Bob Dole famously resigned his Senate seat in June, 1996, to focus on losing to President Bill Clinton. The Republican hold on Kansas was never seriously in question and in fact Kansans returned two Republican Senators to Congress that year, which doesn't happen very often.
We still came out ahead because Dole was eventually replaced with Sam Brownback, who is a typical four-martini Republican politician who knows all about evil but little about his actual job, while Dole was a formidable opponent. Dole's departure did not harm the Republican majority in the Senate, but it did increase the "cleverness deficit" in the Senate, which has been freely exploited by Democrats ever since. Anything we have left at this point is largely thanks to Republicans not being smart enough to exploit their advantages when they had them.
But since then, most Members of Congress who have run for national office have hedged their bets, including Kucinich, Kerry, McCain, and President Obama (who, along with Hillary Clinton, ran as a sitting Senator). Kucinich, being from the House, was always up for reelection whenever he ran nationally, so he always ran his campaigns concurrently.
It works well for us this time around because it's a free shot at the Republicans, and we would be fools not to take it. But conventional wisdom suggests that a candidate running for national office can help his campaign by also running for his usual position in Congress, or holding onto the position in Congress if he or she is not up for reelection.
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