The Case for a Better Understanding of Crime, Abortion and Inflation: The Last Six Weeks of the 2022 Senate Race
The race for the Senate is in the eye of the beholder less than six weeks from Election Day, with ads about abortion, crime and inflation dominating the airwaves in key states as campaigns test the theory of the 2022 election.
In retaining their Senate majority, Democrats defied the historical trend of midterm elections breaking against parties in power and overcame anxiety about high inflation. Voters punished Republicans who had opposed abortion rights and were swayed by Trump’s lies about election fraud.
But the optimism some Democrats felt toward the end of the summer, on the heels of Biden’s legislative wins and the galvanizing high court decision, has been tempered slightly by the much anticipated tightening of some key races as political advertising ramps up on TV and voters tune in after Labor Day.
Republicans have a history on their side of holding the White House to account, but they’ve been attacking Biden and Democrats for supporting policies they argue increase inflation. The latest CNN Poll of Polls shows that Biden has a approval rating of 42% with a disapproving percentage of 50%. And with some prices inching back up after a brief hiatus, the economy and inflation – which Americans across the country identify as their top concern in multiple polls – are likely to play a crucial role in deciding voters’ preferences.
But there’s been a steady increase in ads about crime too as the GOP returns to a familiar criticism, depicting Democrats as weak on public safety. The election has seen law enforcement officers testify to the camera in TV ads for both sides of the aisle. Democratic ads also feature women talking about the threat of a national abortion ban should the Senate fall into GOP hands, while Republicans have spent comparatively less trying to portray Democrats as the extremists on the topic.
Candidates and States in 2020: The Cases of Ossoff, Perdue, Fetterman, O’Kernel, and Warnock
One of the Trump advisers said if Masters lost by a point or two, all of the blame would be on McConnell.
These rankings are based on CNN’s reporting, fundraising and advertising data, and polling, as well as historical data about how states and candidates have performed. It will be updated one more time before Election Day.
At issue are Fetterman’s health — he had a stroke that took him off the campaign trail for a considerable amount of time — and Oz’s struggles with swing voters and his base. Oz has made several stumbles that Fetterman’s deft social media team has capitalized on — from crudité to Oz’s fundraiser in front of “Hitler’s limo.” All eyes will be on the Oct. 25 debate between the two.
“Because the American people turned out to elect Democrats in the Senate, there’s now a firewall against a nationwide abortion ban threat that so many Republicans have talked about,” he said.
Jon Ossoff and David Perdue faced each other in a Georgia Senate campaign in the year 2020. Loeffler had been appointed to the Senate in 2019 when former Sen. Johnny Isakson resigned for health reasons. Warnock defeated her in the special election for the remainder of Isakson’s term.
Warnock’s edge from earlier this cycle has narrowed, which bumps this seat up one spot on the rankings. The bad news for Warnock is that he is still overperforming in a state that the President flipped in 2020 by less than 12,000 votes. He is keeping the Senate race close to the governor contest, for which polls show him ahead. Warnock’s trying to project a bipartisan image that he thinks will help him hold on in what had until recently been a reliably red state. He was in one ad that promoted his work with Alabama GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville and never mentioned his own party. Republicans have been trying to link the senator to his party by voting for measures in Washington that they claim have caused inflation.
Democrats are hoping that enough Georgians won’t see voting for Walker as an option – even if they do back Kemp. Democrats have amped up their attacks on domestic violence allegations against the former football star and unflattering headlines about his business record. And all eyes will be on the mid-October debate to see how Walker, who has a history of making controversial and illogical comments, handles himself onstage against the more polished incumbent.
In the state where Biden won in 2020, Ron Johnson is the only Republican running for reelection and he broke his own term limits pledge to run a third time. And although Johnson has had low approval numbers for much of the cycle, Democrats have underestimated him before. The senator’s race against the Democratic lieutenant governor is gaining steam, which has moved this contest down one spot on the ranking.
Barnes was slow to respond but has made an ad out of the retired police sergeant. “Mandela doesn’t want to defund the police; he’s very supportive of law enforcement,” the retired sergeant says in the ad. Barnes is also going after Johnson on abortion now and Democrats expect this race to tighten and be a 1-to-2 point race, as so many statewide races in Wisconsin have been.
