Ensign says legacy hinges on Ga., Minn.

Undecided races in Georgia and Minnesota are the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s last hopes of salvaging a painful election cycle, Sen. John Ensign said Wednesday.

Reflecting on Election Day and the last two years, the outgoing NRSC chairman called the results “very disappointing” and lamented the difficult — and sometimes wrong — funding decisions he had to make in the closing weeks of the campaign.

{mosads}When asked about his legacy, Ensign (Nev.) suggested the cycle would be a complete bust if the GOP doesn’t emerge victorious from a runoff in Georgia and a recount in Minnesota, both of which will stretch into December.

“These two are absolutely two that we feel like we have to hold on to in order to at least take some kind of good feeling away from this election cycle,” Ensign said.

The Nevada Republican also offered something of a post-mortem analysis of his decisions over the final weeks of the 2008 campaign, saying that he stayed for a week too long in Colorado and that the committee’s polling was too close to abandon incumbents in New Hampshire and North Carolina in the closing days.

Republicans lost all three races by at least seven points. They found out Tuesday that Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) also lost reelection, giving Democrats 58 seats and putting them on the precipice of a 60-seat filibuster-proof majority.

Democrats will get there if they win both Georgia and Minnesota.

Ensign also said that the Republican National Committee (RNC) has transferred $2 million earmarked for the Georgia runoff to the NRSC, which was $4 million in debt after Election Day.

The committee has already launched a $700,000 ad buy in the Georgia race, which pits Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) against former state Rep. Jim Martin (D). Chambliss finished the general election with 49.8 percent of the vote — just under the majority vote needed — while Martin took 46.8 percent.

Ensign said the NRSC ended the cycle in twice as much debt as he would have liked, but the decision to press further was made after consulting his potential successors.

“I was in close consultation with Sen. [John] Cornyn and, at the time, [Sen. Norm] Coleman, because we didn’t know which one of them was going to be the NRSC chairman,” Ensign said. “I inherited $2 million in debt, and I didn’t want to go above what I inherited. But some of these races were so close.”

Coleman (Minn.) leads his race by 215 votes, but a recount began Wednesday — a situation that forced him to concede the NRSC race. Cornyn (Texas) was named the next NRSC chairman on Tuesday.

Ensign said Cornyn comes in with an advantage that the current chairman didn’t have — a large fundraising base in Texas.

Ensign’s Nevada base paled in comparison to Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) Chairman Charles Schumer’s New York base, but Cornyn has been one of the Senate’s most prolific fundraisers in recent years.

Ensign also said the committee will hand over modernized operations, which when he took over still harkened back to the soft money days.

He also said he expects the Cornyn-led committee to go very hard after his Nevada colleague, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D), in 2010.

“Certainly he’s vulnerable; it’s pretty obvious based on the public polls,” Ensign said. “I think that the Republicans are going to go after him, because of the way the Democrats went after [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell [(R-Ky.) this cycle]. It’s going to be a big effort there.”