Probably a stupid question, but I was just wondering- we have three senators running (down from a much larger number) and none have time to do anything in D.C… Who’s doing the actual job of senator from AZ, NY, and IL while McCain, Clinton, and Obama are playing candidates?
Presumably, the job is being ably handled by the other senator from each state.
Kinda tells you something about how important any given senator is, don’t it? 
You can extend the question to how any politician conducts the duties of their current office while campaigning for another one. In fact, it might be more significant when applied to governors, who are the chief executives of their states, rather than just being members of a legislative body.
And, as I pointed out in a similar thread for which I am presently too lazy to look, nearly every President has campaigned for President when he should be busy running the country.
Given that the nation hasn’t yet fallen apart, it kinda makes me wonder how useful these stalwart government leaders really are.
Most Senate votes aren’t by close margins to begin with. If there’s some war spending bill likely to fight a filibuster or something, they’ll show up in DC that day to push the button or raise their hand or however senators cast a vote.
I suppose a greater concern is them missing committee meetings and stuff in which they’re supposedly informed of the facts which should be motivating their button pushing/hand raising. I’d assume their staff keeps them relatively in the loop.
I can’t remember the last time John McCain actually did something for Arizona.
Running for president, thus possibly stepping down as Senator?
Oh come on now, wasn’t he instrumental in getting it admitted to the Union?
Or even more significant when applied to members of the US House of Representatives. All 435 of them have 2 year terms so they’re out campaigning during about half of every term.
What do Senators do? Or, for this thread, what do they spend their time on?
They spend very little of their time voting on bills. And in most cases, as said, the fate of a bill is known well before it hits the floor. You hear of the battles, but they are very few compare to the ones that sail through.
They spend a lot of time on the committee work that precedes a bill. Some of this time is valuable, some is the ridiculous playing-to-the-cameras grandstanding that makes the evening news. A senator can miss a lot of committee and subcommittee sessions and not lose anything of value. It’s all written down and they spend their time on planes and buses reading the important stuff.
They spend a lot of time taking care of constituent requests. In reality, though, their staffs do 90% of the skut work and present stuff to the senator to sign, okay, or tell them who to talk to to get it done. This can mostly be done over the phone and senators on the campaign trail spend a lot of down time talking to their staffs.
They spend a lot of time fundraising. Far more than they would like you to realize. On a campaign they can do this openly, because now suddenly getting more money is considered a positive.
In short, the only real reason with modern communications for senators to be physically in Washington is that it makes it easier to talk to other senators (and congresspeople and president’s staffs, etc.) to do the networking that really is the business of Washington. There’s probably very little of substance they can’t do over the phone or by fax or email. They all do show up whenever a vote is important or a committee appearance will result in tv face time.
So almost every bit of the real work gets done exactly the same for a campaigning politician as for a non-campaigning one. Because all the politicians are campaigning every minute of the day. They just don’t do it all in front of tv cameras.
Not really. IIRC, he was a prisoner of the Apaches at the time.
Mini-hijack: No, that was the late Carl Hayden, at one time President Pro Tem of the Senate, who served in Congress (first House, then Senate) from the day Arizona was admitted until well past when Alaska and Hawaii were admitted, keeping the chain of some state being represented by the same man since statehood alive during the 47-year “dry spell” of 1912-59.
You must be looking at a different nation than I am.