In a surprise move, six-term Sen. Carl Levin (D) of Michigan, the respected and famously hard-working chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, announced on March 7 that he will not seek reelection in 2014.
He is most likely to be replaced by Rep Gary Peters (D) of Michigan, who has solid party support and a war chest of some $1.7 million for the campaign.
But Senator Levin’s decision to pass on a reelection bid also gives Republicans an unexpected pick-up opportunity in a state Democrats had been expected to win. The question is: Will Senate Republicans be able to recruit a top-tier candidate to compete with Peters in a state that rarely sends Republicans to the Senate. Until mid-August, that effort focused on Rep. Dave Camp (R), the chair of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.
Congressman Camp initially declined to run, saying that he wanted to focus on Washington's fiscal woes and the sweeping tax reform plan he has been developing with Senate Finance chair Max Baucus. But by GOP House rules, Camp is term-limited as Ways and Means chair and will lose his gavel at the end of the current Congress in 2014, unless House leaders give him a waiver. (Camp is close to House Speaker John Boehner.) Early in August, Camp signaled that he was reconsidering that decision. But on Aug. 16, he again shut the door on a run.
"I will continue to put my full focus and effort on serving my constituents in mid- and northern-Michigan as their representative and as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, he said in a statement.
Former two-term Michigan secretary of state Terry Land has announced her candidacy for the open Senate seat, but state Republicans – and campaign donors – have stayed largely in a holding pattern, waiting to see whether Camp would get into the race. With Camp's second exit, the issue becomes whether support will be forthcoming for the Republican what did get into the race.
Senate Democrats say they expect to hold the state. "We fully expect to keep Michigan blue in November 2014," said Sen. Michael Bennet (D) of Colorado, who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
So far, many analysts agree. "Michigan's fundamentals still pose major problems for Republicans," says Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report. "Democrats have won the past six presidential elections and 11 of the past 12 Senate elections."
As chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Levin led probes of the Wall Street financial crisis, the Enron debacle, the credit card industry, and offshore tax havens.
After 34 years in the Senate, he says that wants to spend his last two years in office focused on "fighting for the things I believe in," including reviving manufacturing, ending the war in Afghanistan, and adequately funding education, infrastructure, and veterans' care, without the distraction of a campaign.
