Flawed Candidates Make 2010 the Year of Living Dangerously

I'm betting both parties would love to restart this campaign season and call do-overs on more than a few primaries. Maybe the choices weren't ideal, but in some very high-stakes races, the candidates who won are showing why they probably shouldn't have.

This phenomenon can be found coast to coast and points in between: Connecticut, South Carolina and Florida, Kentucky, Illinois and California. In some cases, the outcome of the general-election contests is unlikely to change even with a deeply flawed winner. But in others, we're talking about real impact inside and outside a state. Redistricting, control of Congress and the fates of down-ballot candidates could well turn on the strength or weakness of individual nominees.

One of the clearest trends is in Republican Senate contests, where the high-risk winners include former World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon and Tea Party favorites Sharron Angle and Rand Paul. Public Policy Polling found that they and four other likely or actual GOP nominees have net favorability ratings of minus-5 or worse. Such "below-average" candidates could cause the party to lose "a fair number of races" by a point or two, the pollster concluded. Democrats are doing their best to exploit the situation; their latest device is a website of GOP candidate quotes called "We Couldn't Make This Stuff Up."

But let's start our show-and-tell with a nominee who's received less attention than some: Democrat Alexi Giannoulis, the Illinois state treasurer and aspirant for the Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama. It is not helpful to Giannoulias that he worked for his family bank which lent money to a crime family and now has failed. The FDIC took it over in April. The National Republican Senatorial Committee habitually refers to him as "Mob Banker Alexi Giannoulias."

Nor is it particularly advantageous that Giannoulias is so young (34) and that his political mentor -- a guy he met on the basketball court -- is now the poster-president for high unemployment and soaring debt. Obama helped Giannoulias win the treasurer job in 2006 and, though he did not endorse in the Senate primary, his influential allies did -- among them big labor and several members of Congress. Within days of the primary,.Sen. Dick Durbin became his campaign chairman and took him on a trip to Greece. Obama is also all in; he raised money for his friend in April and he'll do it again Aug. 5.

There was an alternative in David Hoffman, a reform candidate who might have appealed in this season of voter anger and frustration. The Chicago Sun-Times editorial board called Giannoulias a successful treasurer but endorsed Hoffman, citing his impressive work as Chicago's inspector general and on an ethics reform panel. "Everybody talks about the need for more independence, smarter thinking and greater integrity in Washington," the editors said. "Here's your chance."

Giannoulias won by a few percentage points and the race is currently a nail-biter, despite the state's Democratic tilt and Republican nominee Mark Kirk's tendency to embroider his biography.

The most consequential candidate on the GOP side is Angle, who is trying to oust Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada. I don't have enough space -- even on the web -- to recount every problematic aspect of her campaign. Suffice it to say that she can scrub her own website, but not those of others, where her positions live on. They include eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of Education and Energy, and phasing out Social Security and Medicare as federal programs.

Angle seems removed from the pain of the recession, though her state has the nation's highest jobless rate and she is trying to blame that on Reid. She has said she would not have called bankers to try to save CityCenter, a huge new Las Vegas complex employing some 22,000 construction and permanent workers, because it was a "bank bailout" (false) and part of the "stimulus" program (false). Reid made the calls, got the banks to extend credit, and saved the jobs. Angle says it is not a senator's job to create jobs. She has also said unemployment benefits have "spoiled our citizenry."

In interviews with Christian media, Angle has said her candidacy is a calling, that she had "preparatory time" just like Moses, Paul and Jesus, and that incest victims should turn "a lemon situation into lemonade." In recent days she held press conferences but didn't take questions. The chairman of the national GOP campaign committee, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, essentially said she's not yet ready for prime time. Two recent polls show her trailing Reid. Would Sue "chickens-for-health-care" Lowden or college basketball star Danny Tarkanian be doing any better? Unclear. But better recruitment at the outset would have helped.

The Kentucky GOP had a safer alternative to Paul in Trey Grayson, the secretary of state. Fueled by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, Paul defeated him and promptly set off a national firestorm by criticizing parts of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He is now in a close race with Attorney General Jack Conway, a Democrat, in a very conservative state.

