This week’s news that Sen. Claire McCaskill didn’t pay taxes on her personal plane and billed taxpayers for its use has put the first-term Democrat in far greater political peril given that her re-election prospects were far from assured to begin with. McCaskill’s seat in Missouri has been listed among the most endangered of the 23 Democratic Senate seats up for grabs in 2012, and the airplane scandal could make her an even easier target for Republicans, who need to pick up just four additional seats to win a Senate majority. Even before the news about the airplane broke, Republican leaders were calling McCaskill’s seat “ground zero” in their effort to win control of the Senate.
“Missouri is probably not a great environment for her to run in in the first place,” Cook Political Report Senior Editor Jennifer Duffy said. “And it just got a lot more difficult.”
The state tends to be politically fickle, electing Democrats to statewide offices one year and Republicans the next.
Before her election in 2006, McCaskill’s seat was held by Republican Jim Talent, who won it by defeating Democrat Jean Carnahan.
“This is a seat that bounces around a bit,” Duffy said.
In the last presidential election, Missouri rejected President Obama in favor of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and voters are more likely to pick the GOP presidential nominee in 2012, political analysts say. Moreover, Missouri voters last year overwhelmingly chose Republican Rep. Roy Blunt over popular Democrat Robin Carnahan to fill the Senate seat vacated by retiring Kit Bond.
Despite the political fallout from the airplane scandal, few are ready to predict McCaskill’s seat will bounce back into the GOP column in 2012, in part because Republicans have yet to pick her challenger.
Potential candidates include state Sen. Sarah Steelman, Rep. Todd Akin, former Missouri GOP Chairwoman Ann Wagner and Ed Martin, an attorney who narrowly lost the race for the House seat held by Democrat Russ Carnahan.
Political analysts say an ugly GOP primary in which Republican candidates skewer each other could help McCaskill, who plans to sell the plane after repaying the government.
“A nice, divisive Republican primary is really good news” for McCaskill, said Missouri State University professor George Connor.
Connor said the airplane scandal alone “isn’t going to break McCaskill’s candidacy.” Carnahan, he pointed out, won re-election last year after the GOP accused him of trying to dodge Missouri taxes by parking his unregistered boat across the Mississippi River in Illinois.
But the scandal could damage McCaskill just enough to make it hard for her to win a re-election bid already made difficult by her close ties to President Obama. Making matters worse for McCaskill, the Show Me State’s base of reliable Democratic voters is being replaced by skeptical independents.
McCaskill also has to square her efforts in the Senate to reform government by making it more ethical and transparent with her own financial problems over the plane.
“Things like not paying your taxes,” Connor said, “makes it harder to win those voters.”
