The NPR Politics Podcast - Senate Races To Watch This Year

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

All eyes are on the presidential primaries, but there are a few key Senate races to watch this year too. West Virginia, Maryland, and Arizona — to name a few — could decide if Democrats keep their one-seat majority in the Senate or if Republicans will reign again. This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, political correspondent Susan Davis and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.Our producers are Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell & Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Erica Morrison. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. Hi, this is Tony. And Chelsea. And we're sitting on our couch. With our two dogs. Doing absolutely nothing. This podcast was recorded at...

109 p.m. Eastern Time on February 21st, 2024. I don't know what else you need. Okay, here's the show. Clearly a response to our hyperactive podcast listeners who are probably currently listening to us at Top Mound Everest. I'm all for it. I mean, honestly, most of us are just sitting on the couch, not hiking the fjords or, you know, going to spin class. Although those are all like, you know, aspirational for sure. I do want more about the dogs, though.

I feel like you can't mention your dogs and not tell me what type of dogs, these big dogs, little dogs, yappy dogs, slow dogs. I just want a little bit more dog detail. Ooh, I have a baseball can't let it go about dogs, but we can't talk about it today. Save it. Save it for Friday. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today we are talking about the U.S. Senate. We are still well over 200 days away from Election Day, but the Senate races are starting to heat up. Obviously, primaries are

coming up over the next couple of months. And this is a chamber that Democrats currently have a very small one seat majority. But there is a lot of chatter that this map looks really good for Republicans to potentially take over after this election. Can we just start there? Sue, why is that kind of the general narrative right now, looking ahead at this map? Sure. I mean, every two years, it all depends on the certain combination of states that are up for re-election in the Senate. Remember, a third of the chamber is up every two years. And it's just math. Look, it's a 5149 Senate. And one of those Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has already announced he's

retiring. I think reasonable people in the political world agree that Republicans will take control of West Virginia. Jim Justice is their candidate there. So that means the baseline starting point for the Senate is it's already a 50-50 Senate and they're fighting for control. So it means the outcome of the White House could be determinative of who controls the Senate majority. All of the fundamentals of this year seem to bend towards Republicans. And while the party has made a lot of mistakes in efforts to win back control of the Senate in the last several cycles, they do seem to have learned from a lot of those mistakes in 2024. And they're not repeating them in a lot of key races.

So, you know, if you're talking about betting odds right now, Republicans have all of the advantages going into 2024 to at least take a 50-seat majority, which could be dependent on the outcome of the White House, or even up to two to five-seat majority. Well, except for one word, Trump, right? I mean, he's been the problem, the anchor, sort of that's hung around Republicans next. And I would even go further back than Trump, because this is when Mitch McConnell was pushing back against the Tea Party and quote unquote, extreme candidates, and how many candidates he felt that Republicans had lost and how he would have been the likely majority leader far sooner than he was, aside from the fact that you had so many of these candidates who really didn't do very well in suburban areas and swing areas. However, the landscape is so tilted in Republicans' favor this time that it does look like the marbles are kind

of, you know, tilting in their direction, no doubt about it. I want to start with a place that is looking like one of the toughest places for a Democratic incumbent to defend, and that is Montana. John Tester, who has held that seat since 2007, is running in a state that went very far for Trump in 2020. I want to say he won like 56 or 57 percent of the vote there. What are Tester's chances here to defend this seat? Well, you said the key word there, and that's incumbent. And, you know, I think that even in a state like West Virginia, if Joe Manchin were running again, people would probably, you know, give him an edge or say

that it was a toss-up state because you have an incumbent. And incumbents have those kinds of advantages. And Jon Tester is a very good candidate, generally, he sticks to local issues. He sticks to sort of a Montana ethos. He brings on a lot of ranchers onto his into his ads. He has that buzz cut look that makes him look like someone of Montana, down to earth, salt of the earth kind of guy. And he's running a lot of ads. Democrats are running about 14 and a half million dollars in ads in Montana. Overall, about 22 and a half5 million spent there. It's going to be a tough seat to defend, especially in a presidential year. But Montana is a weird state politically because it doesn't always just go as far Republican as some people think it might.

