It’s one thing once they’re in, but starting at that age is problematic, because it tends to assure that they won’t be around long enough to reach any sort of seniority or get a committee chairmanship (and it ends up being a key argument for a younger opponent).
Lautencorpse was 58 when he entered the Senate in ‘82 (his GOP opponent in that election, the liberal RINO Congresswoman Millicent Fenwick, was 72 — and that was her major liability, since had she been elected, she would’ve only served 9 years before her death in 1992).
Byrd was all of 41 when he won as a sitting Congressman in the rodent landslide of 1958, defeating the 63 year old Conservative Republican incumbent Chapman Revercomb (the last elected GOP Senator to date in WV).
Assuming Rounds doesn’t run, this is shaping up as another Republican failure.
Christ, I’m tired of reading such stories. Our party is really in the tank.