GOP Stays Silent on Ensign's 2012 Chances
Politico reports:
Nevada Sen. John Ensign appears to be gauging whether he can mount a reelection bid in 2012, despite the ongoing fallout of his extramarital affair with a campaign aide.
The reaction from Senate Republican leaders who were once in his inner circle? Silence.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was quiet for several seconds when POLITICO asked him whether he’d back an Ensign reelection bid, then dodged the question altogether: “I don’t have any observations to make about that matter today.”
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman, wouldn’t offer his support to Ensign when asked about the Republican senator’s potential candidacy.
“I’m just focused on — what is it? — 43 days from now,” Cornyn said last week in the Capitol, looking at his watch.
Indeed, the spotlight in Nevada is focused squarely on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s fiercely contested reelection race, allowing Ensign to launch an under-the-radar effort to resuscitate a career that had led him into Senate leadership and placed him on some shortlists for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.
Over the past month, Ensign has crisscrossed Nevada, holding a number of official Senate events to show voters that the messy fallout from his affair hasn’t undermined his responsibilities. He’s reaching out to fundraisers — for his legal expense fund and for his campaign accounts — and he’s making no secret to the local press and his supporters that he is not yet ready to call it quits from politics.
For Ensign to succeed in 2012, and ward off primary challengers, he’ll need to shore up support from conservative voters who he hopes forgive him for his infidelity with former aide Cynthia Hampton and overlook the ethics inquiries that still dog him as a result of that affair.
But even if he starts to win back Nevadans, his Republican colleagues are another matter.
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