Tester is also, and several Democrats are going to face this this cycle. He's a Democrat that's never appeared on the same ballot as Donald Trump. And this is a ballot as Donald Trump. And this is a state where Donald Trump is really popular. What Tester is going to challenge is whether there are enough voters, frankly, anywhere in America who still split their tickets. You know, the give or take, if you talk to political scientists and election strategists and people who look at modern elections, they will say the most a candidate can outperform their party and win is usually in the ballpark of six, seven, eight points. So if Joe Biden loses a state, but he gets 46 percent, you might still be able to outperform him and win 50. If Joe Biden's only getting 35 percent in your state, it's really hard, no matter who you are, to overcome that kind of deficit and win. Can Jon Tester do it? Maybe. You know, one of the things that Tester

has to his advantage, Montanans really like him. If you look at approval ratings for senators, he's kind of a unicorn right now. Generally speaking, people feel bad about everybody, especially their elected officials. And he's pretty popular back home. So that does tell you that his brand is sort of cut across. But when I say that Republicans aren't making the same mistakes this time around, I think Montana is a good example of that as well, where they've sort of cleared the field. There was a risk of having a potentially divisive Republican primary that all came together and fell apart in about a week recently, where the Congressman Matt Rosendale was going to get in the race. He announced he was going to get in against Tim Sheehy, who's sort of the party-backed

candidate. And, you know, Rosendale got shown the door. Donald Trump waited in that race. He backed Tim Sheehy. Matt Rosendale quickly said he would get out of that race. And Republicans have avoided a costly, messy primary that could weaken a candidate going into the general election. That happened a ton in 2022, in 2020, in 2018. And I think Republicans so far this cycle have put themselves in a really good position to at least avoid messy primaries. Could they still be flawed candidates that might not be able to win a general? Sure. But winning that first battle is really important. Yeah. And Tim Sheehy, you know, cuts a more moderate in tone profile. He's certainly the

candidate the party wanted. He's wealthy, can spend some of his own money. And he's a former Navy SEAL. And you'll hear that in all of his ads. I think you will hear that probably in every single ad. And that's one of the storylines I think early for me as I've been seeing this. I had the exact same reaction where this kind of quiet primary environment in Montana felt very different than what would have happened, I think, in 2022. And I had the same thought when, let's turn to Maryland right now, which has an open Senate seat because Senator Ben Cardin is retiring. And Larry Hogan recently announced that he is jumping into that race. He is somebody who has sky-high approval ratings across the board in Maryland. When he left office, more than 75 percent of Maryland voters said they approved the job he did as governor.

But winning as a Republican in a very blue state is going to be difficult no matter what. What are Hogan's chances here? There is a difference between being a governor in a liberal state and being a Republican and being a senator. And the reason that changes is because you're going suddenly to fight for priorities that are federal priorities that an entire country wants, things that you don't normally have fights over at the state level until recently, like abortion rights, for example, something I could have never gotten through, let's say, the Maryland State House, some restrictions on abortion or guns. But federally, on a national level, if Republicans take over the Senate and Larry Hogan is suddenly a vote for those things, I think that Maryland voters are then going to have a more difficult time in wrapping their brains around then putting him in the Senate to do that. Yeah. And look, like popular former governors don't actually have a very good track record of getting elected to the Senate. I think voters just look at those offices through two very different lenses. And frankly, when partisanship is so high,

I think when it comes to congressional offices, it comes to that baseline question of like, which party do you want to see in control? And in a state like Maryland, it's like the opposite of Montana, right? Joe Biden won huge there, probably by 30 some odd points. It's a very blue state. He's going to comfortably carry it in 2020. It's hard for me to imagine that there is a critical mass enough of split ticket voters in a state like Maryland to allow Larry Hogan to beat a Democrat, even if he ultimately is someone that Democrats and independents think like, oh, I like that guy, but I don't want Republicans in control of the Senate. Let's turn to two states that are going to be competitive presidential battleground states. Michigan and Pennsylvania both are going to have competitive presidential battleground states. Michigan and Pennsylvania

both are going to have competitive Senate seats. In Michigan, Senator Debbie Stabenow has announced that she is retiring. In Pennsylvania, there is an incumbent there. Bob Casey is running for his fourth term. What should we be watching, Sue, in these two races? I think these are important races because different than Montana and Maryland, which will happen outside of sort of the swing state pull of national politics, Michigan and Pennsylvania are at the heart of that. Somebody like Bob Casey, a long-term incumbent who's never lost an election in the state, sure, I can squint and see a world where he might be able to win if Donald Trump carries that state because it's going to be really narrow and around the margins either way. But in reality, I think these are probably two states where whoever's winning at the top of the ticket would be much