The conservative groups spent for Masters, but still have work to do to damage Kelly, an incumbent who has a large personal brand. Kelly led Masters 51% to 41% among registered voters in a September Marist poll, although that gap narrowed among those who said they definitely plan to vote. A Fox survey from a little later in the month similarly showed Kelly with a 5-point edge among those certain to vote, just within the margin of error.
Masters has attempted to moderate his abortion position since winning his August primary, buoyed by a Trump endorsement, but Kelly has continued to attack him on the issue. And a recent court decision allowing the enforcement of a 1901 state ban on nearly all abortions has given Democrats extra fodder to paint Republicans as a threat to women’s reproductive rights.
The New Hampshire Sen. Burr Race & the Inflationary Boundary: The Case against Cheri Beasley, the Democrat-elected Chief Justice, and Rep. Tim Ryan
New Hampshire swaps places with North Carolina on the rankings. The open-seat race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Richard Burr hasn’t generated as much national buzz as other states given that Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in the state since 2008.
The first African American woman to serve as a chief justice of the NC Supreme Court, Betty was successful in her campaign with the help of a high number of right leaning independents. She’s focused not just on cities, but also Black voters in rural counties as well abortion rights, like other Democrats across the country.
Budd is leaning into current inflation woes, specifically going after Biden in some ads that feature half-empty shopping carts, without even mentioning Beasley. The Senate Leadership Fund is attempting to tie the Democrat to Washington and one recent spot almost made her look like the incumbent in the race, superimposing her photo over an image of the US Capitol and displaying her face next to Biden. The SLF and Budd are trying to take advantage of her support of the tax and climate bill. “Liberal politician Cheri Beasley is coming for you – and your wallet,” the narrator from one SLF ad intones, before later adding, “Beasley’s gonna knock on your door with an army of new IRS agents.” Funding for the IRS is going up thanks to the new law. Democrats and the IRS commissioner agree that the IRS intended to go after wealthy tax swindlers and not the middle class.
It’s not the candidate the establishment wanted for the Republicans. The Republican primary gave her an easier path to victory as she faces off against a retired Army brigadier. Don DonBolduc was the commander of the military. He’s aligned himself with Trump and denies the election results.
Ohio – a state that twice voted for Trump by 8 points – isn’t supposed to be on this list at No. 8, above Florida, which backed the former President by much narrower margins. For the second month in a row, it has climbed back into the top 10. Republican nominee J.D. Vance’s poor fundraising has forced Senate Leadership Fund to redirect millions from other races to Ohio to shore him up and attack Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee who had the airwaves to himself all summer. The 10-term congressman has been working to distance himself from his party in most of his ads, frequently mentioning that he “voted with Trump on trade” and criticizing the “defund the police” movement. The man is trying to poke some holes in the picture of Ryan.
Whereas the party didn’t have to defend a single seat in a state former President Donald Trump won in 2020 this election cycle, in 2024 they will have to defend three seats – Montana, Ohio and West Virginia – where Trump won. Republicans, on the other hand, have no incumbents up in 2024 sitting in seats that Joe Biden won in 2020.
Democratic Rep. Val Demings, who easily won the party’s nomination in August, is a strong candidate who has even outraised the GOP incumbent, but not by enough to seriously jeopardize his advantage. She’s leaning into her background as the former Orlando police chief – it features prominently in her advertising, in which she repeatedly rejects the idea of defunding the police. Still, Rubio has tried to tie her to the “radical left” in Washington to undercut her own law enforcement background.
But in his bid for a third full term, Bennet is up against a stronger challenger in businessman Joe O’Dea, who told CNN he disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. His wife and daughter star in his ads as he tries to cut a more moderate profile and vows not to vote the party line in Washington.
O’Dea voted for a failed state ballot measure in 2020 that would have banned abortion after 22 weeks of age, but Bennet is attacking him for voting for McConnell to pass a national abortion ban.
The Senate Leadership Fund: An Overspending Campaign to Flop in the November Insights on the House Speaker’s Candidate Elections
The field has moved slightly back in the Republican’s direction because of a natural tightening closer to November when the races come into focus for more people, as well as a lot of television advertising in key races supporting GOP candidates.
The Senate Leadership Fund, a superPAC aligned with Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, has spent $52 million on TV ads in just the past two weeks, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact.
