GOP controls Senate for 2 more years:
Result all but assured as Republican Kevin Cramer ousts North Dakota Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp and Republican businessman Mike Braun ousts Sen. Joe Donnelly in Indiana.
WASHINGTON — Republicans have retained Senate control for two more years, shattering Democrats’ dreams of an antiTrump wave sweeping them into majority.
The result was all but assured when Republican Kevin Cramer ousted North Dakota Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp and when Republican businessman Mike Braun ousted Sen. Joe Donnelly in Indiana.
Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz fended off a spirited challenge from Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke, and Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn triumphed in Tennessee.
The GOP’s gains come even as the results in Nevada and Arizona have yet to be determined.
The Indiana victory by Braun, a businessman and former state legislator who closely embraced President Donald Trump, coupled with GOP Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s triumph in Tennessee were key in thwarting Democrats’ long-shot drive to capture the Senate control.
Blackburn, a conservative who is also an ardent Trump backer, defeated former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, 74. Bredesen had promised a bipartisan approach if elected and had won the endorsement of music star Taylor Swift.
The night’s news wasn’t completely disastrous for Democrats.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin was re-elected in West Virginia, a state Trump captured by 42 percentage points in his 2016 election triumph. Democratic incumbents also prevailed in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Midwestern states that Trump carried narrowly two years ago.
Overall, Democrats were defending seats in 10 states that Trump took in 2016, including five he won by at least a huge 19 percentage points. Trump prevailed in Indiana by 19 points.
Tuesday’s midterm elections were among the most bitter in years.
Democrats’ longshot prospects for capturing a Senate majority were pinned on expectations that their supporters, roused by revulsion toward Trump, would surge to the polls. Fueling their intensity have been Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric and policies, his efforts to dismantle health care protections enacted under President Barack Obama and the
#MeToo movement’s fury over sexual harassment.
Democrats also had history on their side: 2002 was the only midterm election in the past three decades when the party holding the White House gained Senate seats.
Republicans were banking on those dynamics being offset by a vibrant economy and by a president whose insult-laden approach to political discourse was as stirring for conservative voters as it was infuriating to liberals. The night’s initial results suggested that Trump’s nationalistic appeals to hard-right voters, while profoundly divisive, were helping nail down GOP victories in rural, deep-red states.
Trump’s racially tinged anti-immigrant rhetoric could hurt Republican candidates in swing states such as Arizona and Nevada where college-educated voters could be decisive, but it seemed to be helpful in deeply conservative areas.
With Democrats considered a good bet to grab House control from Republicans, keeping the Senate was seen as crucial for the GOP’s goals of tax and spending cuts, trade, immigration restrictions, curbs on Obama’s health care law and judicial nominations.
In other results, Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democrats Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar were easily re-elected. Along with Sherrod Brown, a prolabor lawmaker re-elected in Ohio, the four are considered potential 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls.
GOP hopes of gaining a seat from New Jersey were dashed when Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez won a third Senate term. Menendez won in the heavily Democratic state despite a federal bribery indictment that prosecutors dropped this year after a mistrial.
Also victorious was Republican Mitt Romney, the vanquished 2012 GOP presidential candidate who grabbed the Utah seat being vacated by the retiring GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch. Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine, his party’s defeated 2016 vice presidential candidate, won re-election to the Senate.
In other states Trump carried in 2016, Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota seemed at greatest peril of losing. Other Democrats fighting for political survival included Missouri’s Claire McCaskill and Bill Nelson of Florida. Nelson, 76, faced outgoing GOP Gov. Rick Scott, who poured over $50 million of his own fortune into his campaign.