The NRCC survey follows a report in the Roll Call newspaper that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is monitoring more than two dozen House Republicans who are candidates for retirement.
No House Republican has yet announced retirement, and the only GOP senator so far to call it quits is Wayne Allard of Colorado. However, more retirements from both houses are expected as Republicans chafe under life in the minority. No Democratic resignations have been announced, and none are expected from the House. All Democratic senators up for re-election in 2008 have announced they are running again, with the exception of Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa (who says he has not yet decided).
HELSINKI PURGE
Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, Republican members of the Helsinki Commission monitoring human rights, have written protests to illegal firing of four Republican commission staffers after the Democrats won control of Congress.
The commission's new chairman, Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida, began the firings under oversight of Spencer Oliver, a longtime Democratic operative famed as a victim of the Watergate burglary. Oliver, secretary general of an international body dealing with human rights, was assisting the U.S. commission as an observer. Under the commission's founding laws, three of the committee's four lawmakers must concur in any staff firing.
Hastings is expected to change the commission's focus away from religious freedom in Belarus and European sex trafficking and concentrate on alleged U.S. abuses at Guantanamo.