The party also took a flier in Connecticut with McMahon, the former wrestling chief executive whose business, wrote New York Times columnist Gail Collins, "specialized in blood, semi-naked women and scripted subplots featuring rape, adultery and familial violence. In which the candidate, her husband and children played themselves. Also, the family yacht is named Sexy Bitch."

GOP voters in Connecticut will have a chance for a do-over if they want one. Former Congressman Rob Simmons suspended his campaign after McMahon won a delegate vote at a May convention, but last week he put himself back in the mix for the Aug. 10 primary. His new "public service announcement" sure sounds like he is seeking votes. "I'm Rob Simmons, I'm still on the ballot and I approved this message," he says.

Aug. 10 is also a day to watch in Colorado, where upstart Ken Buck has overtaken Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, deemed by the GOP establishment to have better odds of victory this fall.

And then, in the state's gubernatorial race, there's the no-win GOP primary. One Republican is accused of plagiarism, another is facing ethics questions and a third -- non-candidate Tom Tancredo -- is threatening to run as an independent unless the two others drop out in favor of a party appointee.

The ultimate embarrassment may belong to Democrats in South Carolina, who somehow nominated Alvin Greene to take on conservative champion Sen. Jim DeMint. Greene is 32, unemployed, lives with his father, faces a felony obscenity charge, and has proposed manufacture of action figures of himself as a job-creation program. Records from his 13-year military career suggest he can't perform basic tasks or express himself clearly, The Associated Press reported.

Vic Rawl, a retired judge, would have been a credible nominee, but he was lower on the ballot, which is apparently why he lost. DeMint, who memorably predicted health reform would be Obama's "Waterloo," would be a near lock against any Democrat. Against Greene, why would he even bother to campaign? Democratic strategist J.P. Poersch called the situation heartbreaking.

In California, Democrats did themselves no favors by scurrying to the sidelines to clear the field for Attorney General Jerry Brown to run for governor. The former two-term governor, now 72, is as unpredictable and inscrutable as ever. Is this the year for Zen talk about collaboration, patience and the futility of campaign events? Or, was it the year for a Democrat with a big personality, big ideas, fundraising energy and maybe some personal wealth to even the playing field against Republican novice Meg Whitman, the $150 million woman? Polls now show the race to be neck-and-neck, and that's fraying Democratic nerves.

The parties have been lucky in a few instances.

Democrats started out the gubernatorial cycle with Gov. David Paterson of New York running for re-election despite ethics problems and Tom Schieffer running in Texas despite wariness about his ties to George W. Bush. They have ended up with two much stronger candidates: Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of New York and former Mayor Bill White of Houston.

Republicans have formidable nominees in the New Mexico governor's race (Susana Martinez) and the California Senate race (former HP chief executive Carly Fiorina).

Clearly it is not easy to shape a field or influence an outcome. Sometimes the die is cast before the races even begin; just ask Democrats who failed to lure Attorney General Lisa Madigan into the Illinois Senate race or Republicans who couldn't talk Rep. Dean Heller of Nevada into challenging Reid.

The Obama administration has illuminated the difficulties of trying to manage the candidates that the party fields with its clumsy attempts to discourage Joe Sestak (now the Democratic Senate nominee in Pennsylvania) from taking on Arlen Specter and Andrew Romanoff (who is mounting a primary challenge to Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado).

The GOP is providing further evidence of that, as top Republicans watch voters thwart their plans in state after state. Their Senate picks have been rejected in Nevada, Kentucky and Florida and are at risk in Colorado and New Hampshire, as is the GOP establishment candidate for Florida governor.

One of the most interesting numbers to track on Election Night will be how many races each party loses for lack of a strong nominee. If there are any, or even some close calls, expect both sides to marshal every tool in the box -- closed-door sweet talk and hardball, the media, the grassroots, the lobbyists and the interest groups -- to make sure that 2012 isn't déjà vu all over again.