A group aligned with and sanctioned by former President Trump is now starting to spend a lot of money. They have poured in about $2 million in two states — Pennsylvania and Ohio, places where Trump-endorsed Senate candidates are struggling.
Republicans have won 211 of the 218 seats they’d need to take the majority, according to CNN projections, while Democrats have won 204, with 20 undecided as of Saturday evening.
The field of the top 10 most likely to flip continues to be the same group of races with Republicans making serious runs at five Democratic-controlled seats and Democrats contending in the other five. Control will most likely be decided in five of them, with Democrats looking for control in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as Republicans targeting Nevada, Georgia and Arizona.
It may be a natural and expected tightening, but after a month of millions of dollars in TV ads spending by Republican outside groups, the lead held by Democrat John Fetterman over Republican celebrity TV doctor Mehmet Oz has shrunk considerably.
The Case For An Abortion Allegation: What Happens If Your Ex-Lover Gets Away from the Democrat Party?
There was a test of whether scandals still mattered in this era of hyper-partisanship. Republican Herschel Walker paid for his ex-lover to have an abortion, despite the fact that she is the mother of one of his children. He denied the allegation. The Daily Beast presented a receipt for the abortion, a check Walker paid his ex days later and a get-well card he signed. The outlet reported that the friend of the ex-girlfriend also corroborates the story, which was told to them at the time.
Democrats continue to say incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto is running a good campaign, but she’s started to slip behind Trump-backed challenger Adam Laxalt, who denies the result of the 2020 presidential election. The bottom line is Cortez Masto is the most vulnerable incumbent senator in the country right now.
Still, Laxalt acknowledged in a tweet Saturday morning that the mail-in ballots that had arrived over the past couple of days continued to break in higher Democratic margins than his team had calculated. This has made our victory window less clear. He said the race was coming down to the more than 20,000 Election Day Clark County drop-off ballots. “If they are GOP precincts or slightly DEM leaning then we can still win. If they continue to trend heavy DEM then she will overtake us.”
The economy is a major reason for the Republican opportunity here. Some Democrats are concerned that the party is focused too much on abortion and not enough on the economy. The state has many white, Latino and Asian Americans who are still working to recover from the economic effects of the Pandemic.
The Latino group is a key one to watch. Republicans claim they have been able to appeal to the group over the economic effects of the disease and their frustration with progressive Democratic positions in order to tip the balance toward them.
Democrats have traditionally done well in Nevada by turning out their base voters, and they say Cortez Masto has been up on the air with Spanish-language ads for months and is well-liked in the Latino community. There are questions about the party’s ability to get out the vote. Democrats believe that they have the resources to do well, but this election is important to see if they can keep the Nevada turnout machine going.
Both parties have expected this race to tighten. In Arizona, the Republicans outnumber the Democrats and the independents matter. Mark Kelly and his opponent are facing the hurdle.
Masters ran an ad earlier in the cycle, when he was trying to win the primary, saying that Trump won the 2020 election. In a general-election debate against Kelly last week, he called President Biden the “legitimate president.” It’s quite the shift, and not the only one he’s made.
That said, North Carolina, a Republican-controlled seat, has trended up the top 10, and both sides expect a close finish between Democrat Cheri Beasley and Trump-backed Rep. Ted Budd. Some Democrats have complained that there haven’t been enough resources poured into this race, which they see as winnable, to push Beasley over the finish line in this state that has leaned toward Republicans in recent presidential and Senate elections. So lately, there’s been a bit of an uptick in Democratic spending. We’ll see if it makes a difference.
His campaign claims he will be focusing on inflation and retail politics in the next day or so, while Republicans hope that a lot of money spent by Republican groups in the final weeks will result in Budd past Beasley. Budd is expected to have the advantage in the end, but this one has remained close so far. Previous: 7
That’s going to be a tough sell in this state, where about 40% of people identify as independents – and even Republicans acknowledge abortion is effective as an issue. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has taken their advertising away from the state, as reported on Friday. Previous: 6
Incumbent Marco Rubio has continued to hold a consistent lead in this race against Democratic challenger, Rep. Val Demings, despite Demings raising a significant amount of money. As the Cleanup continues, it’s unclear what effect Hurricane Ian will have on this race.
