Who is the luckiest currently serving American politician?

[bballrox4717]

Kirsten Gillibrand has got to be up there right? If she doesn't get picked for NY's Senate seat, I don't see how she would have kept her House seat in the 2010 wave. Her political career would have been over, and now she's a plausible presidential candidate.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I'm not sure I'd go with McCaskill or Reid, seeing as they both, especially Reid, manipulated the republican primaries to get the candidate they wanted. So it was more skill than luck. Chris Coons wouldn't be a bad choice.

Yeah, this is the correct answer. Coons went from the status of complete nobody to that of future US Senator by virtue of events no rational mind could have foreseen.

[ill ind]

  Obama's oppo research wasn't all that good.  Jack Ryan's dirt was known about by a GOP operative who later was the campaign manager for one of Ryan's GOP primary opponents, John Borling, and let the cat out of the bag just before the primary.  Borling fired him for it.
  The whole conservative spin that Obama somehow lucked out because he destroyed his opponents in the IL Senate race is all a bunch of bunk!!

Ill_Ind

[NewYorkExpress]

I'm not sure I'd go with McCaskill or Reid, seeing as they both, especially Reid, manipulated the republican primaries to get the candidate they wanted. So it was more skill than luck. Chris Coons wouldn't be a bad choice.

Yeah, this is the correct answer. Coons went from the status of complete nobody to that of future US Senator by virtue of events no rational mind could have foreseen.

I'm sure... If Coons ran against Castle in 2006, 2008 or even 2012, given how blue Delaware has become, I'd probably bet on Coons winning, (Which is probably why Castle didn't run in any of those years)

[muon2]

Hull imploded because oppo research on him developed a tip that the papers ran with just a few weeks before the primary. The same thing happened to Jack Ryan after the primary. Some in the IL-GOP thought that Ryan could survive the story, but the leaders thought otherwise. Keyes was sold as someone who would run a specific type of campaign, but he chose to run one as a platform for his ideology. In any case Obama was not lucky, he had good staff that could turn up the right info on an opponent, and he used it at the most opportune time in a campaign.

I meant that he was lucky that dirt like that existed on those guys in the first place.

There's dirt on almost everyone at that level. Whether it gets magnified into a campaign issue that sticks is another question. Obama's campaigns have been adept at exploiting opportunities that arise, even if from external sources. To me that shows skill, not luck.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I'm not sure I'd go with McCaskill or Reid, seeing as they both, especially Reid, manipulated the republican primaries to get the candidate they wanted. So it was more skill than luck. Chris Coons wouldn't be a bad choice.

Yeah, this is the correct answer. Coons went from the status of complete nobody to that of future US Senator by virtue of events no rational mind could have foreseen.

I'm sure... If Coons ran against Castle in 2006, 2008 or even 2012, given how blue Delaware has become, I'd probably bet on Coons winning, (Which is probably why Castle didn't run in any of those years)

You mean apart from the fact these elections were contested by extremely popular incumbents, as opposed to some random dude?

Delaware is one of the few States left where retail politics and personal appeal can still weigh more strongly on voter's choices than partisan gravity, at least if the candidate is already an established officeholder with a centrist and uncontroversial record. After all, if Castle was able to retain his House seat amid the 2006 and 2008 democratic waves, it's not too hard to envision him winning a Senatorial race against Coons if Carper/Biden somehow hadn't run.

[LeBron]

Harry Reid would easily be the luckiest. He's survived narrow races with strong GOP candidates (Ensign) and in terrible years for Senate Democrats in 2004 and 2010, Reid gets a homophobic social conservative one year and a Tea Partier the other and if Sandoval declines a run in 2016 depending on if the Lt. Gov is a Democrat or he's more interested in returning to a judicial career, Reid's luck will keep on going alongside Hillary. McConnell is just as lucky though for somehow being able to survive 2008 (and favored to survive this year) as well as Boehner for skating by all his primaries thanks to the lack of organization and weak field of Ohio Tea Party candidates.

Others I would say are Heidi Heitkamp since she barely survived against a misogynist who believed raped women should be jailed for getting an abortion. Rob Portman as well given how even with the strong attacks against him as a Bush lackey who sent jobs overseas, Fisher was a terrible fundraiser who gained criticism alongside Strickland for the Ohio recession and the fact that it was 2010 and Fisher had a strong primary challenge. Then there's also the 2006 class (Sherrod Brown, Bill Nelson, Bob Casey, Claire McCaskill, Jon Tester) who got elected b/c of Bush and Iraq and survived re-election thanks to terrible candidates put up by the GOP in 2012 (not to have counted any of them out, though if those Dems got decent candidates). And when you think about it, luck really applies to most Senators. Donnelly sure as heck was lucky, Heller was for being there at the right time to fill Ensign's seat and barely surviving the election thanks to an unpopular Democrat, Murkowski for obvious reasons, Franken, Fisher since she would have never won if Ben Nelson ran again and she lucked it in facing a war criminal, Begich for barely beating a scandal-plagued Senator and now lucking out this year with higher turnout from ballot issues and a possible Miller Indie run, Kirk and Toomey because 2010, Tim Johnson for not ending up like Tom Daschle, Marco Rubio, Mary Landrieu, Michael Bennet and just on and on.

