Tom Davis will not run for Senate in Virginia

We had been getting hints for days, and it is now official: Tom Davis will not run for Senate in Virginia. This has two very distinct consequences:

• This is great for Senate Democrats, for it removes the last possible scenarios under which this race might be competitive. Mark Warner has been running away with massive leads in the polls, but the one worry he might have had was that Tom Davis would be able to cut the Democratic edge in Northern Virginia (Davis's home region, as well as an area that looks for moderate Republicans in Davis's mold). Davis's non-entry in the race means that the GOP candidate will be former Governor Jim Gilmore who has little of what it takes to hurt Mark Warner. The Democrat will sweep through Northern Virginia by such margings that Gilmore will have no way to offset that.


• But this is quite terrible news for House Democrats. Tom Davis's district, VA-11, is trending blue. Expecting an open seat, Democrats were already celebrating a near certain pick-up. I myself rated the race "lean takeover" in my September rankings, assuming that the seat would be open. But I downgraded the race in my latest rankings after the first reports that Davis might not be running for Senate after all. Democrats can certainly still mount a strong challenge against Davis, but the Republican remains popular in his district and would be not be easily defeated. Though it remains a sure possibility, it is nowhere as certain as it would have been if Davis had run for Senate.

It is still possible that Davis might opt out of running for re-election and just retire from Congress, going for a lucrative lobbying job. His comments last week that he might want to challenge Jim Webb in 2012 might be an indicate that he will not do so, however, given that it would be easier for him to run then as a representative than as a lobbyist. But we shall see how this plays out in the next few days.

In other House news, Republicans are putting increased pressure on Representative Doolittle of retiring in 2008. Doolittle is entangled in a massive investigation for his links to lobbyist Abramoff. CA-04 is a very Republican district, so it would only be in danger if Doolittle remained the Republican nominee. And poll shave indicated Democrats would be heavily favored to pick-up the seat in that case. These past few days, fellow California Republican Campbell became the first GOP congressman to call on Doolittle to call it quits, and NRCC chairman Tom Cole refused to offer any support for Doolittle: "The NRCC doesn't]have enough money to be generous and I'm going to put money where I think we can win."