This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Swamp Notes: Will Republicans take back the Senate?’
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Sonja Hutson
Presidents come into office with big plans, cut taxes, sign treaties, build new bridges and highways. But presidents can’t pass their agenda without approval from lawmakers in Congress. And the race to control the Senate this year is as close as ever.
This is Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the FT News briefing where we talk about all of the things happening in the 2024 US presidential election. I’m Sonja Hutson. And this week we’re asking are Republicans about to take back the Senate? Here with me to discuss is James Politi. He’s the FT’s Washington bureau chief. Hi, James.
James Politi
Hey, Sonja!
Sonja Hutson
And we’ve also got Jessica Taylor. She is the senate and governors editor for the Cook Political Report. Hi, Jessica.
Jessica Taylor
Hi. Thanks for having me.
Sonja Hutson
Thanks for coming on the show. So, Jessica, I want to start with you, since you basically live and breathe Senate elections. The states that hold Senate races vary every year. It’s, you know, one of those weird quirks of American politics. So which states are holding Senate elections this year and which are the ones that you’re most closely watching?
Jessica Taylor
You’re right. It matters which third of the Senate is up every year. Some senators have six-year terms. And unfortunately for Democrats, this is a very difficult map for them. So they’re defending 23 seats to just 11 for Republicans. Democrats have to pitch a perfect game. So they start with a 51-49 majority, but they’re going to lose a seat in West Virginia. And that’s where Democrats turned independent. Joe Manchin is retiring. He was probably going to lose this seat even if he had run for re-election. Democrats are now no longer contesting it.
So we start at 50-50, essentially. That means Democrats have to defend every single incumbent. And they also need Vice President Kamala Harris to win the presidency so that they would have a 50-50 Senate. But then a vice president Tim Walz, would be the tiebreaker. And right now, that looks like a very daunting prospect because the most vulnerable seat is in Montana. Jon Tester is running for re-election in a state that voted for Trump by 16 points in 2020. And he has his strongest opponent yet in Republican Tim Sheehy. And we’ve seen, you know, consistent polling where he is down narrowly, but down and that’s not a position that you want to have for an incumbent going into election day.
Sonja Hutson
Are there any seats that Democrats think they can flip?
Jessica Taylor
That’s where the map becomes . . . If you’re losing Montana, then you have to find another seat. But functionally, this is a defensive map. If you want to win, you have to play defence first because every incumbent you lose, you have to find another one. And there’s just not a lot of opportunities. Florida and Texas are the two main ones that we’ve been looking at since the beginning of the cycle.
You have two polarising incumbents there, Rick Scott in Florida and Ted Cruz in Texas. And Rick Scott’s a multimillionaire, can write himself a cheque. His Democratic opponent, former congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, just hasn’t been able to fundraise to sort of match this potential firepower. But Ted Cruz in Texas is . . . he is a lightning rod and his Democratic opponent has been able to fundraise just because he’s running against Ted Cruz, who, you know, very much stokes, liberal anger and different things. So while we still rate Florida as likely Republican, recently we moved Texas from likely Republican to lean Republican, indicating we do believe that is a more competitive race.
Sonja Hutson
Now, James, I want to bring you in here. You know, Republicans went into the midterms two years ago with high hopes to reclaim the Senate, but they ultimately ended up falling short. Why was that?
James Politi
There are kind of similarities with this year. I mean, that year also, the Republicans seemed to have the advantage going into the Senate races in November. And I think there were two factors that really made a big difference: One is that they had very weak candidates or kind of candidates who are considered extreme even by a Republican standard, very close to Trump. People like Herschel Walker or Dr Oz in Pennsylvania. And that was, you know, one of the weaknesses for the Republicans that kind of swung things sort of unexpectedly to the Democrats.
And I think the other factor was that the Dobbs decision was just very, very fresh at the time. You know, the Democratic candidates ran pretty heavily on abortion and they were able to sort of outmanoeuvre the Republicans in the final stretch and were able to pull out, you know, sort of unexpected victories.
Sonja Hutson
Jessica, to what degree are those issues that James just outlined similar this time, different?
Jessica Taylor
Yeah. You have Republicans that did make more of a concerted effort to get better candidates in some of these races. And I think in some places it’s a mixed bag. But I do think they helped clear the field in some of these races and they also got Trump to work with them in many instances. The chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee this cycle is Steve Daines of Montana. He endorsed Trump early, reached out to him so that he would not endorse candidates like Dr Oz or Herschel Walker. For instance, in Montana, the state that I mentioned that they have the most . . . You know, the strongest lead-in and most likely to flip. Matt Rosendale, congressman there had ran in 2018 against Tester, had lost, had really run a very lacklustre campaign.
They recruited Sheehy and again, military background, ability to self-fund. You know, he’s young, telegenic, you know, as Trump would say, sort of from central casting. But, you know, there are some places where they didn’t, you know get as strong a nominees. Arizona, that’s where that hasn’t happened because Kari Lake who was the 2022 gubernatorial nominee, she got in the race. Republicans kind of had to this was sort of a marriage of convenience in many ways because they saw that if she got in the race that there was no way that she wouldn’t win a primary.
So they got behind her. Even as I’m seeing polling where Trump is winning that state, again, narrowly, she is far behind him and the Democrat Ruben Gallego, despite that he is more progressive, you know. Have they gotten better candidates? Like I said, in some of these places, they have. I think, you know, Lake kind of stands out as the biggest glaring example of the type of candidates they’d hope to avoid from 2022. But, you know, there is not another sort of Herschel Walker-type disaster where Herschel Walker with it and with, you know, going off about you know, vampires and things. So . . .
Sonja Hutson No, I thought like every day there was yet another story about some gaffe he made.
