Sen. Udall Gets Love from D.C. Press

by: Colorado Pols

Mon Mar 09, 2009 at 14:33:57 PM MDT

Mark Udall of Colorado spent a decade in the House slowly inching up the House leadership ladder. Now, just nine weeks into his Senate career, he's working from a post where he can influence his party's agenda on Capitol Hill.

As a newly minted deputy whip, Udall is charged with building close ties between Democratic leaders and a gaggle of senators just like him - the freshmen who will be crucial to so much of President Obama's legislative success.

In the session's first two months, Udall has helped align every one of the 11 new Democrats behind two of the first big-ticket items on Obama's agenda: the $787 billion economic stimulus package and the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. But bigger challenges loom that might divide the newcomers from many members of their caucus, ranging from the president's request for a $3.55 trillion budget for fiscal 2010 to his ideas for overhauling health care and energy policy.

The Senate Democratic Class of 2008 already ranks as one of the biggest groups of majority party newcomers in modern times. This year, the seven Democrats who were elected for the first time last fall have been joined by four people appointed to succeed senators who left for the Obama administration (the president among them) - and the group may yet grow to a dozen if Al Franken ends up prevailing in Minnesota. (By contrast, there are just two GOP freshmen: Idaho's James Risch and Nebraska's Mike Johanns.)

Udall's boss, Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, and other senior Democrats want to galvanize a firewall of freshman support behind Obama's legislative initiatives, in much the same way that Democratic Senate leaders tapped the class of 16 Democrats first elected alongside Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 to be partners in the early days of the New Deal. But in trying to keep the newcomers in the party's corner, Udall and other leaders have to perform a delicate balancing act...

...With such past dramatic reversals of fortune in mind, Udall said he and his fellow freshmen feel compelled to carve out nuanced, independent records that will appeal to voters when they run for re-election themselves in 2014 - without the benefit of any presidential coattails, because Obama will have either won or lost re-election two years before.