On the eve of the last election of the 2014 midterms, Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu must be wondering, "where did all the Democrats go?"
Landrieu, facing a 24-percent polling deficit against GOP opponent Rep. Bill Cassidy, was deserted in her hour of need by the cash-strapped Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), which threw in the towel and withdrew $2 million pledged to her campaign, leaving her swinging in the wind against an onslaught of money and ads from her Republican opponent,
The Hill reports.
Since Landrieu failed to amass enough votes to win the Nov. 4 election, causing the runoff, 13,900 of the 14,000 television ads that have run in the election have been from groups opposing Landrieu, The Hill notes. The Cassidy campaign has run 5,000 television spots against the Landrieu campaign's 3,000.
"The DSCC had no money, so it wasn’t that they pulled it," Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., told The Hill.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, meanwhile, lavished $1.4 million on the race,
The Washington Post reported, leaving Landrieu to complain bitterly: "I am extremely disappointed in the DSCC. I've said that. You know, they just walked away from this race."
The lack of popularity of President Obama dragged Landrieu's chances of winning down, while the lure of bringing their majority to 54 Senate seats kept Republicans in the fight.
Pearson Cross, political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette,
told CNN: "This election has not been about Cassidy. This election has been about the negative press that the president has gotten and the ability of Cassidy to tie Barack Obama and Harry Reid to Mary Landrieu."
Landrieu's claim of having seniority power weakened with the Republican takeover of the Senate and her attempt to win approval of the Keystone Pipeline project also failed, CNN reported.
A Democrat Senate aide told The Hill that Democrats are angry that Landrieu has been abandoned: "There’s a level of frustration that Sen. Landrieu is not getting the support she deserves," the aide said. "There should be more party support for her."
"You don’t abandon your friends when times get tough," Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., told The Hill.
They couldn't get much tougher.
Fox News reports that a WPA Opinion Research poll finds that Cassidy is outpacing Landrieu by 57-33 percent and commented: "Even if African-Americans support Landrieu at 95 percent and turn out in record numbers, she will still lose on election day."
US News reported that, as of Nov. 16, Cassidy had $1.3 million in his campaign chest, compared to Landrieu's $800,000.
The Hill said that the Senate aide commented: "It was likely that cold, strategic calculations — a committee left drained after losing seven seats last month and not wanting to pour more money into a likely unwinnable race — outweighed the principle of leaving a soldier on the battlefield."