WSJ: Will McCain give up his Senate seat?

Will McCain Give Up His Senate Seat?

 

Alex Frangos reports on the presidential race.

Arizona Rep. John Shadegg said Monday he won’t run for re-election to the House, but he is interested in a Senate seat.

That got us thinking: Will John McCain give up his Senate perch to concentrate on running for president, and thus open a spot for Shadegg? We dug into our notebook and it just so happens that Washington Wire posed the question to the likely Republican nominee last Wednesday.

“If I get the nomination, we’ll figure it out,” he said on board his chartered jet from Phoenix to Washington. The 24-year congressional veteran, whose Senate term expires in 2010, lamented the time he has spent away from the Senate in the past year. “It’s very hard. I’ve missed a lot of votes, there’s no doubt about it.”

McCain also talked about the last time a Republican senator got the nomination: Bob Dole in 1996. Dole gave up his Kansas seat in order to concentrate on the election. “I remember discussing it with him, and frankly, I recommended that he not do it,” McCain said. He noted that Dole was the majority leader at the time and had a “forum” to speak his agenda. But he understood Dole’s rationale, given that as majority leader, his schedule was much busier than that of a little old senator such as himself.

There is a long history of senators and their White House ambitions. Lyndon Johnson benefited from a law change that allowed him to run simultaneously for his Senate seat and the vice presidency in 1960. He won both. Lloyd Bentsen took advantage of that law in 1988 and to good effect since he and Michael Dukakis lost. Joe Lieberman made the same move in 2000, when he kept his Connecticut seat while losing the vice presidency.

Arizona rules on Senate vacancies dictate that the governor (currently Janet Napolitano, a Democrat and Barack Obama supporter) must appoint an interim senator from the same party as the departing senator, and an election would be held at the next general election.