With House impeachment proceedings taking longer than initially projected, a looming Senate trial poses a challenge to presidential candidates. Those who are senators may have to spend time away from the campaign trail as a trial intersects with primary contests, and candidates not in the Senate will have to break through a heightened focus on impeachment.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated in September that impeachment proceedings would move “expeditiously,” with some hoping to vote on impeachment articles by Thanksgiving. But Democrats have not announced a timeline for the process and have not yet scheduled public hearings, which are expected before a vote on articles of impeachment.
The delay in the House could mean that the Senate will begin a trial to consider the articles around the time of the first state primary contests, forcing senators vying for the nomination to stay in Washington, D.C., rather than campaign in key states. The Iowa caucuses are Feb. 3, and the New Hampshire primary is Feb. 11.
Six senators remain in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination: Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts, Kamala Harris of California, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Michael Bennet of Colorado.
Republican Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy on Wednesday suggested that a Senate trial intersecting with the primary campaign is by design.
“Maybe it’s a coincidence, but I don’t believe in coincidences up here,” Kennedy said on Fox News. “Who does that help?”
When asked if he thinks that the situation would help Joe Biden, Kennedy responded, “Amen, brother.”
“I’m not accusing anybody of anything. I’m just saying it’s been my experience up here, there are very few coincidences,” Kennedy added. “All of them will be in the Senate six days a week, most of the day, Monday through Saturday. Now, you don’t have to be MENSA material to figure out who that helps.”
South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who has been inching up to fourth place behind Biden, Warren, and Sanders in most recent state and national primary polls, would also be uninhibited from campaigning during Senate proceedings around the time of the primaries.
A trial around the primaries, however, could also be an advantage for the senators seeking the nomination as national attention is focused on impeachment rather than policy proposals.
“Even among Iowa Democrats, they’re going to be focused on the trial in Washington, and I think the actual campaigning in Iowa will be a sideshow,” Democratic strategist Brad Bannon told the Washington Examiner, noting that the top priority of most Democratic primary voters is replacing President Trump. “The senators have more opportunity to score points and be in the limelight than the candidates who aren’t senators,” Bannon said.
Harris and Klobuchar built their national profile during Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing last year when Harris grilled Kavanaugh on the Mueller investigation, and Kavanaugh asked Klobuchar if she had ever been blackout drunk.
While the senators under current rules would not be able to speak during the trial when they act as jurors, they could make comments to reporters and the press.
Jim Manley, another Democratic strategist, warned that the senators “need to be a little bit careful” and make an effort to appear neutral since they will be jurors in a Senate trial. “They need to avoid the presidential campaign aspect of the process. They got to focus on this job,” he told the Washington Examiner.
Manley agreed that while candidates like Biden and Buttigieg “have the luxury of continuing to meet with them [voters] while the senators are stuck in Washington,” it wouldn’t be detrimental to the senators’ campaigns.
[Also read: Biden: Impeachment ‘not good for the nation’]
“Throughout this process, the whole political world is going to be focused on what’s going on in the United States Capitol,” Manley said. “There’s ways to get around it, maybe a conference call to a rally or something like that, but I think on the by and by, their focus needs to be on the job at hand.”
The senators running for president have stressed that their responsibilities to attend an impeachment trial outweigh their presidential campaigns.
“Some things are more important than politics,” Warren said on Tuesday. “We have a responsibility here, and it’s not something that I take any pleasure in, but it’s something that has to be done. So I’ll be there.”
“You really have to let the chips fall where they may,” Klobuchar told HuffPost last week. “This is our constitutional duty. If the trial is in January, if the trial is in February, we’re going to have to be here.”
