South Dakota Senator Won’t Run Again

“I will be 68 years old at the end of this term and it’s time for me to say goodbye,” Mr. Johnson said during a brief news conference in Vermillion, S.D. After thanking his family and staff he added: “The Bible says that there is a time for every season under heaven. It is now our season to spend more time with our six grandchildren and in the state we love.”

Mr. Johnson’s decision, coming on the heels of a spate of retirement announcements from Democrats, opens up a potential new opportunity for Republicans in the state that President Obama lost by a large margin last year. Further, the retirement of Mr. Johnson, a moderate who is chairman of the powerful banking committee, will open up that slot, should Democrats maintain a majority. His replacement could be critical as Congress continues to deal with regulatory issues.

Senators Carl Levin of Michigan, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey and John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, all Democrats, have said they will not seek re-election. Two Republicans, Senators Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Mike Johanns of Nebraska, have also said they will not run.

Republicans, who are hoping that 2014 will finally be their year after two opportunities to take back the Senate majority have slipped from their fingers, are eying Mr. Johnson’s seat eagerly.

“South Dakota voters rejected the liberal agenda by nearly 20 points in 2012, and it’s a prime pick-up opportunity for Republicans regardless of whose name ends up on the ballot,” said Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, who is chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Former Gov. Mike Rounds, a Republican, had already planned to challenge Mr. Johnson. Another possible contender would be Representative Kristi Noem, who came in on a Republican wave in 2010.

Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, thanked Mr. Johnson for making his decision early enough to allow his party to mount a strong defense of the seat.

Mr. Johnson’s success has been a thing of wonder since almost the beginning of his Senate career. After serving in the House for five terms, Mr. Johnson was elected to the Senate in 1996, winning by two percentage points in an expensive race for the low-cost state.

In 2002 he ran again, beating John Thune (who went on to win a Senate seat in 2004) by a mere 524 votes of more than 330,000 cast, and focused largely on agricultural issues, taking moderate positions along an array of issues.

In 2006, just a month after ascending to new powers with his party’s victory, he suffered a brain hemorrhage from which he struggled to recover, threatening his party’s fragile majority. In 2008 he ran again and won after proving that, with slurred speech and the frequent use of a scooter to ferry him around the Capitol, he could still manage his Senate career.

Among Democrats in South Dakota who could succeed him, the greatest speculation centers on Mr. Johnson’s son Brendan and former Representative Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, who was defeated by Ms. Noem and has kept a relatively low profile since but remains popular in the state.

“I’ve not discussed in detail what comes next, whether it’s Stephanie or Brendan or whatever,” Mr. Johnson said, in response to questions about whom he would like to see succeed him.

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Senator Inouye of Hawaii, elected in 1959, dies at 88

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON Recovering from war wounds that left him with one arm, Danny Inouye wanted a cigarette and needed a light.

The nurse at the Army hospital in Michigan threw a pack of matches on his chest. He wanted to curse her. Instead, she taught him how to light it one-handed.

"Then she said, 'I'm not going to be around here for the rest of your life. You'll have to learn how to light your own matches, cut your own meat, dress yourself and do everything else. So from now on you're going to be learning,'" Inouye recalled decades later.

From that moment on it seemed like nothing would stop a determined Daniel K. Inouye, who died Monday after a uniquely American life defined by heroism in war and decades of service in the Senate -- and a lifelong love of Hawaii symbolized by his last utterance.

"Aloha."

Inouye, who broke racial barriers on Capitol Hill and played key roles in congressional investigations of the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals, was 88.

A senator since January 1963, Inouye was currently the longest serving senator and was president pro tempore of the Senate, third in the line of presidential succession. His office said Monday that he died of respiratory complications at a Washington-area hospital.

Less than an hour after Inouye's passing, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Inouye's death to a stunned chamber. "Our friend Daniel Inouye has died," Reid said somberly. Shocked members of the Senate stood in the aisles or slumped in their chairs.

Inouye was a World War II hero and Medal of Honor recipient who lost an arm to a German hand grenade during a battle in Italy. He became the first Japanese-American to serve in Congress, when he was elected to the House in 1959, the year Hawaii became a state. He won election to the Senate three years later and served there longer than anyone in American history except Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who died in 2010 after 51 years in the Senate.

President Barack Obama, a native of Hawaii, said in a statement, "Tonight, our country has lost a true American hero with the passing of Sen. Daniel Inouye. ? It was his incredible bravery during World War II -- including one heroic effort that cost him his arm but earned him the Medal of Honor -- that made Danny not just a colleague and a mentor, but someone revered by all of us lucky enough to know him."

