The 2006 election is shaping up to be one of the most hotly contested off-year races in recent memory. Polling numbers are showing the probability of change in Congress to be the highest since the Republican Revolution in 1994. According to the Cook Political Report, there are 32 Senate races this year, and while Your Mom's Basement wished to endorse in each one, we were limited by our own editorial guidelines to those races in which at least one candidate responded.

Indiana: Richard Lugar, one of the most decorated Republicans currently serving in that body, has a history of independence. As the Chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he is one of the most respected senior members of the Senate. However, we find several of his positions to be troublesome. His support of the repeal of the Estate Tax and of the elimination of the Capital Gains Tax are, in the current fiscal climate, unsupportable.

His opponent, Luther Manning, is one of the "fighting Dems," a group of former soldiers recruited by the Democratic party to run for office to counter the accusation that the party is weak on national defense issues. His injuries from a land mine have made him a pioneer in the effort to outlaw their use. He is also no stranger to cutting-edge military technology, and would serve as an effective check on efforts to "modernize" our current armed services without sufficient technological innovation. However, we are greatly troubled by Mr. Manning's ties to big oil, and there is some question as to his residency (recent reports from the local media have cast doubt on precisely where Mr. Manning votes from, and there is legal uncertainty as to whether American citizenship transfers over between realities).

With these questions in mind, Your Mom's Basement reluctantly endorses Senator Richard Lugar for re-election.

West Virginia: Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia is the longest serving member of the Senate in the history of the body. He has, in his long history with the body, seemingly run the entire political spectrum, beginning his career as a segregationist and acknowledging his membership in the Ku Klux Klan, all the way to receiving a 100% rating from the NAACP in the 2003-2004 legislative session. He has been an outspoken opponent of the current administration's policies, leading a filibuster effort against the Iraq War resolution and opposing the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, claiming that it gives too much power to the executive branch. He shows a refreshing willingness to accept new information and use that to formulate his opinions.

By contrast, Margaret Power, the Republican candidate for West Virginia's Senate seat, refuses to acknowledge reality. Her endorsement interview was almost exclusively dedicated to a heated discussion of the current situation in Iraq. The Your Mom's Basement editorial board presented Ms. Power with a number of stories outlining the increase in sectarian violence, the increasing American death toll, and about the nearly-complete surrounding of Baghdad by Sunni forces. Ms. Power stubbornly stuck to her stock responses, that the media refuses to report on all the good things because "blood sells internet advertisements," and that we shoud trust the President to "continue to guide us right." She even broke into hysterics when presented with the October death toll, weeping and screaming about everything being fine.

Your Mom's Basement endorses Senator Byrd for reelection.

California: Senator Diane Feinstein, serving California since her election in 1992, is once again up for reelection. Since her entry into the Senate, she has been thorn in the side of many on the left of the Democratic party, supporting the President's prescription drug bill, the Patriot Act and the Iraq War Resolution. She has, however, voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, NAFTA and CAFTA, and the atrocious bankruptcy bill.

Running opposition as an Independent/White is White ticket is Vic Sage, who has refused the endorsement of the Libertarian Party, whom he felt to be vague and compromised in their politics. Sage is best known as a television commentator and an outspoken opponent of both The United Nations and Red China, of whom he has asked “Can a country live if it is Half-Slave and Half-Free?” Sage supports heavy immigration reforms intended to halt the passage of undocumented immigrant workers from Latin America and also Canada. “One either is an American or one is not,” says Sage. “You cannot be part American and part Mexican.” If elected Sage has promised to personally remove intellectual dishonesty, moral cowardice and inversion, and “anti-mind, anti-life values” and lying from California politics. How he proposes to do this remains the question.

Your Mom's Basement supports the reelection of Senator Diane Feinstein.

Mississippi: Jose Delgado, after years on the road, finally seems to have found a home. He has settled in Biloxi, Mississippi, and those close to him thought that after years of turbulence and a nomadic existence, he had finally found peace. That peace was short-lived, however, when Mr. Delgado's home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Delgado's response was atypical, to say the least. Shortly after Katrina hit, he publicly stated that the storm was evidence of "God's wrath on the gamblers and huckster politicians of southern Mississippi," in his formal announcement as a candidate for Senate. He has since made similar claims; at a campaign stop in Tupelo, he claimed that Satan was directing gang members to cross into Mississippi from neighboring Alabama; in a diner in Vicksburg, he said illegal immigration was God sending a message about "the overwhelming sloth of the American people;" and at a meeting with senior citizens in Jackson, he told the assembly that prescription drug prices are "appropriate," because prescription drugs "are a placebo for faith in the one, true God."

Senator Trent Lott, by contrast, has done a decent job in steering the reconstruction of southern Mississippi, and is, by all accounts, a sane man. However, we at Your Mom's Basement remain concerned by Senator Lott's association with the Council of Concerned Citizens, and by his horrible record on minority rights (including voting against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act).

Your Mom's Basement is unable to endorse either candidate in this race.

Maine: The state of Maine has long been known for it's fierce independent streak. It is fitting that their Republican senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, are known as two of the most independent members of their caucus. Coming to power in the Republican Revolution of 1994, Snowe managed to succeed where many of her colleagues failed by retaining her independent voice and voting her conscience, rather than in lockstep with the caucus. She is most certainly a hawk, but she is also, unlike many of her fellow Republicans, true to her conservative roots on fiscal policy, working with the Democrats to reduce the scale of the Bush tax cuts and increase government revenue without increasing the tax burden on the middle and lower classes.

Her opponent, Hector Lennox, is running with the support of both the Maine Democratic Party and the Maine Green Party. Mr. Lennox, thought to be dead, returned to the public eye in 2001 as an environmental activist. He has since led protests at the United States headquarters of every major oil company, and picketed several individual car dealerships in the southern Maine area. While his insistence on energy independence, on alternative sources of energy, and on clean fuel technology is admirable, we fail to see exactly how his insistence on travelling via bicycle everywhere will allow him to be an efficient Senator from Maine.

Your Mom's Basement endorses Senator Olympia Snowe for re-election.

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