The NPR Politics Podcast - Two Very, Very Different Strategies For Winning The Senate

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

There are 34 Senate races this November and any one of them could decide control of the evenly-divided chamber. Democrats in Pennsylvania are slogging through a crowded primary, pitching similar progressive economic policies and distinct personal brands to voters. And Republican presidential hopeful and Florida Senator Rick Scott put out a blueprint encouraging GOP candidates to double-down on the culture war issues in order to save a country he describes as imperiled.This episode: congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, national political correspondent Don Gonyea, and acting congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Caroline in New Orleans, Louisiana. I just started my day with a piece of king cake and a cup of coffee. My kids and I are putting on our purple, green, and gold and headed to the Mardi Gras parades for the first time since 2020. Happy Mardi Gras and Feliz Carnaval. This podcast was recorded at 2.39 p.m. on Wednesday, February 23rd. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Okay, here's the show. Ah, that sounds very fun. I'm jealous. I would love to be out there with you. Oh, Mardi Gras. Have you been?

I have. I have. It's been a long time, though, and it's unforgettable, let me tell you. I've never been, but I love the food in New Orleans. It's not too late. Go get on a plane. Yes. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I also cover Congress. And I'm Don Gagne, national political correspondent. There are 34 Senate seats on the ballot this year in states across the country. That means we're watching the most competitive states extremely closely because, as we have said countless times before on this podcast, the Senate is evenly divided and the majority is in the balance in this year's election.

So, Don, you have been spending a lot of time in Pennsylvania lately. Pat Toomey, the current Republican senator there, is retiring. So this is a wide open race, right? That's right. And I've been with the Democrats a lot over the past couple of weeks. But I will note that the GOP side has a TV celebrity, Dr. Oz. He's probably the front runner. There's hedge fund manager David McCormick and a former Trump ambassador, Carla Sands. And just to make it interesting, there is a Trump endorsed candidate who's already dropped out after an allegation of domestic abuse. So it's early, but there kind of step back. And since there are 12 candidates here,

and we only have, you know, a limited period of time on this podcast, could you kind of pick out a couple of them that you think are, you know, really sticking out to voters and or at least that you've noticed are really kind of emerging as candidates to watch? Right, we're going to talk about a lieutenant governor, a congressman, and a sitting state house member. Let's start with the lieutenant governor. His name is John Fetterman. He's a former small-town mayor. He's been lieutenant governor since 2018. I spent a day with Fetterman in northwestern PA. Now, that is, people who know the state, Trump country. There are Trump signs everywhere,

old Trump-Pence signs, and lots of new Trump 2024 signs. I asked Fetterman why he was there in a place where Democrats have just gotten their tails kicked over and over. And some folks would say, why would you waste your time? And I'm like, because you have rooms like this and you have people that have the same core values and same issues as you do. And if you don't show up and you don't engage, then who else are they going to listen to? Now, Fetterman campaigns like a blue collar guy. He wears a Carhartt hoodie. He wears baggy basketball shorts on a day when it's like 30 degrees out there.

He is a progressive, a Bernie Sanders supporter. He talks in his very short and very informal stump speech about $15 an hour as the minimum wage. And he says the party's caught up to him on that issue. He talks about broadband for rural areas and about legalizing pot. That gets libertarians excited, right? And, of course, he talks about things like investing in manufacturing and clean energy while being mindful of protecting and replacing current jobs in the state, coal jobs or whatever, with good-paying jobs.

If we're thinking about people that voters might know, the next person in my mind would be current Congressman Conor Lamb, who, you know, Deirdre, that's somebody we know pretty well from the Capitol, right? Right. And, you know, he won in a special election for his House seat with this argument that he had crossover appeal, right, that he was campaigning in a district around Pittsburgh that had a lot of Trump voters. But I think Conor Lamb's sort of political identity now sort of tracks with where the Democratic Party has moved. Like he has taken a lot of positions recently that were probably when he ran considered, you know, pretty progressive. Like he is now trying to set himself apart from somebody

like West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, because he's saying, you know, he wanted to get rid of the filibuster. I ran into him in the Capitol right around the time the Senate was voting, was considering getting rid of the filibuster and trying to pass a voting rights bill. And he said, look, like, I think we need to do it because this is something that our party is just so fundamental to the Democratic Party in terms of protecting voting rights, that he, as someone who's viewed as sort of a moderate, has moved left on. And he also, you know, kind of attached himself to Joe Biden. He said, you know, I'd be happy to campaign with Joe Biden, who obviously has roots

in Pennsylvania. How's that all playing out on the ground for him, Don? Well, he's certainly meeting voters and voters closer to his western Pennsylvania district are far more likely to know him. But you can really sense that he is still introducing himself to much of the state. He is, I think it's fair to say, a rising star in the party. But where Fetterman is all, you know, shorts and Carhartt, you know, Lamb is very buttoned down. He's a former Marine, a former prosecutor. As Deirdre said, he has won narrowly in districts that are evenly divided. And he actually says that is a big, big reason to support him.

