On Politics: Your guide to the drama-filled race for Senate control
Your guide to the drama-filled race for Senate control
The latest, with 11 days to go
All year, control of the Senate has seemed like Republicans' to lose. They are practically certain to pick up Senator Joe Manchin's West Virginia Senate seat, and they need just one more of seven competitive seats held by Democrats or an independent to claim the majority. With Senator Jon Tester, a farmer and a third-term Democrat, trailing his Republican opponent in Montana, a state that's gotten redder and redder, Republicans are closing in on their goal of wresting back the Democrats' narrow majority. That would turbocharge Donald Trump's ability to install his allies in political and judicial roles if he were to win the presidency, and it would stymie Vice President Kamala Harris's agenda right out of the gate if she won. But this has been a year of political surprises — and there are several playing out across the Senate map right now. Democrats led many of those competitive races for much of the year, but some have tightened in recent weeks. Republican-held seats in Texas and Nebraska (yes, Nebraska) have become surprisingly competitive. And some candidates are subtly shifting their messages. To explain the state of play, I called my colleagues Carl Hulse and Annie Karni, our indomitable congressional correspondents who are covering the two toughest Senate re-election battles on the map, Montana and Ohio. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Jess Bidgood: Annie and Carl, welcome back to the newsletter! Where are you? Carl Hulse: I am in Montana, where I've been for a week, chasing around Tim Sheehy, the Republican running to unseat Jon Tester, and watching a gazillion ads on TV. It's incessant. I feel for these people. They've been bombarded. Annie Karni: I just got back to Washington from Ohio, where Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, is trying to hold off a challenge from the wealthy former car dealer, Bernie Moreno. It's a half-a-billion-dollar race — the most expensive of the cycle — and the ads are so constant that when I went to a fair with Moreno, he was apologizing to voters over how much they have to see these ads. CH: Tester raised $32 million the last quarter, which is incredible. JB: That's remarkable. Now, we try not to be too predictive around here, but I do want to ask: Given everything we know about the map right now, how likely is it that Republicans will win the Senate? AK: If they don't, it will be the more surprising story. The conventional wisdom for a while has been that both chambers of Congress are likely to flip: The Senate will go to Republicans, and Democrats will retake the House. But these races are all really close — just like the presidential race. CH: Tester is the tipping point. He is the underdog — which is unusual for an incumbent — and he knows that. But there are wild cards in Nebraska and Texas. At the start of the cycle, the Democrats were on defense, and weren't competitive in any of the Republican-held seats, but they've made a real charge against Senator Ted Cruz in Texas, a polarizing figure who is now having to fight to hold onto his seat. And in Nebraska, you have an independent union activist, Dan Osborn, who has forced the Republican Senator Deb Fischer into an unexpectedly competitive re-election fight. JB: Let's talk about the Democratic-held seats that are tightening. Right now, Brown has the toughest re-election battle aside from Tester. What's his strategy to hold on, Annie, and why is it so close? AK: I asked Brown why it's so close last week, and he just said: the money. Brown is the head of the Senate Banking Committee, and the cryptocurrency industry, which doesn't want to be regulated, has poured money into Moreno's campaign. Then, there's the way Ohio has changed politically. It used to be a bellwether state, and now it's firmly red. If Brown can't win this race, that could be the end of Democrats being elected statewide in Ohio. He's a known quantity with a populist message about workers' rights that has really worked for him over the years. But, as I wrote this week, even he is having to lean on the issue of abortion, which is what every Democrat around the country is doing to get over the finish line. CH: In Ohio and Montana, Democrats have the best possible candidates they could have in this environment. Brown is a well-liked populist; Tester is a third-generation Montana farmer with a real history in the state. But it may just be that their states have changed too much. People here tell me they have nothing against Tester, but they think the country needs change, and they're going to vote for Sheehy. JB: Both of the Republican candidates in Ohio and Montana have run rocky campaigns. Does that matter? AK: In Ohio, Moreno suggested that women over 50 should have no reason to care about the issue of abortion rights. Democrats have described this to me as a comment that seemed cooked up in a lab to lose an election. CH: That abortion comment is exactly the kind of comment that cost Republicans in the past. Sheehy, Tester's opponent, has been dogged by controversy, including the question of whether he got shot while serving in the military, as he has claimed. He's running a fairly hidden campaign. But whether it's enough to knock him off amid the growth of Republicanism and MAGA in Montana, I don't know if that's going to happen. JB: There are a few other Midwestern Senate races — in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — that look tight, too. But one surprise of the cycle has been two that don't look tight, and those are in Nevada and Arizona, where the Republican candidate, Kari Lake, is trailing Representative Ruben Gallego, a Democrat. AK: In Nevada, Senator Jacky Rosen has been polling way ahead of Harris, and President Biden before her, in her race against Sam Brown. That's been attributed to her focusing on abortion for over a year. CH: Many of these are going to be super tight races, depending on turnout. Michigan is flashing red for the Democrats at the presidential level, and that could spill over into the Senate race. Democrats say they've got the ground game, and Republicans don't. And, on Election Day, we're going to find out whether or not that's true.
Behind Nebraska's tight Senate race, a railroad feudAbout that competitive Senate race in Nebraska. My colleague Maya Miller, who recently reported from the state, tells us how the contest is undergirded by an unexpected issue: trains. Dan Osborn, a mechanic and steamfitter best known for his role in leading strikes against the Kellogg's cereal company in 2021, is giving Senator Deb Fischer, Republican of Nebraska, a last-minute run for her money in a race that could complicate the G.O.P.'s hopes of securing a majority in the Senate. Osborn, who is running as an independent, is leaning heavily into his working-class background and his status as a political outsider in a populist appeal to voters across the ideological spectrum. Until April, he was still working full time as a steamfitting apprentice while making time for campaigning on the side. He tells viewers in one of his most recent advertisements that in his last year working at the Kellogg's factory, he pulled 33 double Sunday shifts — 16-hour days — to make ends meet for his family. The origins of Osborn's scrappy campaign trace back to the rail unions of western and central Nebraska, where Union Pacific and other railroad companies carry great influence as both employers and lobbying powerhouses. The unions recruited Osborn as a candidate last year after they vowed to oust Fischer for championing legislation that they say benefited rail executives at the expense of laborers. "Dan was a person that wouldn't cater to any political platform. He would cater to what labor and what working people needed in the state of Nebraska," said Jeff Cooley, the president of the Midwest Nebraska Central Labor Council and a rail conductor who said Fischer's office had largely ignored his letters calling for increased safety standards to prevent train derailments and explosions. Cooley, a disaffected Democrat, said that both parties were guilty of abandoning the working person's interests, and that Osborn would bring some "common sense economics" back to Washington. As part of a final campaign sprint, the Osborn campaign opened four field offices just weeks before the election. In North Platte, a frequent stopping point for travelers on Interstate 80, the new office is just a few blocks away from the world's largest rail yard. — Maya C. Miller THE MOMENT
A glimpse backstageI spent last night in Atlanta, watching Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Barack Obama take the stage in front of 23,000 people for their first joint campaign rally. My colleague Erin Schaff got to see something most of us didn't: the view behind the scenes before they took the stage. It's an image that shows history unfolding, albeit in a mundane setting. The first Black president and the first Black and first female vice president are surrounded by unadorned platforms and a half-open door. But it's the shared expression of seriousness that struck Erin and me the most. "I'm always looking to try and understand a bit more about a politician and who they are," Erin told me. "You can get at that a bit more in their one-on-one conversations, when they're not performing for an audience." Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
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