Herb Kohl: 'Benign' re-election

The Journal Sentinel today has a story about the Kohl Senate race.

I found this paragraph intriguing:

When you've been in the Senate for 18 years, when you own the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team, when you're wealthy enough to own a Van Gogh if you chose to, and when your face is on television as often as you want it to be, running for re-election can seem like a pretty benign matter. Especially if you add one factor: The other major party has all but withdrawn from the battlefield.

And it made me wonder: Would Jacobson and Stewart say that Kohl's re-election campaigns are "benign"? Sure, he's had it easy in terms of political opponents, but something tells me that Kohl is still nervous about the re-elections, even if that nervousness seems misplaced.