The Ensign Affair

The bizarre situation surrounding Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign is starting to coalesce into calls for resignation, as Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin became the first of Ensign's colleagues to suggest Ensign should resign if the allegations against him are true.

Sen. John Ensign is facing an increasingly uncertain future in the Senate, with a senior Democrat saying that the Nevada Republican should resign if allegations against him are true and other senators mulling the possibility of public hearings into his extramarital affair with a former staffer.

“If it is true that indeed he did make these payoffs and all that kind of stuff, then I would think the honorable thing would be to resign,” Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said in an interview.

Harkin added that he doesn’t “like the smell” of a sex scandal that has “cast a bad image on the Senate.”

Harkin’s public declaration — the first of its kind by a sitting senator — comes as Ensign’s Senate colleagues stand to make life more difficult for him.

The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee is not ruling out holding public hearings in the case, a move that some believe could help drive Ensign from office. A number of senators signaled to POLITICO they’d be supportive of seeing Ensign sit before a public forum to address the allegations, something that has not been done since the Keating Five scandal in 1991. 

Sex scandal aside, the politics of Ensign's troubles are vitally important.  Every senator for the Republicans is number 41, and the GOP may actually want to see Ensign gone early to give another Republican the chance to take his seat and run in 2012.  The last thing they want is to see Ensign run again with this one hanging over his head.  It's possible they could throw him under the bus.

And actually, unless Ensign is somehow replaced by a Democrat, the Republicans actually don't need him.  If they filibuster, the Democrats still only have 59 votes and need 60 to break one.  The GOP can afford to let Ensign go right now.  We'll see what happens.