Senatorial Approval Ratings

Following up to their gubernatorial approval ratings last month, SUSA has compiled polls on all 100 Senators. You can find the full results for our Massachusetts senators here. After yesterday's discussion about how Massachusetts politicians can appeal to Independents, I thought it would be interesting to see how self-described Moderates and Independents viewed our two Senators.

	Moderates		Independents
	Approve	Disapprove	Approve	Disapprove
Ted Kennedy	64%	30%	56%	39%
John Kerry	56%	40%	50%	44%

It's interesting to note that both Moderates and Independents not only prefer Kennedy to Kerry, but also disapprove of him less. It might just be because he's a Kennedy, and Kerry is coming of a losing presidential race, but it might be because you at least always know where Kennedy stands. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Speaking of Senator Kennedy, it looks like the state GOP still can't find anyone to run against him. GOP consultant Charley Manning was practically begging ambitious Republicans to challenge the Senator to build on a future run. Still, that hasn't stopped Kennedy's team from jumping all over the Wall Street Journal Op/Ed which advised Governor Mitt Romney himself to take on Kennedy. From a Kennedy fundraising e-mail:

[Romney] wants to run for President in 2008. But along the way, he has a decision in 2006 -- whether to run for governor again, or take on Senator Kennedy.

As Romney plots his rise, conservative commentators say that if he can "defeat the brother of JFK," he will have done more to "add momentum to a run for the presidency than anything he could accomplish as governor." That's the empty ambition of Republicans like Romney. A race against Kennedy would be, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, to "gain political capital" for a White House run.

It's only fair -- after all Romney has been using Kennedy's name in fundraising letters for months (probably years) now and Romney's popularity among Massachusetts Democrats is not getting any higher with the Governor's recent rhetoric.