Democrats see edge in early Senate map as Trump casts big shadow
Six months into the Biden administration, Senate Democrats are expressing a cautious optimism that the party can keep control of the chamber in the 2022 midterm elections, enjoying large fundraising hauls in marquee races as they plot to exploit Republican retirements in key battlegrounds and a divisive series of unsettled GOP primaries.
Swing-state Democratic incumbents, like Sens. Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Mark Kelly of Arizona, restocked their war chests with multimillion-dollar sums ($7.2 million and $6 million, respectively), according to new financial filings this past week. That gives them an early financial head start in two key states where Republicans’ disagreements over former President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept his loss in 2020 are threatening to distract and fracture the party.
But Democratic officials are all too aware of the foreboding political history they confront: that in a president’s first midterms, the party occupying the White House typically loses seats — often in bunches. For now, Democrats hold power by only the narrowest of margins in a 50-50 split Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tiebreaker to push through President Joe Biden’s expansive agenda on the economy, the pandemic and infrastructure.
The midterms are still more than 15 months away, but the ability to enact policy throughout Biden’s first term hinges heavily on his party’s ability to hold the Senate and House.
Four Senate Democratic incumbents are up for reelection in swing states next year — making them prime targets for Republican gains. But in none of those four states — New Hampshire, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia — has a dominant Republican candidate emerged to consolidate support from the party’s divergent wings.
Out of office and banished from social media, Trump continues to insist on putting his imprint on the party with rallies and regular missives imposing an agenda of rewarding loyalists and exacting retribution against perceived enemies. That does not align with Senate Republican strategists who are focused singularly on retaking the majority and honing messages against the Democrats who now fully control Washington.
“The only way we win these races is with topnotch candidates,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who used to work on Senate races. “Are Republicans able to recruit top-notch candidates in the Trump era?”
Of the seven contests that political handicappers consider most competitive in 2022, all but one are in states that Biden carried last year.
“We’re running in Biden country,” said Matt Canter, a Democratic pollster involved in Senate races. “That doesn’t make any of these races easy. But we’re running in Biden country.”
Critical races remain unsettled for Republicans. The party is still trying to find compelling Senate candidates in several states, with Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire, considered the highest priority for recruitment to challenge Sen. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat who raised $3.25 million in the past three months. A bevy of Republican senators have lobbied Sununu to enter the race, and Sen. Rick Scott, Rfla., who leads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, went so far as to ask activists at a conservative conference last week to “call Chris Sununu” and urge him to run.
Scott has similarly pursued the former attorney general of Nevada, Adam Laxalt, saying last month that he expected Laxalt to run against Sen. Catherine Cortez-masto, the Democratic incumbent.
The unexpected retirements of Republican senators in Pennsylvania and North Carolina have opened seats and opportunities for Democrats in those swing states, but the path to victory is complicated. In both, Democrats must navigate competitive primaries that pit candidates who represent disparate elements of the party’s racial and ideological coalition against one another: Black and white; moderate and progressive; urban, suburban and more rural.
In Wisconsin, a third Republican incumbent, Sen. Ron Johnson, has wavered for months over whether he will seek a third term.
Whether or not Johnson runs, Wisconsin is among the top Democratic targets in 2022 because Biden carried it narrowly in 2020.
In Florida, national Democrats have all but anointed Rep. Val Demings, a Black former police chief in Orlando who was vetted by the Biden team for vice president, in a state that has repeatedly proved just out of reach.