Obama also sent a tweet that ended "Aloha, Danny."

Inouye died after a relatively brief hospitalization. Once a regular smoker, he had a portion of a lung removed in the 1960s after a misdiagnosis for cancer. Just last week, he issued a statement expressing optimism about his recovery.

Despite his age and illness, Inouye's death shocked members of the Senate.

"I'm too broken up," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who becomes president pro tem of the Senate. Leahy also is poised to take over the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie will appoint a replacement, choosing from a list of three candidates selected by the state Democratic Party. "We're preparing to say goodbye," Abercrombie said. "Everything else will take place in good time."

Whomever Abercrombie appoints would serve until a special election in 2014.

Inouye has represented Hawaii since it became a state in 1959, first in the House. He was handily re-elected to a ninth term in 2010 with 75percent of the vote.

Inouye became president pro tem of the Senate in 2010, a largely ceremonial post that also placed him in the line of succession to the presidency, after the vice president and the speaker of the House.

Earlier, he had taken the helm of the powerful Appropriations Committee, where he spent most of his Senate career attending to Hawaii. At the height of his power, Inouye routinely secured tens of millions of dollars annually for the state's roads, schools, national lands and military bases.

Although tremendously popular in his home state, Inouye actively avoided the national spotlight until he was thrust into it. He was the keynote speaker at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and later reluctantly joined the Senate's select committee on the Watergate scandal. The panel's investigation led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Inouye also served as chairman of the committee that investigated the Iran-Contra arms and money affair, which rocked Ronald Reagan's presidency.

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Senator McCaskill to Skip Democratic Convention

One would think that a nominating convention is a command performance for prominent members of a president’s party.

But that is not the case for vulnerable Democrats running in districts where President Obama is less than popular. Senator Claire McCaskill on Tuesday became the latest Democrat to decide to skip the party’s national convention in Charlotte, N.C., later this summer.

Ms. McCaskill, who campaigned actively for Mr. Obama in 2008, is fighting for a second term in a state leaning toward Mitt Romney in the polls and where three potential Republican challengers are all seeking Tea Party support.

A campaign aide said that Ms. McCaskill, of Missouri, has not attended a national convention in those years that she is on the ballot, most recently in 2004 when she ran for governor. The aide repeated the mantra of all candidates who choose to skip a splashy convention with all the hoopla – Ms. McCaskill thinks it’s more important to talk to voters.

This week, three leading Democrats from West Virginia – Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, Senator Joe Manchin III and Representative Nick J. Rahall II – said they would also miss the convention this September, according to the state’s Democratic Party. All three are up for re-election in November.

Mr. Obama is deeply unpopular in West Virginia, where last month a protest candidate, a federal prison inmate, won 40 percent of the vote in the Democratic presidential primary.

In a statement Mr. Tomblin said he felt “that his time is best spent working in West Virginia to move our state forward instead of attending a four-day political rally in North Carolina.’’

In western Pennsylvania, another battleground region, Representative Mark Critz said he, too, would take a pass on the Democratic National Convention. It is more important, he said, “to spend my time in western Pennsylvania listening to the people about how we can create jobs for the region.’’

But Democrats are not the only party-skippers. Representative Denny Rehberg, Republican of Montana, will not attend his party’s convention in Tampa in August, according to a report in The Hill this week. He intends to focus on his bid to unseat the state’s freshman Democratic Senator, Jon Tester, who is also reported to be skipping Charlotte.

Mr. Rehberg, Montana’s lone Congressman, has shown an independent streak before. He voted against President George W. Bush’s bailout of Wall Street in 2008 and against the House budget package crafted by Representative Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin.

In a political advertisement Mr. Rehberg describes himself as an independent thinker who “refuses to toe the party line.’’

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State Senator Adriano Espaillat Runs for the House on Pride and Energy

Tired?

“Nah, I’m feeling good,” he said. “I just had a Power Bar.”

Mr. Espaillat, a Democratic state senator from Washington Heights, was on the last leg of a day that began inside an uptown subway station, asking commuters escaping the rain for their votes. He snatched a quick breakfast (a bagel with cream cheese and lox), shot downtown for a meeting, rode up to Albany while making campaign calls, and met lobbyists and legislators at the Capitol before returning to New York City to speak to constituents and check in at his office.

It is this combustible pace that Mr. Espaillat, 57, has been trying to sell as his greatest advantage over the four-decade incumbent, Representative Charles B. Rangel, in next week’s Democratic primary for Congress.

