Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp (North Dakota) won her Senate seat last year by the thinnest margin; her race was one of the last ones to be called and nobody expected the result. Even Nate Silver had the seat listed as going to to the GOP just prior to election night. It's a good thing Sen. Heitkamp won, as it now appears that she perhaps -- ? -- was the tipping point that pushed Larry Summers into withdrawing his name from consideration of the Fed Chairmanship the other day. Sen. Heitkamp's involvement has been perhaps the most under-reported aspect of what transpired among several Democratic members of the Banking Committee. The attached link provides some of the details:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
It has already been widely reported that Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester and Jeff Merkley all stood up to the President on this issue. Many pundits, including the story above, credit Tester's stand as sort of the final straw, and that indeed may have been the case. Apparently, Sen. Heitkamp's position was revealed only yesterday, after Summers withdrew. Nevertheless, it was also reported that, throughout the process, Summers and his supporters contacted the various Banking Committee Members, including a reported last minute reaching out to Sen. Warren. It would be quite within the realm of possibility that, having reached out, Summers realized that he had not four -- but five --Democrats on the Committee opposed to his nomination --? Regardless of how the process transpired, it appears that Sen. Heitkamp's representation may indeed be a noticeable improvement over her predecessor, the corporatist Democrat Kent Conrad.