Many places, including Orange County, where Demings was police chief, are still recovering from the aftermath of the flooding from Hurricane Matthew. The campaigns and committees are still trying to adjust with just a month to go in the election. Next: 10
The End of the Republican Party? Investigating Patty Murray’s Influence on the GOP Senate Race: An Update on the 2018 November 8 Election
Worth keeping an eye on: The Senate race in Washington state, between incumbent Democrat Patty Murray and Republican veterans advocate Tiffany Smiley, has been in single digits in the last several polls. Murray has lead in all of them and has continued to boast about her tenure and items in recent legislation, even as she’s been accused of leading to inflation. Murray is morphing into President Biden in a Republican ad. Murray has focused on the legislation that she fought for, which included items like lowering prescription drug prices.
Editor’s Note: Paul Sracic is a professor of politics and international relations at Youngstown State University and the coauthor of “Ohio Politics and Government” (Congressional Quarterly Press, 2015). He can be reached on the social media platform at@pasracic. His own opinions are included in this commentary. CNN has more opinion.
Does this mean that candidates should not use Ohio as a bellwether? Is Ohio a must-watch state for the Republican party in the future due to its electoral votes?
The results of 2022 US Senate race in Ohio, pitting Democrat Tim Ryan against Republican J.D. Vance, will be a very significant data point when seeking to answer this question. And the answer to this question is not only important for Ohio but for the nation’s political future.
When analyzing Ohio’s vote on November 8 what should we be looking for? A political scientist likes to divide Ohio into five distinct regions, the Northeast, Northwest, Central, Southeast and Southwest. Most of the change in Ohio’s political behavior after 2016 took place in only one of these regions: Northeast Ohio.
The Northeast Ohio region is home to the cities of Cleveland and Akron, and it is the most populous region in the state. Historically, it was also the most Democratic, a legacy of the influence of organized labor when the area was a manufacturing powerhouse.
The governor and US Senate races were among those that took place during the last two years. Former Republican Senator and Lieutenant Governor Mike DeWine beat out President Donald Trump by taking seven Northeast Ohio counties.
Brown first was elected to the state legislature nearly 50 years ago, and is now a household name in Ohio. Therefore, one must be careful about generalizing from an election involving such a well-known political figure. But one could say the same thing about the DeWine election. Six years after Brown, DeWine was elected to the state legislature.
The 2016 Midterm Campaign Swing: Chuck Trump’s Stops in Iowa, where he and Mike Grassley met in the House of Representatives
But starting Thursday night, the former president is back in a new way – four rallies in five days – for his sprint to Election Day, putting himself at the forefront of the GOP fight for control of Congress.
The Trump rallies in Iowa, Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio are intended to bolster his chances of being elected president in the future.
His final push to boost Republican candidates whose races could determine control of the US Senate begins Thursday in Sioux City, Iowa, a state he won comfortably in 2016 and 2020 but where Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley is looking for a last-minute boost from Trump’s base after a Des Moines Register poll last month found the seven-term senator in a far closer contest than expected against Democrat Mike Franken. Two people familiar with the matter claim that the Iowa Republican asked Trump to make a stop in his state.
But the former president’s appearance there, along with the other stops on his final midterm blitz, is also motivated by his desire to return to the White House, said multiple sources close to him. Trump, who lost the Iowa caucuses in 2016, hasn’t returned to Iowa in more than a year, and some Republicans suggest his absence has opened the door for other presidential prospects, some of whom have already made multiple trips to the first-in-the-nation state
There is no chance that Chuck is in trouble in this climate. Sam Nunberg, a former aide to Trump, said there is a big opening in the Iowa caucuses and that it is a 2024 thing.
While the election will have some weight for the Republican Party, which needs to pick up only five seats to regain the House and is in serious competition for the Senate, it will also have an impact on Trump as well.
There are people who are never going to be with President Trump and there are others who will decide if they are with him or not.
Trump’s final midterm campaign swing comes as Democrats deploy a number of high-profile surrogates to boost enthusiasm for the party and, in some cases, rescue endangered Democrats from close contests. Former President Barack Obama barnstormed the Midwest over the weekend with stops in Milwaukee and Detroit, while Vice President Kamala Harris and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are both slated to campaign for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul this week as she fends off Republican challenger Lee Zeldin.
