Mitch McConnell has history in sight - if he can win

Corrections and clarifications: An earlier version of this story mistakenly included North Carolina among states President Obama carried in 2012.

TRAM, Ky. — On a recent bus tour through economically depressed small towns in the heart of the state's coal country, Sen. Mitch McConnell hammered the message he believes will deliver a trifecta of victory on Election Day: his re-election, a Senate GOP takeover and his elevation to majority leader in the next Congress.

"This administration needs to be stopped," declared McConnell to a crowd of miners and supporters gathered at a coal mine. "Put me in the majority, and I'll be calling the plays for America and looking out for Kentucky next year."

The coal miners cheered back: "Get him, Mitch!"

McConnell's bet — like every Republican running in a competitive Senate race this year — is that President Obama's unpopularity will outweigh everything else and deliver sweeping GOP victories in a battle largely being fought in states Mitt Romney won in 2012.

With days left in the race, McConnell, 72, is in the toughest re-election fight of his career against Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, a statewide elected Democrat half his age who hails from a family with ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Both Clintons have hit the campaign trail for her in the home stretch of a tight race, though most public polls give McConnell the narrow advantage.

One indicator of the president's unpopularity here is Grimes' refusal during a recent debate to say whether she voted for Obama, which McConnell has used against her in television and radio ads.

"The president's approval is the single biggest factor in an off-year election like this," McConnell told Paste BN. "I'm optimistic the American people are ready to go in a different direction, and I think they know the only thing they can do right now to go in a different direction is to change the Senate."

A Senate takeover would put Congress under Republican control for the first time in Obama's administration. Republicans already control the U.S. House, and they are forecast to strengthen their majority this year.

For McConnell, a GOP takeover would elevate him to Senate majority leader, fulfilling a career goal that has eluded him for the previous two elections.

But first he has to win his own race.

"We're optimistic," he said, but "I don't think it's over."

The path to a GOP takeover

Democrats hold the Senate 55-45, with the assist of two independent senators who caucus with the party. Republicans need a net gain of six seats to take control, because in a 50-50 chamber Vice President Joe Biden would be the deciding vote.

One week out, non-partisan election analysts say the data is trending toward a GOP takeover. "These races are playing out pretty much exactly how we would expect them to play out given the president's job approval right now," said Sean Trende, senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics. "I think a takeover is the most likely scenario."

Republicans have long been forecast to pick up three of the six seats they need for control in Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia, although the South Dakota race has tightened in the home stretch and Democrats have diverted resources there.

If Republicans bank those three seats, they need to net at least three of the seven competitive Democratic-held seats in Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, New Hampshire and North Carolina to win the majority.

Democratic incumbents running in states Romney won — Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana — have all been idling at around 42% in public polls. Obama's approval rating, respectively, is 33% in Arkansas, 38% in Louisiana and 33% in Alaska. "They're polling a couple points ahead of the president's job approval, but that's just nearly an impossible position for an incumbent to come back from," Trende said.

GOP gains in that trio of states would net the six seats Republicans need, not including the strong potential for further gains in some combination of the Obama-won states of Colorado, Iowa, and New Hampshire.

Democrats need to counter with victories in GOP-held seats in Georgia, Kansas and McConnell's race in Kentucky, all states where Obama's approval rating is below 43%.

Grimes is outperforming Obama's approval more than any other Democratic candidate in a competitive race this year, by about 8 percentage points in most polls. But with his approval hovering in the low 30s in Kentucky, she'll have to beat his performance by nearly 20 points to win. Trende notes that only one Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has outperformed Obama's approval rating by more than 10 points. "She's got a tough row to hoe," he said.

As a result, the pressure on Republicans to win the Senate cannot be understated. The GOP enjoyed favorable environments in 2010 and 2012, but blew it by fielding controversial candidates when the party was more fiercely divided between the establishment and Tea Party wings. Losing in this climate would shake the party, its base and its donors to the core. Particularly because national elections now tilt in Democrats' favor, as does the map of Senate seats up for re-election in 2016.

