McConnell preps for 2016 battle

Mitch McConnell spent years charting the Republican path back to power — and now he’s already plotting to make sure they don’t lose it.

The Kentucky Republican is quietly pushing his fellow Republican senators to beef up their political shops. He’s considering a new super PAC that could spend millions on Senate races. And he’s locking down operatives for another cycle who were key to GOP triumphs this month.

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The under-the-radar moves less than three weeks after the 2014 midterms and a month-and-a-half before McConnell takes over for Harry Reid makes clear the brutal reality in front of Republicans: Their majority could be short lived.

Republicans face a daunting map in 2016, when they will be forced to defend 24 seats in a presidential year, while Democrats have to defend only 10 seats — a scenario McConnell is taking so seriously he’s leaving nothing to chance, starting now.

“You can start too late, but never too soon,” McConnell said in an interview in the Capitol hallways last week, citing the words of the late Happy Chandler, a former Kentucky senator turned commissioner of baseball.

Last week, McConnell summoned all 24 Republicans up for reelection in 2016 to a morning meeting at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which was even attended by potential 2016 presidential candidates like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has said he wouldn’t run for the White House and Senate at the same time. At the meeting, McConnell and Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the new NRSC chairman, made a blunt declaration to their colleagues: Reelection, they said, starts now.

With the NRSC’s new executive director, Ward Baker, and the deputy executive director, Kevin McLaughlin, the two GOP operatives made a presentation of how much campaigns have changed since the senators last ran in 2010, even noting iPhones were just a couple years old back then and iPads had just come on market. They implored their candidates to begin a heavy fundraising push immediately, and tried to tell them on what to expect in the ad war.

For instance, the GOP projected based on past trends that 83,000 radio and TV spots from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee alone would air in all 2016 Senate races. And McConnell detailed how he shrewdly adjusted his tactics to pull off a resounding primary and general election victory for a sixth term in 2014.

In the 35-minute discussion, the GOP leaders and top operatives also urged Republican senators to immediately hire their own pollsters, consultants and staff, given there will be a major competition for operatives with the crowded 2016 GOP presidential primary about to take shape. If there are certain staff who need training, they said, the NRSC was prepared to help groom them.

“Members need to begin to do the things to tool their campaigns differently, to understand the significant change in resource needs,” Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said, recounting the message from the meeting. “And now is the time to begin to think about the mechanics of the campaigns.”

Burr, who is up for reelection for a third term in 2016, has just $720,000 in cash in a state where more than $100 million was spent in the 2014 North Carolina Senate race, in which Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan narrowly lost to Republican Thom Tillis. But despite the lack of money, Burr said he plans on running and even seemed ready to take on Hagan if she were to run against him.

“Repeats in North Carolina, historically, don’t work too well,” Burr said in an interview. “You have to ask yourself, how many people will write a check to somebody who just lost?”

In 2014, retirements became a major problem for Democrats, as they lost open seats vacated by retiring members in Montana, West Virginia and South Dakota. McConnell, a former NRSC chairman himself who has spent years studying campaigns in other states and spent an inordinate amount of time strategizing with NRSC officials this past cycle, is expected to eventually set a deadline for when lawmakers need to announce whether they will retire.

Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk, a freshman Republican who suffered a stroke in 2012 and travels around the Capitol in a wheelchair, said he was “doing everything possible” to prepare for a run and win potentially tough primary and general election races in 2016. Other potential retirees, like Indiana Sen. Dan Coats and Arizona Sen. John McCain, have also sent signals they are likely to run again, buoyed by the fact that they are no longer in the minority.

After last week’s NRSC meeting, Wicker felt bullish.

“I don’t expect any [GOP] retirements,” Wicker said confidently in an interview. “I do not. I think we are excited about the chance to govern, the chance to legislate as the founders intended, I think there’s a lot of enthusiasm, yes.”

Donors, he said, are feeling much happier, and many have dumped big bucks early into the campaign accounts of Republican senators who have held a bevy of fundraisers at the NRSC since Election Day.

“People need to start to get prepared,” said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican who attended the meeting.

The Republican path to keep the Senate won’t be easy. They have to defend seats in blue states and swing states, like Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio, Florida, Illinois and Wisconsin — compared to just 10 for Democrats. Moreover, Democrats could have some serious statewide recruits. In recent interviews, two Democratic senators who lost this year — Arkansas’ Mark Pryor and Alaska’s Mark Begich — punted on their intentions to run in 2016 in their respective states, though they didn’t rule it out.

“We’ll see,” Begich said when asked if he’d run against Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in 2016.

Plus, Hillary Clinton could end up at the top of the ballot if she decides to run and becomes the party’s nominee, a scenario that could boost turnout, giving Democrats hope that they can increase the gender gap among women voters after seeing it shrink in 2014.

With Democratic turnout typically...