Democrats have held the Senate since 2021, thanks to Republicans’ bungled attempt to hold on to two key seats in Georgia in the wake of Donald Trump’s attacks on early voting and mail-in ballots. GOP efforts to retake the body in 2022 were hampered by multiple pro-MAGA candidates who triumphed in GOP primaries, regardless of their ability to raise funds or campaign successfully with the broader electorate.
In that cycle, National Republican Senatorial Committee head Rick Scott of Florida chose the novel approach of staying out of the nomination process, resulting in Trump’s vociferous recommendation of a number of candidates who lacked both cash and mainstream appeal. The story of 2022 zigzagged between candidates with no personality (Arizona’s Blake Masters), too much personality (Georgia’s Herschel Walker) or television personality (Pennsylvania’s Dr. Oz). This time around, new NRSC head Steve Daines of Montana has stuck to the fundamentals, backing candidates the national party deems more capable of self-funding or winning over swing voters — and it’s one reason the odds strongly favor a Republican takeover, regardless of what happens in the presidential race.
The highest chance for a Republican flip from a Democratic incumbent is in Daines’s own home state, where the rotund Jon Tester with his hang-loose hand motions (he lost three fingers in a meat grinder accident) and his perfectly square flat-top is headed to the exit. After eighteen years in the Senate, Tester is widely expected to lose to the thirty-years-younger Tim Sheehy, a handsome Navy SEAL with a strong résumé. “The hay is in the barn on that one,” a Republican consultant tells me. “So Democrats are scrambling to find another race they can claim, at least to their donors, could be competitive with the right amount of cash.”
The 119th Congress will also bring replacements for the Senate’s two most powerful Independents, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. West Virginia’s Manchin, who toyed with the idea of running as a third-party candidate when the race was between Joe Biden and Trump, is retiring, and popular governor (and fellow former Democrat) Jim Justice is miles ahead of little-known Democrat Glenn Elliott. In Arizona, even with its high number of political independents, Sinema’s unique positioning and quirky vibes made her reelection a virtual impossibility. She’s likely to be succeeded by Democrat Ruben Gallego, a progressive member of the House who’s successfully used his military background to fend off charges of radicalism — and has the good fortune to be running against MAGA-retread Kari Lake, who’s spent more time posing at Mar-a-Lago than she has pounding the Phoenix pavement.
