UPDATE: Claire McCaskill on Monday announced she will not run for governor of Missouri in 2016.

The 2014 Republican rout left just five red-state Democrats in the Senate — and three of them are thinking about an early exit, decisions that could complicate Democrats’ plans to take back the chamber in 2016 and beyond.


Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, all of whom are up for reelection in 2018, are flirting with bids for governor next year instead. If they follow through and win, Democrats fear they’ll open up seats that could favor the GOP. And if they lose, their chance for reelection to the Senate could plunge too.

A McCaskill spokesman said the two-term senator is deciding which office would give her the greatest platform to deliver for Missourians, as well as how it might affect her family. Heitkamp’s office won’t address the gubernatorial rumors, but wary North Dakota Republicans are considering a plan to tinker with the state’s Senate vacancy law. Manchin has said that if the partisan fever in Washington doesn’t break soon, he’ll consider running for governor again.

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All three have had gubernatorial ambitions for years: Manchin was elected to two terms as West Virginia’s governor before choosing to run in a 2010 special election to replace longtime Sen. Robert Byrd after Byrd’s death. Heitkamp was defeated in the 2000 governor’s race by Republican John Hoeven, with whom she now serves in the Senate. McCaskill lost narrowly to Matt Blunt in the 2004 gubernatorial contest and now serves alongside Blunt’s father, GOP Sen. Roy Blunt.

The three senators will weigh gubernatorial bids in 2016 against staying in the Senate and facing voters in the 2018 midterms. The past two midterms were disastrous for Democrats, though a new president in 2017 and an improving economy could scramble that dynamic. Still, the loss of up to three proven candidates — who represent states increasingly hostile to Democrats — would be, at minimum, a setback for the party.

“It’s definitely a little bit disconcerting that folks like this who can get reelected in red states may be thinking about running for governor instead,” said Jim Manley, a former adviser to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. “They’ve shown an ability to win in states that are pretty tough for Democrats right now.”

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Any decision to return to state politics may have been nudged further by Democrats’ miserable showing in November’s midterm elections. The party lost all seven seats it held in states Mitt Romney won in 2012 — with longtime Democratic incumbents resoundingly rejected in red states like Arkansas and Louisiana — and the party’s prospects in West Virginia, Kentucky and Georgia were easily defeated.

Democrats need to win at least four seats — perhaps five — to retake the Senate next year, an achievable-but-difficult prospect based on the number of Republicans up for reelection in blue states. But if Manchin, Heitkamp and McCaskill depart, Democrats may need to run up a higher margin to protect their majority beyond 2016.

“The magic number becomes that much higher if you’re going to look ahead,” said Brian Walsh, a Republican strategist and former communications director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Under current state laws, if they run and win, each would have the opportunity to appoint a Senate replacement until the next election. The three Democrats could also lose, rendering them damaged goods if they try to run for reelection to the Senate.

For the senators themselves, the allure of the world’s greatest deliberative body may have waned. They’re facing at least two years in the minority of a chamber already wracked by gridlock and partisanship. The most exciting policymaking in the nation has been at the state level, and the thought of executive control may have more appeal than lawmaking.

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“For Claire, this is a tough decision that will ultimately come down to two things — where can she make the biggest impact on behalf of Missourians, and how her decision will impact her family,” said McCaskill spokesman John LaBombard.

Caitlin Legacki, a former McCaskill aide who is now a principal at the Democratic consulting firm Precision Strategies, says her former boss would’ve rejected a gubernatorial bid by now if it weren’t a serious consideration.

“If Claire wasn’t at all interested, she would have ruled it out by now. She’s a pretty direct person,” said Legacki, who was McCaskill’s communications director on her successful 2012 reelection campaign and worked with the Missouri Democratic Party. “I think if she did run, she’d immediately be the best candidate in the race.”

Attorney General Chris Koster has also been considering a run to succeed Gov. Jay Nixon, a fellow Democrat, and he’s been amassing a war chest that could make him a formidable candidate. But at least one Democratic strategist familiar with high-level conversations about the 2016 gubernatorial field said Koster would consider deferring to McCaskill if she decided to get into the race. He’s also taken a beating in the press lately, following a New York Times story this past fall that detailed his relationship with lobbyists.

In West Virginia, Manchin has said his decision about running for governor or Senate will come down to whether the new Congress moves away from brinkmanship and polarization. “If he doesn’t see improvements in discarding partisan rhetoric and moving toward bipartisan efforts to tackle many of the challenges that West Virginia and the United States face today, then he would consider a move back [to] West Virginia,” said Manchin spokeswoman Katie Longo.

That decision is likely to come by April or May, she added.

Mike Plante, a West Virginia Democratic strategist, said that if Manchin heads back into state politics, there’s a decent stable of rising West Virginia Democratic stars who could succeed him, including Ralph Baxter, a wealthy businessman from Wheeling, and U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin, cousin of former interim Sen. Carte Goodwin.

But North Dakota, one of the nation’s most conservative states, doesn’t have a ready-made bench for Democrats. That Heitkamp won at all in 2012 was viewed as a minor miracle: the result of a well-run campaign combined with a miserable one by her opponent, then-GOP Rep. Rick Berg, who lost by less than a percentage point. Although Heitkamp hasn’t explicitly ruled out a run for governor, she’s not denying interest, either.

“Sen. Heitkamp is focused on her work to fight for North Dakotans in the U.S. Senate,” said Heitkamp spokeswoman Abbie McDonough in a statement, when asked about the senator’s interest in a gubernatorial bid.

Amid the rumors that she’ll run for governor, though, North Dakota Republicans are mulling a change to state law that could discourage her. State Rep. Roscoe Streyle told local new outlets that he wants to change the way Senate vacancies are filled, sharply curtailing the governor’s appointment power — and he admitted he had Heitkamp in mind when he crafted his legislation.

Under current law, the governor may appoint anyone to fill a Senate vacancy until the next biennial election. Streyle’s proposal would require the governor to call a special election within 60 days of a vacancy.

In a phone interview, Streyle said his effort wasn’t intended to be partisan.

“I don’t know how you argue that the people shouldn’t decide,” he said, adding that he’s open to seeking Democratic co-sponsors and expanding the bill to cover all major statewide offices.

Chad Oban, executive director of the North Dakota Democratic Party, said even floating the proposal is a sign that Republicans are worried about a Heitkamp bid.

Oban said he’s not sure whether Heitkamp will run, but “there’s lots of Democrats that would be ecstatic about the idea.”

“[Republicans are] clearly very scared of the prospect of her running for governor, of her running a successful campaign,” he said.

Even if Democrats did prefer for their incumbents to remain in the Senate — Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Jon Tester of Montana are the other two red-state Democrats left — it’s not clear that persuasion would work.

“These are sitting senators who know what the job is and know exactly what they’d be giving up if they decided to pursue a different office,” said Matt Canter, who just stepped down as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s deputy executive director. “They’re going to go through their own individual process, which I think is pretty inoculated from any pressure from party committees.”

There’s a deep divide among Democrats about whether the party could — or should — fight for their incumbents to remain in Washington.

The more Democrats in governor’s mansions after 2020, some in the party note, the more influence Democrats will have when political boundaries are redrawn — which could help put the House of Representatives and a number of state legislative chambers back into play. That’s partly how Republicans cemented their current political advantages in recent years.

“If Joe Manchin’s going to run for the governorship, the good news is we’re likely to win the governorship,” said Joe Trippi, a D.C.-based Democratic consultant. “I think the governor has more influence on how voters in that state start thinking about the two parties.”