more likely to be the same party that is winning the Senate because people don't tend to split their tickets anymore, because I think that the margins will be so close. So, yeah, I think that these are two states that will be incredibly decisive, not just for the presidential race, but sort of what the what the coattail effect is for the party either way. I think it's gonna be really interesting to watch Alyssa Slotkin in this race as the Democrat, and she's leading in most of the polls. That's in Michigan. In Michigan. Yeah, she's a real rising star in the party. And she's somebody who even in a difficult House seat, really, you know, showed that she can win in those kinds of districts. She's a no-holds-barred kind of candidate. She is willing to debate almost anybody. And she pulls no punches. I mean,

honestly. And she's the kind of candidate who I think Democrats are very excited for in a place like Michigan. All right, let's take a quick break and more of the map when we get back. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, offering over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Hand-selected for their inherent craft, each hotel tells its own unique story through distinctive design and immersive experiences, from medieval falconry to volcanic wine tasting. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of over 30 hotel brands around the world. And we are back. And we are going to go to another state that has started moving more and more in recent elections to the right, and that's Ohio.

And there is a Democratic incumbent there as well, Sherrod Brown. Sue, how do you like his chances in a state that, as I said, in the last few election cycles is looking more and more like a Republican stronghold? You know, the Democrats and the Republican strategists that I talked to think that Sherrod Brown is probably the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent. And again, like Tester, he has a lot of strengths. He's run before in the state. He knows how well-known. She was really popular. And she still just couldn't win there and probably couldn't win anymore. And I think that Ohio has given us reason to believe that it is a red state gone red and they're not very interested in voting blue anymore. And if you think about it this way, in the midterms,

Tim Ryan, the former congressman who ran against J.D. Vance, the Republican who ultimately won the seat, he basically ran the Sherrod Brown playbook of how to win Ohio. A lot of his messages, a lot of his appeal, he was from a working class town and he's still lost by a considerable margin. So I think the odds for Sherrod Brown are not impossible, but probably the hardest to overcome for any incumbent. Yeah, I mean, Tim Ryan's not Sherrod Brown. He's not an incumbent. It doesn't have that same sort of deep roots, especially in the white working class union community. He's running a considerable amount of ads, millions of dollars so far, and really kind of focusing, for example, on fighting for union pensions and a lot of testifiers to that case. At the same time, Sue's right. The political graveyards are filled with really good candidates who were just behind the eight ball when it came to what happened in their state politically. It is probably worth noting that Republican primary is also pretty competitive. So it'll be interesting to see. Take a look at that race again once we know actually who the Republican candidate is. And that race is a lot about Trump and immigration, just like we're seeing with Republicans all across the country.

Yeah. Let's turn now to Arizona, which I'm having trouble getting a read on exactly what the landscape is because. It's Arizona. The current senator, Kyrsten Sinema, who was a Democrat, who then became an independent. And it's unclear whether she is going to run again or how that could affect things. Can somebody please just explain to me what's happening in Arizona? I mean, it is the only truly unsettled state really so far because Sinema has not made clear whether she's going to run or not. She has until early April to decide. You have to collect enough signatures to make it onto the ballot. So I don't know yet because it really depends on what she does. She is not operating in the way either fundraising

or politically that makes you think that she's going to run for reelection. But she's also one of the hardest people to predict in politics. So who knows what she does. If she doesn't run for reelection, then it's a pretty straight race between Ruben Gallego, who's a congressman from Arizona, and Carrie Lake, who is a proven loser in that race. She ran and lost the 2022 midterms. For governor. Yes, for governor. She ran and lost a statewide race in 2022 for governor. She is a very MAGA candidate. She embraces election denialism. I still don't think she has conceded that she lost her own race. But she's dynamic. The base loves her. Trump has

endorsed her. Part of why I say they're not repeating the same mistakes, it's like the establishment wing and the Trump wing are kind of singing from the same hymnal this time around. The Republicans campaign committee has already endorsed her despite all that baggage. In the past, they would try to get these candidates out of the race. And now I think that they've sort of just accepted that she would win a primary, so just get on board. I don't know. Arizona, I would say for me personally, the races that I think are going to be the most decisive are Arizona, Montana, Ohio. And I think Arizona is probably one of those states that's decided between zero and three percent. So it'll be tight till election day. Arizona is all about independence, really.

