A conservative friend of mine sent me the word via email a few weeks back of the impending retirement of New Mexico Democrat Jeff Bingaman. In the subject line (and you could practically feel the smirk on his face as he typed it), he wrote the following: "What does Senator Bingaman know about the 2012 elections that we don't?"
My pal on the right can be forgiven for speculating. It does seem a bit unusual that we have seen so many retirements in the Senate so early in the 2012 campaign cycle. That four of those six retirees have come from the Democratic caucus (in the form of three actual Democrats and one Joe Lieberman) might only add to the intrigue.
And, sure, it is tough to dispute that the conventional wisdom (that 2012 could potentially be a wicked Senate cycle for Democrats) has legitimate moorings.
After all, Democrats are defending well more than twice the seats of the GOP, and have arguably five times as many vulnerable seats to defend. With that in mind, it is not wildly speculative to suggest that some folks might be heading for the exits ahead of the curve.
Except, quite frankly, I don't think that is what's going on in this case. Indeed, the half dozen retirements to date in the Senate appear to be, all in all, somewhat unique and random in their genesis. Plus, a study of the 2010 cycle tells us that this high number of early retirements is (a) not all that unique and (b) hardly indicative of the direction the cycle will eventually go.
Let us take this second half of the story first. The "wave" of retirements in this cycle is actually somewhat illusory, a sense created by the relatively small window of time in which they occurred. In other words, having six retirements this early in the cycle is not unusual, but the fact that all six occurred within a time span of just five weeks (starting with Kay Bailey Hutchison's announcement on 1/14 and ending with Jeff Bingaman's on 2/18) made it seem like a mass exodus.
Indeed, in the most recent cycle (2010), by this point in the campaign nearly the same number of Senators had announced that they would not be seeking re-election. There is one caveat: two of those five (Burris and Kaufman) were appointees that had merely indicated that they were unlikely to run for full terms in their own right (though official announcements of same would come later). But three Republicans had announced their retirements: Sam Brownback (KS), Kit Bond (MO), and George Voinovich (OH).
Which brings us to the peril of trying to use early retirements to imply predictive value for how a campaign cycle is likely to go. All of the early retirements in 2010 were Republicans, a half dozen of whom had headed for the exits before the summer of 2009 drew to a close. As we came to learn, 2010 wound up being a pretty damned good cycle for Senate Republicans.
In fairness, this is not to say that retirements can't presage electoral outcomes: 2008 was a year in which there were relatively few retirements, but they all came from the Republican side. All that is being said here is that one cannot gauge the political winds from the partisan composition of retirements alone.
So, if the sextet of Senate retirements isn't terribly unusual, and it isn't always instructive to draw any nascent political trends from them, what the hell is going on?
The answer, albeit unsatisfying, is that each one seems to have its own set of unique circumstances. It is difficult, unless you are really trying to do so, to draw any common threads here.
There have been six retirement announcements thus far in the 2012 cycle. Three of them have been Democrats: Jeff Bingaman (NM), Jim Webb (VA), and Kent Conrad (ND). Also technically from the Democratic caucus, we have seen the retirement of Joe Lieberman (CT). Lastly, we have seen a pair of Republicans call it quits: Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX) and Jon Kyl (AZ).
From that list alone, we see one flaw in the "Dems leaving before the wave" theory. The partisan breakdown of the retirements has hardly been one-sided. Democrats have to be at least a little alarmed, of course, that their open seats look a little more perilous on paper than the GOP's. But any suggestion that the retirement picture represents some kind of a mass exodus on the part of Democrats is more than a little silly.
Especially when one considers that each of the Democratic retirements can easily be explained by other factors:
Start with the most recent retirement, that of New Mexico's Jeff Bingaman. His retirement announcement nine days ago centered on the simple fact that, after three decades in the Senate, Bingaman decided it was someone else's turn.
There's no real reason not to take Bingaman at face value here. Polling conducted by our polling partners at PPP just before his retirement strongly suggested that Bingaman was as likely a candidate for re-election as one would be likely to find in this grouchy political climate. So, it seems likely that Bingaman's decision to walk was less about political calculation and more about the fact that, at age 67, he merely was tired of service in a body in which he had sat for close to half of his lifetime. Understandable, to be sure.
