This is about something much bigger than any candidate.

While the presidential contenders mostly have ignored the state, little ole South Carolina has become a battleground of national importance in the war for a more strategic prize: control of the U.S. Senate.

With polls showing the race between Tenenbaum and DeMint tightening, Democrats and Republicans smell blood in the water, and both are going for the kill.

"South Carolina, surprising to many, is a key state," says Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. "If you take South Carolina out of the Republican column, you are putting the Senate majority in jeopardy. That's not an exaggeration, that's just looking at the electoral map. All that money being spent -- and there's millions of it -- is being spent on Senate math."

There are 34 Senate seats on ballots this year, enough to shift power in the upper chamber of Congress. Republicans now hold a 51-48 majority, with one independent who votes with the Democrats. Most pundits and party officials expected the GOP to pad its majority by three or four seats this year, but things aren't working out exactly as expected.

Several races that were supposed to be Republican cakewalks are neck and neck, including South Carolina's, and the GOP is poised to lose a couple of seats it had expected to hold. Colorado and Alaska, both considered Republican strongholds, may well go to Democrats, erasing the gains the GOP should make in Georgia and perhaps Louisiana.

Even though Sen. Fritz Hollings, a Democrat, has held it since 1966, South Carolina's open Senate seat was expected to be ripe for Republican pickings. But Tenenbaum has fought the conventional wisdom with a barrage of ads critical of DeMint's support of a 23 percent national sales tax.

When DeMint made controversial comments that homosexuals and unwed pregnant women shouldn't be teachers, it became a race.

"I don't think I've ever seen the number of ads in a Senate race here," says Bill Moore, political scientist at the College of Charleston. "The Democrats are going to put their money where they think they have the greatest chance to influence the outcome. Obviously, they see this as an opportunity. I think DeMint's comments ran up the first red flag for people."

The same sort of bizarre controversy has popped up in elections around the country. In one race, a sitting senator has said his opponent looks like Saddam Hussein's sons, while a candidate in another race warns of rampant lesbianism in public schools. Suddenly, the reins of the Senate are flying free.

South Carolina is one of about half a dozen states that will decide control of the Senate, and it isn't anywhere near the most colorful of the fights. Among the other battleground states:

-- In Oklahoma, the fight to replace retiring Republican Sen. Don Nickles has shades of South Carolina. Democrats are circulating tapes of Republican candidate Tom Coburn saying that campaign workers have told him "lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom."

Coburn's campaign has said the remark was taken out of context, but the damage is done. Democratic challenger Brad Carson is polling even with Coburn.

-- In Kentucky, the re-election of Republican Sen. Jim Bunning, considered a sure thing a couple of months ago, is in serious doubt.

Bunning publicly compared his opponent, Democratic state Sen. Daniel Mongiardo, the dark-complexioned son of Italian immigrants, to one of Saddam Hussein's sons. Bunning, one of the great major-league pitchers of all time, claimed Mongiardo and/or his campaign staffers beat up Mrs. Bunning at a campaign picnic, and he's surrounded himself with a security detail, declaring, "There may be strangers among us."

The Louisville Courier-Journal, the state's biggest newspaper, has questioned Bunning's mental health, and his 12-point lead has evaporated. The race is too close to call.

-- In Alaska, a solidly Republican state, the party may lose a Senate seat over voter outrage at nepotism. Republican Lisa Murkowski is running for re-election to the seat she was appointed to by the governor, who happens to be her father. Frank Murkowski, the previous senator, gave his daughter his old job when he was elected governor. Now polls show the state favors former Gov. Tony Knowles, a Democrat, over Murkowski.

Some less-colorful races are just about as tight. In Colorado, where Republican Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell is retiring, GOP beer magnate Pete Coors is trailing the state's Democratic attorney general, Ken Salazar. In North Carolina, the seat vacated by John Edwards is a toss-up between Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican U.S. Rep. Richard Burr.

Graham, the South Carolina Republican elected two years ago to Strom Thurmond's old seat, said the GOP strategy was to take advantage of retirements in the South to pad its advantage.

"We have five open Southern Democratic Senate seats," Graham says. "That's like Halley's Comet; that doesn't happen often. But if you lose any of the five, you have to look elsewhere."

The safest of those seats is in Georgia, where Democrat-in-name Zell Miller is retiring. Republican Johnny Isakson is expected to win there. The two Carolina seats are too close to call, and most polls show the Florida race between Democrat Betty Castor and Republican Mel Martinez to replace retiring Sen. Bob Graham is a dead heat. In Louisiana, a Democrat is retiring, and Republicans have a chance for the pickup.

That's a seat the GOP needs to add to its stable if it is going to make up for losing a seat in Illinois, which it almost certainly will.

This ambiguity broadens the spectrum of important races, and neither side has the cushion to ignore a potentially close S.C. race. It is particularly important to the ideologues of both parties this year, with at least two Supreme Court nominations at stake.

Questions about whether the tie-breaking vote -- the vice president -- will be in the hands of Democrats or Republicans raise the stakes, too. Vice President Dick Cheney has had to break six ties in the Senate in the past four years, Graham says.

That's part of the reason Graham has gotten involved in the race, campaigning alongside Republican Gov. Mark Sanford for DeMint. Moore says Thurmond and Hollings always stayed out of each other's races, and South Carolinians seemed to like the mix: No matter which party was in power, the state had a strong voice.

Graham says the Senate is much more partisan these days, and every vote counts.

For now, the optimistic Republican picture is 54 or 55 seats total, while Democrats see the chance to add five seats for a 53-seat total.

In either scenario, South Carolina plays a leading role.

"South Carolina could be pivotal," Mason-Dixon pollster Brad Coker says. "DeMint has the advantage, as long as he doesn't stick his foot in his mouth again because Bush is going to run very strong there.

"But the Senate is up in the air right now. It's going to come down to a couple of open seats."

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