Like a place like Nevada, you can't really pin down its politics. That's why Kirsten Sinema moved to try to be an independent and see if she could run. She's going to keep us guessing probably for a while. Gallego, I have to say, running a lot of ads, about a million dollars worth of ads for Arizona. That's a significant amount. And I'm wondering if Carrie Lake has some money issues. Frankly, she's only run like $89,000 worth of ads, which really for somebody who we know is supposed to be running isn't very much. Interesting. I want to turn now to a state that we talked a lot about in 2018,

which is Texas. The dream for Democrats. Well, that's what I was. I was having dinner with my in-laws last night and my father-in-law was like, do Democrats have a shot in Texas? And my response was people have been saying Democrats have a shot in Texas? And my response was, people have been saying Democrats have a shot in Texas for a long time, and there hasn't really been evidence that that is going to come to fruition. Is Ted Cruz uniquely vulnerable in that state because of all of the stuff that comes with being Ted Cruz? Or is this just a Texas is going to be a Republican state for the foreseeable future? Texas is like the blue state of the future and maybe always will be. It's like Democrats feel like they're so close to making it a blue state, but they can't really get there. Democrats

certainly will argue that they could put Republicans on offense in Texas, where Ted Cruz is running for reelection, and in Florida, where Rick Scott is running for reelection. One of the things we're just talking about the race is here. But I think in this case, Democrats would say the issues really do matter because I think the party believes that abortion politics is still very much creating an upheaval in American politics and creating a possibility for surprise. Texas, because of hyper restrictive abortion laws and for the stories that have come out of the state of women trying to seek abortion access that have become national news, that they think that this is, especially in

the suburbs, opens a door for an appealing, moderate Democratic candidate to beat someone like Ted Cruz, who is more conservative, more divisive, and is still being criticized for famously leaving the state when Texas was dealing with a weather emergency a couple years ago. Same thing in Florida. There could be abortion-related ballot initiative, which has proven to really juice turnout and in Democrats' favor. So look, yes, they are on the board. But as we sit here today, these are states that Republicans are still favored to win. But we got a whole lot of campaign to go.

I mean, these are races that if they start to break, we're going to see that in August, September, October, in the closing weeks of the campaign. So it's just too soon to say, but there's still long shots for now. Texas is the prime example of how demographics are not destiny because Texas has been a majority minority state for quite some time. You have a lot of Latinos in South Texas, for example, who are second, third generation and who feel like they did it the right way, quote unquote. And I hear that quite a bit. The other thing I see when I'm in Texas is this bumper sticker that

says, don't California, my Texas, because there's been quite the influx of Californians who've moved from there to Texas. The thing is, most of those Californians who've moved to Texas are Californians who don't like California and the democratic politics there. So they're actually fairly Republican for the most part. Austin remains as this like blue blip in the state. But someone like Colin Allred, who's a congressman from Texas and Dallas area, is pretty popular. He's running. He actually outraised Ted Cruz in the last quarter. He's leading in the Democratic polls. He's a former football player. And, you know, he's an affable guy. He has some chance. He's not like Beto O'Rourke, who ran previously. He certainly had

his wing of progressives who liked him. Allred's not quite that left as Beto O'Rourke was. So it'll be interesting to see, number one, if he gets that same level of enthusiasm, but also whether or not he can bring over some moderates, you know, to be able to defeat Ted Cruz. And I will say there is at least one messy Democratic primary coming up on Super Tuesday, which is California. And we don't talk as much about it because Democrats are going to hold on to that seat. But, you know, California has a nonpartisan primary, which means the top two vote getters go to November. But Adam Schiff, the Democratic congressman, is in a battle against two other congresswomen, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee. And he is trying to run a race in which he

elevates the Republican running, Steve Garvey. If it's a Garvey-Schiff winner, then it's a cakewalk for Adam Schiff. But if you get two Democrats to be the top two vote getters, then you're going to have two Democrats in the state of California slugging it out till November. And that could be an also very ugly, internal, divisive Democratic Party fight. Well, there is a lot of campaigning obviously left this year. But quickly, I just want you guys to put some money down here. Who is going to control the Senate after this election? I want you on record. We are reporters. We don't use our crystal balls.

We are analysis. I mean, look, what did you say? The best chance scenario, it seems like with handicappers, I'm as a 50-50 Senate potentially with Democrats holding the White House and maybe even picking up the House, which Democrats, by the way, we haven't talked about the House, but Democrats do seem to have a fairly good chance of picking up the House, especially if Biden does win reelection. So, you know, a lot can happen here. But that's a very it's a very thin line for Democrats to walk to have a chance at control because of just how many seats they're defending. Yeah. And like I said earlier, obviously, all this is going to be even more interesting to

discuss once we know after in the next couple months, we're going to find out a lot about who's actually going to be on the ballot. Right. OK, let's leave it there for now. We will be back in your feeds tomorrow. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.