BOSTON — Former Massachusetts Treasurer Joe Malone said Thursday he expects to run against an incumbent congressional Democrat this fall, part of a wave of political recalibrations occurring nationally after Republican Scott Brown’s upset win in the special election to replace Sen. Ted Kennedy.
California Sen. Barbara Boxer, a liberal Democrat facing a re-election challenge, declared “every state is in play now.” The anti-spending group Club for Growth said it’s trying to recruit conservative Rep. Mike Pence to challenge Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh in Indiana.
Congressional Republicans see House seats in Arkansas, New York, Michigan and Ohio in play, raising their hopes for winning back majority control they lost in 2006.
“The message of Massachusetts is clear: No Democrat is safe,” said Paul Lindsay, spokesman for the GOP committee charged with electing Republican House members. “We’re already seeing the ripple effects.”
The GOP also is hoping to entice former Maryland Gov. Robert Erlich into a rematch against incumbent Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley.
Tim Murtaugh, spokesman for the Republican Governors Association, said Brown’s win “helps us tremendously with fundraising, because people say, ‘My gosh, if we can win a Senate seat in Massachusetts of all places, we can win anywhere.’ It also helps with candidate recruitment.”
Brown’s victory cost President Barack Obama not just the Democratic Senate supermajority he was counting on to pass his health care overhaul, it also laid bare unrest among pivotal independents, who helped him win in 2008 but abandoned Obama in droves the day before the first anniversary of his inauguration.
Brown rode a wave of populist, anti-government sentiment to claim a seat the Democrats had held in true-blue Massachusetts for over a half-century. The Republican won across Cape Cod, where Malone is planning to run against Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass.
Brown even claimed the Barnstable precinct where Kennedy voted and the family has its famed compound in Hyannis Port.
“I can’t tell you how many people have said to me, ‘I had no idea my neighbor felt the same way I do, or my kids were seeing things occurring that were troubling them,”’ said Malone, a Republican. “It’s a feeling that, ‘If we all put our minds to it, we can be in charge as opposed to the politicians.”’
The Senate will have 57 Democrats, two independents who vote with them and 41 Republicans once Brown is sworn in. At least 36 seats are up for election this fall.
Democrats control the House by a margin of 256-178 with one vacancy. They could see double-digit losses this fall, a common trend for the party in power, as happened when Democrats last lost control in 1994.
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