Friday, Dec. 15, 2006 | 7:17 a.m.
WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader-elect Harry Reid once said it would take a miracle for Democrats to win the Senate this year, and he must have been remembering those words this week when a colleague's serious illness threatened to wrest away the victory won by the party last month.
Reid rushed to George Washington University Hospital after learning that his friend Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., had suffered what initial reports called a stroke. Reid stayed much of the evening and was back at the hospital Thursday morning.
As his colleague underwent surgery to repair bleeding inside his brain, the unspoken politics also were wrenching: The Democrats' stunning takeover of the Senate with a one-vote majority achieved in last month's elections could be erased if Johnson did not recover, perhaps allowing South Dakota's Republican governor to appoint a successor - presumably a Republican.
If Johnson could not serve and Republicans regained the Senate, gone would be the bicameral mandate for all those Democratic campaign promises - from raising the minimum wage to new energy and health care policies to changing direction in the Iraq war.
By midday, however, Reid faced reporters, telling them Johnson looked "very good." House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi put forward her 100-hours agenda - the Democrats' ambitious plans for the opening hours of the next Congress - at a planned press conference. And keeping to a business-as-normal routine, both met with U2's Bono in the afternoon.
"There isn't a thing that's changed," Reid said. "We're all praying for a full recovery, and we're confident that will be the case."
Late Thursday, Johnson was in the hospital's critical care unit and was "recovering without complication," according to the U.S. Capitol physician.
Johnson's medical condition created a nightmarish potential political scenario for Democrats whereby the party's 51-49 edge in the Senate could disappear if a Republican took his place. That would create a 50-50 Senate, and Vice President Dick Cheney's tie-breaking vote would hand control back to Republicans.
That would mean that Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, not the miner's son from Searchlight, would be the Senate's majority leader.
But just because a senator is out of commission does not mean he is out of office. No regulation requires an ill senator to step down, no matter how disabled he might be, experts said. Only a death or resignation would create an opening.
In fact, one of Johnson's predecessors, Sen. Karl Mundt of South Dakota, suffered a stroke in 1969 that left him unable to resume duties but he stayed in office until the 1972 election, Senate Associate Historian Don Ritchie said.
In the House, Maryland Rep. Gladys Spellman was re-elected in 1980 while in a coma after having suffered cardiac arrest. She remained in office for four months before being replaced.
And medical problems have kept plenty of senators away from their official duties for extended periods. The political Web site cq.com reported that Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., was out after a brain aneurysm in 1988. More recently, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., battled cancer last year and Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., was diagnosed with leukemia last month.
For Nevada, putting Republicans back in charge of the Senate would deflate the state's brush with fame that has come with Reid's rise. As majority leader-elect, Reid has climbed higher than any other elected official from the state.
Already, Reid's growing influence can be seen. He put in a good word to help get fellow Democrat, Rep. Shelley Berkley, a coveted seat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and tacked an important Southern Nevada water project onto an 11th-hour tax bill during last week's lame-duck session.
Reid also had a strong hand in securing for Nevada the Democrats' second-in-the-nation presidential caucus in 2008 that will have contenders for the White House passing through the state with increasing frequency over the next 13 months.
As political scientist John Pitney at Claremont McKenna College told the Sun shortly after the election, with Reid at the helm, the watchwords in Congress will be "Don't mess with Nevada."
UNR professor Eric Herzik said if Republicans regain control, Reid still would carry clout as leader of the minority party. But it would be "more of a blow to the state's prestige - we almost had the majority leader," he said.
Political science professor Wendy Schiller, who studies Congress at Brown University, said it would not be good for either party if Johnson had to bow out.
While Democrats would lose their grip on the Senate, Republicans would be forced to compromise on legislation from Pelosi's House lest they retain the dreaded do-nothing Congress moniker heading into the 2008 elections.
"It makes life a little more difficult," she said.
David Lublin, a political scientist at American University, saying it would be "ghoulish" for Republicans to try to turn the situation to their advantage, predicted that "no one is going to be in a rush to force (Johnson) out."
After visiting Johnson at the hospital, Reid said his office will continue to prepare for the new session, where he has promised five-day workweeks as the Democrats chart their ambitious agenda.
And Reid spokesman Jon Summers said the senator's office is moving forward with the "work that needs to be done in preparation for January."
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