Eighteen-year Senate incumbent Patty Murray (D-Washington) might find her name beginning to rise in the list of endangered Senate seats. A Rasmussen poll shows her lagging behind possible Republican challenger Dino Rossi, who lost the 2004 gubernatorial race in Washington by a razor-thin margin and also ran for governor in 2008. A newly released SurveyUSA poll shows Murray with a 43-50 approval rating, dangerous territory for an incumbent. 61% of independents disapprove of her job performance. Will voting to push through Obamacare via the reconciliation process endear her to them?
UPDATE: A lot of commenters have replied with some skepticism about the prospects of Murray losing this seat. This skepticism is not completely unjustified; it's not for nothing that the Cook Political Report calls this race Solid Democrat. However, the political landscape is being shaken up day by day. I'm sure many would have rated the Massachusetts Senate race a Solid Democrat race in November 2009. The reductio ad Scott Brown may increasingly sound hackneyed, but there is an element of truth to it. As another commenter pointed out, candidate recruitment would be crucial. Based on Murray's current polling (and her approval rating has fallen about ten points from a year ago), the right Republican candidate could certainly make a strong go of it. Washington did, after all, have a Republican Senator as recently as 2001. So a Republican victory could be a possibility, one that seems to be growing stronger.