In other words, this could be McConnell's now-or-never moment.

"We are going to win the Senate. I feel very good about that," said Rob Collins, executive director of the Senate GOP's campaign operation. If not, he quipped: "I'll be in an unmarked grave in Kentucky."

The senator from Kentucky

McConnell is readying an agenda if Republicans take control. In an interview, he said Republicans would likely move forward on things like approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline and repealing an unpopular medical device tax. He also said that, in theory, there is room for compromise with Obama on things he would like to accomplish, such as overhauling tax laws and a stalled Asian trade agreement.

"I'm not opposed to doing business with the president," he said. "If he will — if confronted by a totally Republican Congress — work with us to look for the areas where we might find some agreement, it could be a couple of years where we could get some significant things done."

In order to advance that agenda, he is counting on Obama's unpopularity to outweigh his own.

What's clear in this election year is that while voters are fed up with the president, they are not particularly enamored of the GOP, either. The latest Bluegrass poll showed nearly half of Kentucky voters, 47%, have an unfavorable view of McConnell.

First elected in 1984, McConnell has steadily risen in power in Washington while keeping a low national profile: according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll earlier this year, nearly half of Americans, 45%, had never heard of him while 24% had no opinion.

Born and raised in the South, McConnell was stricken with polio at age 2, which required two years of daily physical therapy treatments with his mother. The experience, he recalled in a 2005 Senate floor speech, was defining. "This example of incredible discipline that she was teaching me during this period, I always felt, had an impact on the rest of my life," he said.

McConnell has spent almost his entire adult life involved in Washington politics, which Grimes has enthusiastically used against him in a year when Kentucky voters not only dislike Washington, but they dislike their senator. "You have been there 30 years and you don't want to take any responsibility for the loss of jobs in the state or the lack of benefits our miners and their families are having to fight for? It's wrong," Grimes said at their only debate.

McConnell was a congressional aide before winning at 35 his first local elected office position as a judge-executive. From there he mounted his first Senate campaign in 1984. In 1993, he married Elaine Chao, his second wife, and the first Chinese-American appointed to a presidential Cabinet. She served as Labor Secretary under President George W. Bush.

He has built up his influence as eagerly as he has avoided the media spotlight.

"He's quiet, studied, prepared, trustworthy," said House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., who has served with McConnell for the duration of his career. "It's amazing how he has gained the respect and support of the rest of the Republican senators."

The regard he enjoys from his GOP colleagues is matched in kind by opposition from Democrats who see him as the personification of Washington obstruction in the Obama era. "Sen. McConnell, from day one, has done everything he can to undermine the president's agenda," said Jim Manley, a former Senate aide and spokesman for Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

McConnell opposed Obama's 2009 economic stimulus package, and he supports repealing the Affordable Care Act and rolling back the Dodd-Frank law that overhauled the financial services industry in the wake of the Wall Street bailouts.

On the Kentucky campaign trail, he pledges to roll back Obama's environmental regulations that opponents say has destroyed the coal industry and cut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency. He is perhaps the GOP's most passionate advocate against campaign finance laws that restrict political funds as a violation of First Amendment rights.

At the same time, McConnell has also played the role of deal-maker. "There have been three major bipartisan agreements (with the Obama administration). I've negotiated every one of them," McConnell said, citing a 2010 tax cuts extension, a 2011 budget deal and the 2012 agreement to avert the "fiscal cliff."

His allies say his opponents do not understand that, if given the chance, McConnell would like to advance an agenda more than he would like to block one.

"I think his Democratic colleagues and many people in the country will be pleasantly surprised by Mitch McConnell's style of leadership if he is the majority leader," said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., a longtime ally. "He's viewed as a partisan — which he is — but he's also an institutionalist who cares very much about making the Senate work."