible? Have you been watching our political climate in the past year-this wouldn't be any less shocking than what happened in Alabama?
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| Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) |
While there probably aren't any other Republican senators up this year (because it's finally 2018!) that will retire (there's not that many left, period, to retire), that doesn't mean we won't see some openings. Hatch leaving at an advanced age and health leaves room for others to follow suit, namely Sens. Thad Cochran and John McCain. Cochran has been the subject of swirling resignation rumors (he's in his 80's, and has had increasingly severe health issues in recent months) that he won't be in Congress through January, and Hatch could give him grounds to leave as well. While Mississippi isn't anyone's idea of a Democratic stronghold, this would still put his seat in a vulnerable position, and unlike Utah, it's considerably more left-leaning than Alabama.
McCain seems less inclined to retire, but were his battle with brain cancer prove him incapable of serving, his retirement would also put his seat at risk, and unlike Hatch or Cochran, Arizona is bordering on a swing state, particularly in a Democratic wave year (if that transpires, which polls show is a strong possibility). While both McCain and Cochran would be replaced by Republicans, open seats would invite more potential Bannon-approved challengers (like Roy Moore and Donald Trump) in a year where that could be a liability. As a reminder, with Doug Jones taking the oath of office tomorrow, Democrats only need two seats to win back the Senate in 2018-a surprise win for the left in any of these three states would be death blow to Mitch McConnell, and to the Trump administration in the last two years of his first term.
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