Broken by Ira Shapiro

Author:Ira Shapiro [Shapiro, Ira]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781538105825
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2017-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

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Investigating the Russian Connection

As Election Day 2016 approached, Richard Burr, the two-term Republican senator from North Carolina, expected to coast to an easy reelection, suddenly faced a surprisingly stiff challenge from Deborah Ross, a liberal former state representative best known for her work as executive director of the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in the 1990s.1 A series of polls showed Burr only one or two points ahead of Ross.2 North Carolina had become perhaps the hottest battleground state in the country.3 In a state that Barack Obama had carried in 2008 but lost in 2012, Trump and Clinton were locked in a very close race, while the gubernatorial contest between Republican governor Pat McCrory and his Democratic challenger Roy Cooper, the state attorney general, had attracted national attention because of the highly charged debate over the state’s “bathroom bill.”4 Burr received unfavorable press coverage when he jokingly expressed surprise that an anti-Hillary ad by the National Rifle Association “didn’t have [Hillary] in the bullseye.”5

Burr had previously announced that this would be his last term.6 Now, in these turbulent waters, he suddenly confronted the serious possibility that he would be done six years earlier than expected. Even as Republicans privately criticized Burr for his overconfident and lethargic campaign, outside money poured into North Carolina to try to rescue the embattled incumbent.7

Neighboring Virginia was also a major presidential battleground. Obama had won Virginia twice, and Hillary Clinton was clearly favored there, having chosen Tim Kaine, the popular senator and former governor, as her running mate. Mark Warner, the senior senator from Virginia, was not on the ballot; he had barely survived an unexpectedly close race in 2014. Warner could be forgiven for wondering what, exactly, had happened to the seemingly unlimited potential of his career. Once touted as a likely presidential prospect, Warner had been generally ineffective and frustrated in the gridlocked Senate. Warner, a moderate, probusiness consensus builder given to working in a bipartisan basis, had channeled his energy and passion to the failed efforts to produce a “grand bargain” on spending and taxes.8 Now he suffered the indignity of watching his former lieutenant governor be tapped to be Clinton’s vice president. If the Democrats held the Senate, Warner could look forward to becoming the chairman of the Rules Committee, probably the least inspiring assignment that the Senate could offer. Mark Warner, who had given serious thought to quitting the Senate after one term, was probably considering what else he might want to do in life.

When the Senate convened in January 2017, just two months later, Richard Burr and Mark Warner found themselves in situations that had been stunningly transformed. Buoyed by the “dark money” that flooded the campaign, Burr had won a relatively comfortable victory over Ross, and returned to the Senate to chair the Intelligence Committee.9 Warner had benefited from an improbable sequence of events, as Patrick Leahy, the longest serving senator, decided to give up his position as ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee to become ranking on Appropriations.

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