If he loses a number of Senate and gubernatorial contests that threaten to undermine his credibility as a kingmaker and cause questions about his popularity with GOP voters, his presidential campaign may be crippled before it even begins. In the weeks leading up to Election Day aides to the former president have had to plan his campaign so he doesn’t make a difference in states like Florida where he could be perceived as anti- Republicans.
Two Trump advisers, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, said DeSantis would gain a major selling point in a contested presidential primary if he won Miami-Dade county, a feat that some Republicans consider attainable.
Nunberg thinks the rally is going to set up Trump to take credit for DeSantis’ performance, especially around Miami.
Trump has long been taking credit for Republican gains as he tries to create a reason for mounting a third presidential campaign. For months, the former president’s team has beat back criticism from Trump-weary corners of the party that candidates he personally recruited or elevated in primaries couldn’t be competitive in general election races. Now, as critical contests in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Ohio narrow, they are waiting with bated breath for an “I told you so” moment. Trump is a team player and candidate-in-waiting, acting as both during the closing weeks of the polls and during the campaign.
According to a person familiar with the matter, the Vance campaign thought that Trump could be the most helpful man in the world during the last 24 hours of the election.
A Republican who is active in several mid-term races told me that there are places where you don’t want to have the man who lost to Biden campaigning for you.
In an interview this week, Trump struck a cautious tone when asked about the Senate map, eschewing the confidence he typically oozes at his freewheeling campaign rallies.
I believe we could pick up the Senate. The former President told Chris he wouldn’t have said that if he had been asked three months ago.
The battle for control of the House is now the biggest unanswered question of this year’s midterm elections after Democrats kept their narrow Senate majority.
In California the process of counting mail-in ballots can take weeks, and significant shifts can occur late in the process. In some states, like Arizona and Oregon, there are undecided races.
With an estimated 290,000 votes to be counted, the governor’s race is too close to call with Lake one of the most prominent election deniers on the ballot.
Republicans seem to be inching closer to control of the House, but Democrats are still hopeful of gaining control.
Democrats scored a major coup in Washington’s Republican-leaning 3rd District, where on Saturday CNN projected that Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez would defeat Republican Joe Kent, who had aligned himself closely with former President Donald Trump.
Her victory came largely as a result of Trump’s efforts to punish Republicans who voted to impeach him. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a moderate who was widely viewed as a lock for reelection, did not finish in one of the top two slots in the primary and therefore didn’t advance to the general election.
Kevin McCarthy, House GOP Leader, has been the target of a backlash since Republicans lackluster performance in the mid-term election.
The result is a huge boost to President Joe Biden over the course of the next two years. It means Democrats will have the ability to confirm Biden’s judicial nominees – avoiding scenarios such as the one former President Barack Obama faced in 2016, when then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold a vote on his Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. Senate Democrats can set their own agenda if they reject bills passed by the House.
He said the Democratic Senate candidates “beat some very flawed challengers who had no faith in democracy, no fidelity to truth or honor. Our candidates didn’t give up even when the polls looked bleak.
He pointed out that Democrats can block any GOP measures that would affect abortion rights after the Supreme Court reversed Wade.
The Warnock-Wayn Senate Race and the Persistence of Democratic Perceptions of Election Frauds in Georgia, and a Chance for a Majority in 2020
Senate control already being settled will take some of the focus away from the Georgia Senate runoff, and the television advertising spending.
But the December 6 race between Warnock and Walker is still important. A win would give Democrats a meaningful majority, rather than the power-sharing agreement currently in place with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as a tie-breaker in the 50-50 chamber. It would also give them a pad ahead of a 2024 Senate battle in which the party must defend several seats in states that typically back Republican presidential candidates.
It is simply better. The bigger the number the better,” Biden, who is in the midst of an international trip, told reporters in Cambodia shortly after CNN and other news outlets projected Democrats would keep their Senate majority.
“It’s about who has the competence and character to represent us; who’s willing to tell the truth; who has the knowledge needed for the job,” a narrator says in the spot.
It’s the second straight election in which overtime in Georgia, which is triggered when no candidate tops 50% of the vote in the general election, will be necessary.
She would be a rareTrump supporter to win a competitive statewide race this year. Other Republicans who had parroted Trump’s falsehoods about widespread election frauds lost governor’s races in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and secretary of state races in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and more.