Jessica Taylor
And secret-love children like, yeah . . .
Sonja Hutson
Oh, yes! It never ended. So I want to pivot to Democrats for a little bit. You know, one big concern that they had about Biden as their presidential candidate is that he would drag down-ballot candidates down with him. Are we seeing any similar effect with Harris, James? I mean, are down-ballot Democrats running with her or more away from her?
James Politi
Well, I think it’s a very interesting dynamic because when Biden was running the Democratic senatorial candidates had big leads over their opponents and those leads have shrunk maybe because we’re at the end of the race. But under Harris, they don’t seem to be faring as well. There was a kind of surge of enthusiasm in these Senate campaigns when Harris kind of jumped into the race because the campaigns and the candidates were kind of eager to have Harris on the campaign trail and to show that they were united with this new . . . you know, the new generation candidate. But I think that more recently, there have been signs of a little more wariness, a little more distance. You know, everyone’s in it for themselves at this point. And I think that if they do have to not campaign with her or distance themselves from her, they probably will.
Jessica Taylor
I will say what I think they can piggyback on, that they have an advantage where I don’t think Republicans do is that Democrats still have a very sophisticated get-out-the-vote effort. And some of these state parties — particularly again in Pennsylvania and especially in like Wisconsin and Michigan — have some very sophisticated targeting efforts. You know, Wisconsin had . . . they had gubernatorial recalls through the last decade and they’ve had . . . they’re just used to this. It’s sort of like a well-oiled machine, whereas, you know, the Michigan Republican party was basically bankrupt a year ago and ousted their chairwoman.
So I think that the state parties are better in some of these places and I think that Harris and the DNC organising is versus, you know, the Trump campaign that has sort of farmed out their get-out-the-vote efforts to, you know, Elon Musk and to the Turning Point USA, Super Pac and things. I think that the Republican Senate candidates are doing it a little bit more on their own in some instances. So, you know, in races that are close, those get-out-the-vote efforts can make a difference.
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Sonja Hutson
We’ve obviously been talking about the Senate, but that is only one of two chambers of Congress. Do we have a sense of which party will win the House of Representatives this year?
Jessica Taylor
We say that the House is a toss-up. You know, we have about a dozen seats per party that we rate. We currently have 12 Democratic-held seats in toss-ups. We have 14 Republican-held seats in toss-ups. You know, Democrats’ last cycle underperformed in the midterms in some very blue states, particularly in New York and in California. They’re hoping that higher presidential year turnout this year will help them. But then there’s been sort of some surprising areas that Democrats have made gains. And we currently rate two House races in Iowa as toss-ups. We’ve seen some tighter polling there. You know, it’s a little bit of a mixed bag, but it actually would be historic if actually the Senate went flipped one way and the House flipped another way.
Sonja Hutson
So, OK, so we’ve got kind of a dead split on House races on who’s gonna have control of the House. The Senate is maybe leaning more in Republicans’ favour, but it’s still pretty close. What’s at stake, James, when we think about control of the Senate? What would each party aim to achieve with a majority?
James Politi
Well, so much is at stake. I mean, if Harris were to win the White House, she would be, you know, significantly constrained in her ability to pass legislation if either of the chambers of Congress were in Republican hands. So it definitely complicates . . . you know, would complicate her presidency and sort of force her to the middle and to more moderate positions, less ambitious positions, which in a way, she has been campaigning on in the last few weeks as well.
If Trump wins, I think that Democrats will certainly see it as sort of imperative that they are able to flip the House, because that would be then sort of the only check on his power, because I think the assumption is that if he wins, then almost certainly the Senate will have flipped to the Republicans.
Sonja Hutson
Yeah, and it’s interesting because even in like a perfect world for whoever wins the presidency, if your party controls both the House and the Senate, that’s probably not gonna last. Like you pretty much only have two years to really get your agenda through, which can be really difficult.
Jessica Taylor
I mean, we saw that Trump had a trifecta when he was elected. And then, you know, but again, the Senate was so close that you saw, you know, trying to overturn Obamacare that John McCain voted against it. So I think that’s where, you know, having some of those centrist senators matters. But we’re also seeing — at least on the Democratic side — a lot of those centrists. If Tester loses or Brown, they’re gonna be replaced by more conservative Republicans say you are losing a little bit more of that middle, certainly.
James Politi
On the other hand, we have the case of Biden coming in with truly the slimmest majorities on Capitol Hill. And he was able to enact his, you know, in those first two years, these kind of the very big stimulus bill infrastructure, the IRA using reconciliation, which is this kind of budgetary device that allows you to avoid the supermajorities in the Senate. And he was actually able to get a ton done, even, you know, with a very slim Senate majority. And I think on the tax side, if Trump comes in, you know, I’m sure he’ll try to use that to you know, maximum effect to go ahead with the huge kind of tax cut plans that he has, because that’s gonna be one of the biggest legislative battles no matter who wins next year.
Sonja Hutson
All right. Well, I think that’s a good place to wrap up. I want to thank our guests, James Politi, the FT’s Washington bureau chief. Thanks, James.
James Politi
Thanks, Sonja.
Sonja Hutson
And Jessica Taylor. She is the senate and governor’s editor for the Cook Political Report. Thanks, Jessica.
Jessica Taylor
Thank you.
Sonja Hutson
This was Swamp Notes, the US politics show from the FT News Briefing. If you want to sign up for the Swamp Notes newsletter, we’ve got a link to that in the show notes. Our show is mixed and produced by Ethan Plotkin. It’s also produced by Lauren Fedor and Marc Filippino. Special thanks to Pierre Nicholson. I’m your host, Sonja Hutson. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz and Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Original Music by Hannis Brown. Check back next week for more US political analysis from the Financial Times.
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