Massachusetts electorate are at the polls today to decide who will replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D) in a firmly contested extraordinary election with implications for President Obama's governmental agenda back in Washington.
For starters, the two leading candidates -- Republican state Sen. Scott Brown and Democratic state Attorney General Martha Coakley -- are poised to offer critical votes in the closing moments of the Capitol Hill debate over Obama's sweeping health care reform package.
A Coakley win would keep up the status quo and help shepherd the bill into law. But if Brown can score a come-from-behind upset, many political observers predict Obama's team will need to quickly scramble to get health care across the finish line, given that the new Republican senator would upend the Democrats' filibuster-proof 60-seat majority.
Further down the road sit Obama's efforts to pass a comprehensive energy and climate change bill. Here, there's considerable debate over whether the outcome in Massachusetts means much for an issue that already hinges on some degree of bipartisanship.
"It has the potential to roil the climate waters," said Eric Ueland, who served as chief of staff to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). "On a macro level at least, the majority administration's agenda in the Senate faces a lot steeper odds if Brown wins."
In Massachusetts, Brown has made the extraordinary election into a competitive race in part because of populist anger over Obama's broad-based agenda. Frank Maisano, a Washington-based spokesman for several major energy industry interests, said that groundswell could leave the Democrats in limbo as they weigh just how much to push on the climate change issue during a midterm election campaign in which many more House and Senate seats are up for grabs.
"Just the nature of the campaign and the mood right now is going to send folks who have serious concerns of going down the road of a climate bill, I think it's going to send them running for cover anyway," said Maisano, who represents electric utilities, oil refineries and wind developers for the Bracewell & Giuliani law firm.
"There's really already major concern in the minds of 20 to 25 Democrats as to whether this is a good approach anyway," Maisano added. "Definitely, I think the fact Massachusetts is even in play certainly puts even more power into that concern."
Energy policy analyst Christine Tezak sees the Massachusetts election a bit differently.
In a research note published today, Tezak said she didn't think a Brown victory would have much of an effect on the climate bill.
"We have never considered this issue to rely solely on the partisan divide in the Senate," she said. "A handful of Republicans lean in favor, several Democrats oppose it. There are 'fencesitters' on both sides of the aisle."
Obama's climate agenda could even benefit, Tezak said, should Brown win and help to take down the health care bill.
"If the health care debate gets derailed, then the Obama administration will need to come up with other victories," said Tezak, a senior research analyst for Robert W. Baird & Co. "While it is very easy to suggest that Congress may want to throw up its hands and do nothing for the balance of the year, incumbent Democrats will need a win -- not inaction -- to reverse what will be hailed as a significant defeat for their agenda and prove they can govern. There may be greater pressure to salvage an energy and climate package. If health care is shelved, there would be time to address it."
Contingency plans
On health care, Obama and Capitol Hill Democratic leaders have been busy preparing an alternative strategy in case Coakley loses.
"Certainly the dynamic will change depending on what happens in Massachusetts," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters in California yesterday, according to the Boston Globe. "Just the question of how we would proceed. But it doesn't mean we won't have a health care bill."
But they haven't gone much further when it comes to speaking up on other items on the Obama agenda. Campaigning in Boston on Sunday, the president portrayed the special election as an either-or for several issues, including the climate bill.
"That's what this race on Tuesday is all about," he said. "Because it's easy to say you're independent and you're going to bring people together and all that stuff -- until you actually have to do it. And when the vote comes on energy, and there's a choice between standing with Big Oil or fighting for the clean-energy jobs of the future, whose side are you going to be on? Martha is going to be on your side."
Coakley's record on the climate issue includes leading a coalition of states, cities and environmental groups in the 2007 Supreme Court case that rebuked the George W. Bush administration for its decision not to link man-made greenhouse emissions to global warming.
Brown voted in 2008 for Massachusetts to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade program that limits emissions from the electric utility industry. But the Boston Globe reported in December that the GOP Senate candidate didn't blink when asked by a Harvard voter if he thought "that whole global warming thing is a big fraud?"
"It's interesting. I think the globe is always heating and cooling," Brown replied, according to the Globe. "It's a natural way of ebb and flow. The thing that concerns me lately is some of the information I've heard about potential tampering with some of the information.'"
"I just want to make sure if in fact ... the Earth is heating up, that we have accurate information, and it's unbiased by scientists with no agenda," he added. "Once that's done, then I think we can really move forward with a good plan."
Regardless of the Massachusetts outcome, environmental groups are already planning to ramp up their efforts this week to promote passage of the climate bill.
The League of Conservation voters, National Wildlife Federation and Earth Day Network have scheduled a press conference tomorrow to call on Congress to finish work on energy and climate legislation by April 22, the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. And the Environmental Defense Fund is releasing new research data on Thursday with GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who famously helped climate opponents during the George W. Bush administration.
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