The Clark County Election was won by Adam Laxalt, the right-wing activist and a member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors
The Chairman of the County Board of Supervisors, Bill Gates, said that about 180,000 votes remained to be counted in the county.
He said he was confident that about 95% to 99% of those votes will be recorded by Tuesday. He said the county will continue to report about 85,000 votes per night until they are done.
In Alaska, the state’s at-large House seat and one of its Senate seats will hinge on ranked-choice results. Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, who won a special election this summer, is in a strong position to eclipse the 50% mark. Kelly Tshibaka is backed by the Trump campaign and wants to get Murkowski impeached for her part in the US Capitol attack.
Officials in Arizona and Nevada continued to push back on election misinformation about the vote counting that was spread online by right-wing activists and by Trump on his Truth Social platform. Trump baselessly posted on Truth Social Friday night that Clark County, which is the most populous in Nevada, was “finding all sorts of ballots in Clark County” and “pulling out all stops to steal the Election from Adam Laxalt.”
Gloria said there was no way they could find ballots because they were taking them in. “They’re brought here by the United States Postal Service. As long as it’s postmarked [by Election Day], we process those ballots and put them in the count.”
Laxalt struck a different tone than Trump. Less than a week before the Clark County ballots were dropped, Laxalt was leading Masto by a little more than 800 votes.
Underscoring the closeness of the race, Laxalt put out a series of tweets Saturday evening encouraging voters to “cure” their ballots to ensure that any ballots with technical errors with signature or other issues could be fixed to ensure they are counted. The deadline to cure ballots is 5 p.m. on Monday.
Masters promised to make sure that every legal vote was counted, for his people who knocked doors in 116 degree heat, and for the million+ Arizonans who put their faith in him. If Senator Kelly has more of them than me, I will be happy to congratulate him on his victory. Let the voters decide, not the media.
Maricopa County Election officials pushed back on Masters’ earlier contention – one that Lake had also made – that the vote counting in Arizona was moving too slowly in Arizona’s most populous county.
“It’s really, really unfortunate that some candidates, some activists are deciding to spread this misinformation,” Gates told CNN’s Jim Acosta. “We have spent weeks at Maricopa County, getting that word out that people should not anticipate results on election night or even the next day. That it takes a long time.
Democrats defied the odds – and most political handicappers’ predictions – to keep control of the Senate, as CNN projected over the weekend, making the December runoff between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker in Georgia seemingly less important.
But a look at the 2024 Senate map shows that Democrats need every seat they can get as they look to the next election cycle, which is filled with potentially problematic races for the party.
Manchin already has an official Republican challenger: Representative Alex Mooney, who has telegraphed his line of attack in an anti-Manchin ad that ran four months ago. At least two others have shown interest: Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who ran against Manchin in 2018, and Gov. Jim Justice, who is term-limited.
In Arizona, Senator Sinema, who won with 50% of the vote, is Channelsing liberals’ Disgruntledness with her First Term Voting.
And in neighboring Nevada, Sen. Jacky Rosen is up for a second term. She won in 2018 with 50% of the vote, and given the long history of close statewide races in Nevada, has to be considered potentially vulnerable as well.
Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania all sit in states that are expected to be hotly contested at the presidential level.
“Some of the primary noise on their side suggests they haven’t learned too much yet,” said J.B. Poersch, the president of Senate Majority PAC, a group closely associated with Senator Chuck Schumer. “There’s plenty of things for them to be nervous about.”
The Cleveland Guardians: How Do Republicans have gotten their way? In defense of Donald Trump, Senator Matt Dolan and Senator Joe Manchin
Republicans are lining up to take on Brown, notably State Senator Matt Dolan, who finished third in this year’s Senate primary behind Vance and Josh Mandel — both of whom aggressively courted Trump and his base.
The Cleveland Guardians is owned by Dolan’s family and they are already exploring the boundaries of acceptable criticism of Trump. He wrote an email to the Republican county chairs in Ohio that he thought what they saw nationally convinced them the country is ready for substantive candidates, not personalities and election deniers. He would back Trump if he was the nominee.
Then there’s Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who sounds intrigued by Sinema’s decision to become an independent. Manchin said he doesn’t know how you get more independent than him. I look at all of these things, I have always looked at them. But I have no desire to do anything in the foreseeable future.