In the House, the obvious pick is Matheson in being able to survive in Utah as a Democrat and only by a few hundred votes in 2012 as well as Rahall if he pulls it off again. Just about all other Bluedogs still in the House and Tea Party Republicans in ruby red districts as well and Bob Gibbs should get an honorable mention for avoiding a Democratic challenge from John Boccieri this year or let alone any Democrat. David Joyce to for somehow being able to fend off Matt Lynch this year.

Governor's - LePage is the luckiest of them all for managing to get elected as a Tea Partier in Maine b/c of vote splitting and possibly being able to survive again if Cutler makes enough of an impact. Also Christie for strongly winning re-election shortly before Bridgegate was leaked, McAuliffe eeked out a win courtesy of Sarvis and the VA GOP, Pat Quinn for obvious reasons, Kasich, Walker, Snyder and Branstad for being elected by the skin of their teeth in Obama states amid outside money and terrible state economies, and Bullock, Jay Nixon, and Tomblin since they got elected in Presidential years and probably none of them would have survived a state governor race in 2010.

[Badger]

Coons for the reasons stated above. Gambling that someone like O'Donnell would beat Mike Castle in the primary, turning the race into near-walk in November, was a hellava bet.

Donnelly, LePage, and McCaskill also come to mind.

[bore]

I'm not sure I'd go with McCaskill or Reid, seeing as they both, especially Reid, manipulated the republican primaries to get the candidate they wanted. So it was more skill than luck. Chris Coons wouldn't be a bad choice.

Yeah, this is the correct answer. Coons went from the status of complete nobody to that of future US Senator by virtue of events no rational mind could have foreseen.

I'm sure... If Coons ran against Castle in 2006, 2008 or even 2012, given how blue Delaware has become, I'd probably bet on Coons winning, (Which is probably why Castle didn't run in any of those years)

You mean apart from the fact these elections were contested by extremely popular incumbents, as opposed to some random dude?

Delaware is one of the few States left where retail politics and personal appeal can still weigh more strongly on voter's choices than partisan gravity, at least if the candidate is already an established officeholder with a centrist and uncontroversial record. After all, if Castle was able to retain his House seat amid the 2006 and 2008 democratic waves, it's not too hard to envision him winning a Senatorial race against Coons if Carper/Biden somehow hadn't run.

And it's not like he was close to losing in either 2006 or 2008, he won them both by 20 points with the same electorate as the senate seat. He would have walked the general election in 2010.

EDIT: Senate polling here and here confirms this.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I've got to agree with those who have said, "Obama".

And don't forget that, as his re-election opponent, the Republicans picked an uncharismatic, transparently elitist, vulture capitalist multimillionaire from a non-mainstream religion. They might have had a better chance with a actual Bond villain.

[Mordecai]

He may not be the luckiest, but I'd say Bill Clinton was pretty lucky.

He's a political nobody who runs for Congress, gets the nomination and narrowly loses the general. His loss sets up a run for Attorney General in a very Democratic state. They let him, a nobody, walk to the nomination and, with no GOP opponent, automatically win the general. He then uses his short stint as AG to run for Governor 2 years later, also in a walk. At the astoundingly young age of 32. He later runs for President against an incumbent who's popular enough to scare away most of his well known Democratic opponents. He wins the nomination based on skill, but gets lucky enough to compete in a 3 way race for President (while Perot supposedly took votes equally from both sides, he was known for despising George Bush). So Clinton and another candidate both hammer Bush for months. Then, suddenly, the other candidate drops out smack in the middle of the campaign. So he becomes one of the youngest Presidents ever. He certainly has plenty of political skill, but his career involved quite a bit of luck as well.

He was a big fish in a small pond but I agree, based on how he came into this world, his life and ascent to the Presidency really is the American dream. But he also worked his entire life to get there and wanted to be President ever since he shook hands with JFK whereas with Obama, I get the impression that he didn't have the ambition to be President until about 2005.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

I'm not sure I'd go with McCaskill or Reid, seeing as they both, especially Reid, manipulated the republican primaries to get the candidate they wanted. So it was more skill than luck. Chris Coons wouldn't be a bad choice.

Yeah, this is the correct answer. Coons went from the status of complete nobody to that of future US Senator by virtue of events no rational mind could have foreseen.

Sort of like the previous guy elected to the seat, 29 year-old Joe Biden.