Left and Right Already Swinging at Ark. Senator
The conservative Club for Growth tags Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor as President Barack Obama’s “closest ally” in the state. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun-control advocacy group says Pryor “let us down.”
Pryor’s re-election race is 17 months away, but the Democratic incumbent seen as perhaps the most vulnerable in 2014 is already taking hits from the right and the left. That’s forced the second-term senator to aggressively defend himself and step into re-election mode sooner than planned, even though he has no Republican opponent.
“My goal right now is to put the campaign off until the election year, 2014,” Pryor told reporters recently. “They keep dragging me back into the politics, they keep running ads and trying to keep it stirred it up here.”
Republicans are trying to unseat Pryor and three other Democratic incumbents who represent states that Republican Mitt Romney won in last year’s presidential race: Mark Begich of Alaska, Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.
Democrats need to defend 21 seats, including seven in largely rural states that Obama lost in 2012.