NASHVILLE - Tennessee U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker both have 51 percent approval ratings among their constituents, according to a national poll on the popularity of all 100 U.S. senators by Morning Consult.
Alexander had a 30 percent disapproval rating; Corker was at 29 percent. The Tennesseans thus avoided listing among the top 10 most popular senators among their constituents as well as the 10 least popular.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Democrat who unsuccessfully sought his party's presidential nomination, was rated as the most popular senator among voters within the represented state with an 87 percent approval rating, followed by Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine with 69 percent.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky had the highest disapproval rating with 51 percent. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has soured with Silver State voters and is now the third-least-popular senator, with a 43 percent disapproval rating. That's up two spots from earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Corker and fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina are pushing for a delay in an expected vote to override President Barack Obama's promised veto of a bill authorizing families of the 9/11 terrorist attack to file lawsuits against the government of Saudi Arabia, according to Bloomberg News.
Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said a delay would give senators more time to consider whether the lawsuit authorization would "backfire on us" because "once we create the opportunity for U.S. citizens to sue another government we also open the door for the same thing to happen to us."
The bill was approved by both the House and Senate by wide margins and White House spokesman Josh Earnest has said Obama will veto it, though he hasn't said when the veto will occur.
Corker told Bloomberg last week he hopes the veto will come after "a couple months' cooling period takes place," and perhaps leading to consideration of revisions to the legislation.
"Unless the White House offers a solution that appropriately addresses both sovereign immunity issues and the concerns of 9/11 families, the veto override will likely be overwhelming," Corker told the News Sentinel on Monday.
Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who also heads the subcommittee that writes the spending bill for U.S. embassies and diplomatic programs, said he wants to "buy some time here" to "make the bill more palatable but also to make it more "in the interest of the families."