He's the guy who can win in the fall. And Deirdre, you raised Joe Manchin. I put it right to him. I said, people see you as a centrist. People see you as perhaps even another Joe Manchin type in the Senate. He said he didn't like the word centrist. And here's what he said about the Manchin part of that question. You know, he opposed Build Back Better. I voted for it. He opposes getting rid of the filibuster. I'm for getting rid of it. He opposed raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. I'm for it.

There are a number of issues like that that we're continuing to spell out for people so they understand the difference. So who else are you seeing? Is there anybody else? I'm acknowledging that this is very early in the campaign process for a lot of people to be getting engaged, but is there anybody else who stands out that voters are really seeming to be drawn to? Well, let's talk about that state house member, Malcolm Kenyatta. Remember, Fetterman and Lamb are both from western PA. The population base, especially for Democrats, but the population base in Pennsylvania is the southeastern corner of the state. That means Philadelphia and its suburbs. Kenyatta is from Philly. He's from North Philly, he'll tell you. He is looking to be the

first African-American U.S. senator from PA. He would also be the first openly gay person to hold that job in Pennsylvania. He is banking on big turnout in urban areas. He says that's how you win Pennsylvania. It is going to be critical that we have massive, massive turnout in southeastern Pennsylvania. Folks want to win this race, then you know what? We're going to have to have a lot of people turn out in southeastern Pennsylvania, as well as everywhere across the state. And he says he's the one who can do that. I'm wondering if you see any, you know, relationship here, either Deirdre or Don, between what these guys are talking about in Pennsylvania and kind of a national strategy for Democrats, if there is one that you guys can kind of identify at this point. I mean, I think a lot of national Democrats are really looking

closely at the primary in Pennsylvania, because there's clearly this tension inside the party about having broad appeal and reaching out to independents, you know, in a way that perhaps Conor Lamb has done in the past and could do in a general election, and someone like Fetterman or Kenyatta, who are more progressive and probably tout different issues that they want to stress differently in terms of, you know, what the party should be focused on and the future of the party, right? I mean, because I think what, there's going to be a lot of debate, depending on the results of this primary and primaries in other places around the country where there are progressives pitted against more mainstream or more centrist Democrats. Well, it's time for us to take a quick break,

because when we come back, we're going to be talking about what Republican strategy looks like for, you know, these upcoming races. And we're back, and it's time to talk about Republican strategy. Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott was out yesterday with a kind of policy blueprint for what he thinks a conservative takeover in Washington should look like. So, Scott is the head of the Republican Party's Senate campaign efforts, and he's also widely seen as a potential presidential hopeful, but he did release this plan from his personal campaign. So, I guess we should start by talking about what's in this plan. He talks about issues like parental control in schools, but he also talks about controlling the way schools teach race. He wants to do away with the concept of critical race theory. He also wants to remove questions about

race from government forms, and he has positions on abortion and gender, including denying the existence of transgender people, banning gender reassignment surgeries for minors, and doing away with government forms that acknowledge gender identity and sexual orientation. All of those things that have energized Republican voters in recent state and local elections are all in there. So Deirdre, do Republicans see this as a smart strategy, kind of piggybacking off of that Virginia governor's race win last year to kind of motivate the way they think about all of the races this year? I think yes, Republicans do see talking about a lot of the same issues that helped elect Glenn Youngkin in Virginia as a Republican governor as being things that they could focus in on the midterms. People have been talking about the issues of parents' rights,

parents having the ability to weigh in on COVID policy when it comes to school, when it comes to curriculum. But in terms overall of this strategy that Rick Scott is putting out, this very detailed, specific messaging and policy proposal, I don't think Republicans agree with him on that, on doing that now. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for months has been saying the 2022 midterms are a referendum on President Biden's handling of the economy, handling of COVID. There's been a lot of talk about the impact of inflation. I think a lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill want to talk about that. None of that was in this plan. And there was nothing in that plan.

I think, unless I'm mistaken, I haven't seen many Senate Republicans say, yeah, I'm all for this Rick Scott strategy. That's been kind of pretty quiet about, at least from the Republican side. Democrats have a lot of feelings about it. But yeah, some of it is because there are some, you know, issues in here that might not be winning for Republicans, one of which being, you know, Rick Scott is proposing and basically imposing taxes on people who don't make enough money to currently have, you know, a tax debt to the government when they file taxes. And that is not a particularly popular idea. Don, are you hearing this when you're out there talking to voters? I mean, the other stuff that Rick Scott talks about a lot in here are social issues like abortion and gender identity and sexual orientation.

Are Republican voters talking to you about that when they're talking about what matters? Not a lot. You will hear things related to mandates and schools and local control. And that then leads to discussion of curriculum. But mostly people are talking about inflation and their concerns about the economy. And I think the other thing that's worth noting is in the context of the midterm elections, mostly people aren't paying attention yet. So they aren't attaching things to one candidate or another. They might certainly attach things to one party or another. But in terms of deciding

which candidate in a primary, a lot of them, overwhelmingly, it feels like they don't even really know who's running yet because they're just not that focused on it. Well, it sounds like what you're saying is we have a very long campaign road ahead this year. So with that in mind, I guess we'll have to leave it there today and, you know, come back and revisit all of these themes in the next couple of weeks or months. With that, I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I also cover Congress. And I'm Don Gagne, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.