U.S. Senate: Feinstein wins — Republicans pick up seats to keep power
Sen. Dianne Feinstein won re-election Tuesday night, but will return to a Senate that remains in Republican control.
With Feinstein squaring off against a fellow Democrat, Los Angeles state Sen. Kevin de León, California’s seat was never in play for the GOP. But Republicans across the country took advantage of President Trump’s popularity in redhued states to increase their 51-49 advantage in the Senate.
Feinstein was leading with 54 percent of the vote to de León’s 46 percent with 29 percent of precincts reporting.
At her election night party at the Presidio Officers’ Club — where the San Francisco Girls Chorus sang “I left My Heart in San Francisco” — Feinstein said the political climate is far different in Washington than when she was first elected to the Senate in 1992.
“This is such a great country, and it’s been fractionalized and trivialized and threatened,” Feinstein said. “We must stop that. We must come together as the great power that we are, for the good of the nation, and I think, mankind.”
Across the nation, Democrats started at a disadvantage Tuesday, defending seats in 10 states Trump carried in 2016. The bad news for them in those races came early in the night, with Republicans picking off incumbent Democrats in Indiana and North Dakota. A Republican then toppled a third Democratic incumbent in Missouri.
To take control of the Senate, they had to successfully defend all 26 Democratic seats up for re-election and win two held by Republicans. Instead, Republicans flipped the three seats and effectively held off Democratic challenges in others. In Florida, Republican Rick Scott seemed poised to topple incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, but the race was too close to call late into the night.
Republicans pulled off their first pickup in Indiana, where Republican challenger Mike Braun defeated incumbent Democrat Joe Donnelly. North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp’s seat followed, with Rep. Kevin Cramer defeating her handily. In Missouri, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill lost to Republican Attorney General Josh Hawley.
In Texas, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz fended off a tighterthan-expected challenge from Democrat, Rep. Beto O’Rourke.
Keeping control of the Senate will give Republicans a major bright spot in what is otherwise shaping up to be a rough election year. With Democrats taking control of the House, a Republican majority in the Senate will ensure no Democratic-led legislation reaches Trump’s desk.
The Senate also exclusively holds pivotal powers in Washington. The upper chamber confirms all nominees — judicial and Cabinet. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has been determined to help Trump remake the federal judiciary by confirming as many conservative judges as possible to the lifetime positions.
And with a raft of Cabinet departures expected from the administration, the party in power will dictate who replaces them. In the rare case of impeachment, the Senate also serves as the trial body, ultimately deciding on any potential verdict.
In California, Feinstein never trailed in any of the pre-election polls, which found her with strong acrossthe-board support from virtually every group in every part of the state. Much of de León’s backing in those surveys came from Republicans, even though the former state Senate leader argued throughout the campaign that Feinstein should be replaced because she was too willing to work with Trump and the GOP.
For the 85-year-old Feinstein, her battle against de León, 51, was a contest she never expected. The former San Francisco mayor has rolled to victory every six years since edging GOP Rep. Michael Huffington in 1994 and was poised for another low-key, no-campaigning campaign this year.
But Trump’s 2016 election changed everything, igniting an opposition movement in California that energized progressives in the Democratic Party. Those activists, many of whom supported Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, took control of much of the state party machinery, freezing out many of Feinstein’s longtime supporters and prompting de León to challenge her from the left.
“This race has been a fight for California’s future, and for the future of the Democratic Party,” de León told supporters in Los Angeles on Tuesday night after his bid came to a close. “We’ve shown that you can’t just elect Democrats that walk like Democrats; we have to fight for Democrats who share our values — who aren’t afraid to stand up, speak out, and fight every day for the most vulnerable.”
In San Francisco, Feinstein’s supporters celebrated her win and said her leadership was needed more than ever.
“She really influenced my career,” said Cynthia Nimmo of Sausalito, a former Feinstein staffer who attended the senator’s election night party.
“I learned so much from watching her,” said Nimmo, who is CEO of Women’s Funding Network, which invests in projects supporting gender equity around the world. “She always held herself with such confidence and integrity.”
Kathryn Totah of Pacifica said she was hoping to see country-wide change come out of Tuesday’s election.
“This election feels very important,” Totah said during Feinstein’s election party.
Democrats taking control of the House helps, said her husband Paul Totah, even if Republicans maintained their dominance in the Senate.
“We need to figure out a way to survive the Trump years and this will certainly help,” he said.
Chronicle staff writer Melody Gutierrez contributed to this report.
“We must come together as the great power that we are, for the good of the nation, and I think, mankind.” Sen. Dianne Feinstein