But that will mean little unless Democrats also capture the U.S. Senate. A Republican-controlled Senate can block much of what we need from government. So we've got a lot to do. Friends have asked me to lay out what I know about which Senate elections are most meaningful to winning a Democratic majority. Obviously this is where many of us want to put our energy. I'm just a moderately informed observer, but here's my overview:
Democrats currently hold 47 seats (including two independents, Bernie Sanders-VT and Angus King-ME). So, theoretically, if Biden wins and Dems gained 3 seats, they would control the Senate because whoever Biden chooses for Vice President would break tie votes.
But it's not so simple. As you can see from the pink coloring above, polls say Alabama's Democratic Senator Doug Jones is going to have to move mountains to hold off a Trump-loving Auburn football coach. So actually Dems may need to win 4 seats somewhere to have a majority.
And Dems have one seat (light blue above) that may need some serious defending, that held by Michigan incumbent Senator Gary Peters. His opponent, Republican John James, is a attractive, competent candidate who has out fundraised Peters in recent quarters. However, the context in the state is good for Peters. Michigan is a battleground state which will receive a lot of Democratic focus; Joe Biden is 11 points ahead there today; and its Democratic governor clashed with Trump over COVID, largely to her advantage. But still worth watching.
Pollsters consider there are three tossup seats most likely to fall to Democratic challengers.
In Maine, incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins is in the race of her long political life. State senate leader Sara Gideon is an experienced politician who has outraised Collins by $9.2 million to $3.6 million in the last quarter. Collins has been hurt by voting to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court while claiming he'd stand up for abortion rights (not so in the recent session) and by voting to acquit Trump in the impeachment trial. But Collins is wily and well suited to Maine's rural expanses, so this will be a fight.
In Colorado, Democratic former governor John Hickenlooper is trying to unseat incumbent GOPer Cory Gardner. Hickenlooper was a very popular office holder, though Dem voters found him dull as dishwater in his brief presidential run. Like other Dem candidates, he outraised Gardner by a couple of million dollars in the recent quarter. He polls well. But I don't think we can take this one for granted: in 2016, Democrat Evan Bayh, a former Senator and legendary name in Indiana, looked like a shoo-in to regain a seat he had previously held -- Republicans creamed him. Hickenlooper seems a stronger candidate, but this race could go sour.
In Arizona, former astronaut Mark Kelly is taking on Republican appointed-Senator Martha McSally. Weirdly, McSally lost a Senate race in 2018 to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema -- so Arizona's Republican governor then appointed her to the Senate seat made vacant by John McCain's death. On paper she has a terrific resumé, but Kelly has led in every poll this year despite running in what was once the center of Republican Goldwater cowboy conservatism. And Kelly has vastly outraised McSally, $12.8 million to $9.3 million last quarter. Arizona will be a viciously contested state at the presidential level; the emergent Democratic coalition -- people of various colors, including a huge Latinx segment, Native indigenous voters, Black voters alongisde educated suburban whites -- is beginning to show its potential here. It is the previously solidly GOP state most thought possible to flip for a Democrat.
After this set of three seats, where are the Dems most likely to find another win? Here I'm seriously speculating, though there are encouraging benchmarks.
In Montana, another Democratic Governor, Steve Bullock, is running against incumbent Republican Steve Daines. Unlike Hickenlooper, Bullock is still in office now, and is getting high marks for his handling of the coronavirus. And, although Montana will certainly vote for Trump for president, it has a current history of electing Democratic Senators. Its other one is Jon Tester, first elected in 2006 and re-elected in 2012 and 2018, who always seemed an unlikely Democratic survivor in the rural West. Montanans have shown they will vote for a candidate who they find somehow authentic, even by splitting their votes between parties. And as in other Senate races, Bullock out raised the other guy by a couple of million dollars last quarter -- no small change in lightly populated Montana. I'm very hopeful about Bullock.
In North Carolina, Democrat Cal Cunningham is challenging incumbent Republican Senator Thom Tillis. North Carolina is the ultimate battleground state: the parties have been hammering each other in a no-holds-barred partisan fight for about a decade, with local GOPers trying and often succeeding at gerrymandering and voter suppression. There's a fight near to the death going on there between a rural old South and a growing, more educated, urban population. The latter, with Black and Latinx turnout, elected a Democratic governor in 2016 and the Republicans have been trying to take away his executive powers ever since. That Governor, Roy Cooper, is on the ballot again in 2020. As in so many of these contests, Cunningham raised $7.4 million while Sen. Thom Tillis raised $2.6 million in the last quarter. Cunningham definitely has a chance, though this election will be terribly hard fought and probably vicious. Both Biden and Cunningham have led in some polls, though not by much.
Then there are the true long shots:
In Georgia, there are two Senate elections this fall. In the regular one, Democrat Jon Ossoff is running against incumbent David Perdue (yes, he's from the chicken packing family.) Ossoff is a heck of a fund raiser and even leads in some polls, though it will take a lot more evidence before many people believe in his chances. The other Senate race is actually a sort of primary. Incumbent Republican Senator Johnny Isakson resigned for health reasons. Republican governor Brian Kemp appointed plutocrat Kelly Loeffler (she's married to the guy who owns the New York Stock Exchange and, yes, I do hold it against her). The Trumpie parts of the GOP wanted Congressman Doug Collins in the seat. So Collins is running against a Senator of his own party. Dems have fielded Raphael Warnock, who is pastor at Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic Atlanta church and is endorsed by Stacy Abrams, as well as several other contenders. The way this special election works, the whole lot of them run in November, then the top two vote-getters duke it out in a special election on January 5, 2121. At the moment, the contenders would be Collins in first, trailed by Loeffler. But who knows where this crazy mess goes. Dems could win one Senate seat, or two, or none, in Georgia.
In Iowa, challenger Theresa Greenfield is giving Republican Senator Joni Ernst a strong run. Ernst broke into the national conversation in 2014 by running an ad boasting of her prowess at castrating pigs. In June, the often accurate Des Moines Register poll found Greenfield ahead. Social Security death benefits saved her family; she promises to protect Social Security for all. Can she pull it off?
And finally, a couple of seats where wishful hopes are not yet born out by polling. In South Carolina, Democrat Jaime Harrison is a wonderfully attractive candidate against loathsome Trump suck-up Lyndsey Graham. And wouldn't it be great if Moscow Mitch McConnell in Kentucky could get his comeuppance? Democratic challenger Amy McGrath is a prodigious fundraiser -- but it is hard do more than hope she can do it in this very conservative state.
All of these Republican Senate candidacies are being held back by the anchor around their necks that is Donald Trump. The Democrats look safe to hold the House of Representatives which we won in 2018. There are even some promising Democratic House seat pick ups, particularly in Texas suburbs.
No one can say that those of us who live in noncompetitive states don't have choices to work on. Just pick one or more and do it.
(Fundraising numbers here cribbed from an article in The Trailer.)
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