North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad headed for the exits last month, blaming (in part) the budget deficit for doing so:
"After months of consideration, I have decided not to seek reelection in 2012," Conrad said in a letter to constituents. "There are serious challenges facing our state and nation, like a $14 trillion debt and America's dependence on foreign oil. It is more important I spend my time and energy trying to solve these problems than to be distracted by a campaign for reelection."
Those who find Conrad's decision to cite the budget deficit as a reason to retire might find it interesting to note that there is precedent with this man and this cause. Recall that Conrad has actually served in the United States Senate in two separate tenures in office. Elected in 1986, he retired in 1992, claiming that the inability of the Senate to curb the budget deficit in his first term violated one of the central tenets of his candidacy. Conrad's return to the Senate came just months later, when longtime Democratic Senator Quentin Burdick passed away. Conrad, confident in his mind that running for the open seat left by Burdick's passing did not violate his pledge of retirement on the deficit issue, ran in the special election, and was elected alongside Byron Dorgan in the 1992 elections.
And, indeed, if one wants to speculate, Dorgan might be a good place to start. The North Dakota delegation had remarkable stability: the same three men had served the state in the halls of Congress from 1992 to 2010. Then, Dorgan retired, and longtime Rep. Earl Pomeroy was washed out in the House tsunami last November. Now, Conrad is the lone Democrat alongside Republican delegation mates John Hoeven and Rick Berg. It is a different environment for Conrad, and one that he very well might not have found to his liking.
Webb's retirement may well be the most curious one. While Bingaman and Conrad had 56 years of Senate service between them, Webb was a freshman in the Senate. Therefore, his announcement that he was leaving the Senate earlier this month is tougher to chalk up to the traditional explanations.
But while Webb's retirement was less traditional (members rarely retire after just one term), it was not particularly shocking. As Chris Cillizza pointed out at the time, Democratic insiders had Webb at a 50/50 shot at retirement all along. In his mid-60s, he was not a traditional rookie elected official. There also seemed to be an issue with comfort level that lifelong elected politicos rarely experience. Taken together, his decision to leave office therefore seemed to be more about personal desire and less about political calculation. Especially when a late 2010 PPP poll showed Webb leading GOP frontrunner George Allen despite less-than-stellar approval numbers.
If there was one "Democrat" who left as a result of political calculation, it was almost certainly one Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. Lieberman's poll numbers have been pretty awful for years, and unlike 2006, the presence of ambitious Republicans in his state meant that Lieberman couldn't skate to victory by being the de-facto GOP nominee like he had in 2006, when he cobbled together a coalition of still-loyal Dems and state Republicans to win a narrow victory.
In short, he was about to be involuntarily retired. So he jumped, claiming all along that he felt his re-election prospects weren't in any danger. Which was fantasy, of course.
Indeed, if there is any prospects for politically motivated retirements in the immediate future, it may well come from the other side. When Kay Bailey Hutchison retired last month, she cited the demands of travel and a young family (she has 9 year-old twins) as reasons for her decision.
However, as Tom Jensen noted at the time, there may have been other considerations afoot, as well. Having been buried in a one-sided defeat in the 2010 gubernatorial primaries, KBH had made her name pretty muddy with the conservative wing of her party in-state. The prospects of her getting buried under an avalanche of teabags was pretty damned high.
And she might not be the only one. Witness what is presently taking place in Indiana, where longtime Republican Senator Richard Lugar is watching helplessly as state treasurer Richard Mourdock lines up an army of teabaggers to dispatch him. The humiliating news that a majority of county and state GOP officials are lining up with the insurgent candidate could easily provoke a retirement announcement from Lugar, who will be 80 years of age on primary day in 2012.
Could there be others? History tells us that there almost certainly will be additional retirements. And while it is difficult to read the tea leaves from the retirements to date, future retirement announcements might be more instructive in explaining the tenor of the 2012 cycle.