While Mr. Rangel, 82, has been arriving at campaign stops with the help of a walker and maintaining a relatively relaxed schedule, Mr. Espaillat has been feverishly bouncing around the Upper Manhattan and Bronx district, articulating a vision that focuses heavily on immigration reform, job creation, affordable housing and access to higher education.

“I’m going to bring a fresh new view and voice to the 13th Congressional District that I think is entirely needed,” Mr. Espaillat said. “New ideas, new energy.”

Mr. Espaillat, who is seeking to become the first Dominican-born congressman and expresses unabashed ethnic pride, is widely seen as Mr. Rangel’s most serious challenger since he won office in 1970 because the district is, for the first time, a majority Hispanic.

Until recently, Mr. Espaillat had avoided sharply criticizing Mr. Rangel in public. But during a televised debate with Mr. Rangel and the three other candidates last week, Mr. Espaillat took aim at the ethics charges that led to Mr. Rangel’s censure two years ago.

“As a result of that, we lost 60 Democratic seats in the Congress, and the Tea Party radicals invaded Congress and are pushing back on Obama,” Mr. Espaillat said. “So he became the poster child for dysfunction in Washington.”

Mr. Espaillat’s critics have accused him of overzealous campaign tactics. Moises Perez, Mr. Rangel’s campaign manager, said supporters of Mr. Espaillat had branded Mr. Perez and other Dominicans supporting Mr. Rangel as traitors. “That’s a very heavy-handed style of campaigning that turns people off,” Mr. Perez said.

And last month, Mr. Espaillat said he would not refuse the support of an anti-incumbent “super PAC” that is mostly funded by businessmen who back conservative causes. Asked to explain his position last week, Mr. Espaillat offered a different stance: he said he was “rejecting any super PACs from getting involved in this campaign.”

With a public-service career that started as a community organizer and crime victims’ rights advocate in Washington Heights, Mr. Espaillat has long held high political ambitions. He often invokes personal experiences when advocating for a cause or bill, supporters say.

“When he locks into an issue, he locks into an issue and he doesn’t let go until he gets resolution,” said Senator José Peralta, a Democrat of Queens.

Assemblyman Phil Ramos, a Democrat from Long Island, said that Mr. Espaillat taught him the art of compromise.

“He said that, as an elected official, if we can win 80 percent of what we want, then next year we live to fight for only 20 percent,” Mr. Ramos recalled. But if you “go for 100 percent, the end result could be that our community ends up with nothing.”

Mr. Espaillat says he is a descendant of one of the Dominican Republic’s most notable political figures — Ulises Francisco Espaillat, who held the presidency for about five months in 1876.

The family moved to Washington Heights in 1964, when Mr. Espaillat was 9, and one of the first things he did on American soil was to touch the snow on the airport tarmac. His father purchased a gas station in East New York, Brooklyn, where Mr. Espaillat helped out.

Mr. Espaillat was introduced to politics through a summer youth program run by a Baptist preacher. After graduating from Queens College, he worked in criminal justice, first for the city and then as a liaison between his community and the police.

“I remember Adriano walking up on the corner and talking to gang members and telling them to stop doing what they were doing,” said Roberto Lizardo, who worked closely in community activism with Mr. Espaillat.

Mr. Espaillat lost two races for City Council; the second, in 1991, was won by Guillermo Linares, who became New York’s first Dominican-born elected official. In 1996, he won election to the Assembly, and became the first Dominican to hold office in Albany; he was elected to the State Senate in 2010.

Mr. Espaillat, who dances bachata and merengue, decorated his Albany office with paintings from the Dominican Republic, including one of a twin-steeple church in Santiago and another of a broad-shouldered marchanta balancing a basket of flowers on her head. Two glittery, horned Carnival masks that Mr. Espaillat made hang from a wood-paneled wall.

He has been “very aggressive about Dominican pride, very aggressive about furthering the Dominican people, very aggressive about putting a focus on making sure that Dominicans get their fair share,” said Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell, who has endorsed Mr. Rangel.

He also became a die-hard Yankees fan; so much so that years later, as a lawmaker, he put on a Yankees hat and professed his love for the team while he and other legislators were presenting a Mets player with an award.

Gregarious and blunt, Mr. Espaillat balances his days of nonstop politicking with levity.“How come you’re looking sad today?” Mr. Espaillat sang at a tollbooth agent (he refuses to get an EZ Pass).

There were also quiet moments, like when Mr. Espaillat made the sign of the cross when he got behind the wheel, or when he mumbled a song coming from the radio: “In the midnight hour, she cries more, more, more.”

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