2022 US Senate Democratic Dream Part I
What is the absolute dream scenario for the Democratic Party in next year's Senate elections? I explore that thought experiment in three parts with this one dealing with currently blue seats.
Here is an interesting thought experiment: What is the Democratic Party’s absolute dream scenario for the 2022 US Senate elections? When I say “dream”, I mean pie-in-the-sky, everything goes 1,000% correct, involves $2 billion electioneering, massive ground game, and a massive Democratic wave like we saw in the 2018 US House elections. Let us take a look. First, here is the map which 270towin.com currently labels as the “2022 Consensus” outlook at this very early stage:
Based on the earliest of indications, it seems that Democrats are on track to at least maintain their Senate majority regardless of what happens to the national environment. This is largely because the Class III Senate map is the most favorable for the Democratic Party; in comparison, the Class I Senate map, which was contested in 2018, is the most favorable for the Republican Party (one of the big reasons why Republicans actually were able to gain two Senate seats on net that year despite it being a D+9 Democratic wave).
To build the Democratic dream scenario, let us look at the map where all the potentially competitive seats are labeled as tossups. I will then build up the case for each state and go from there.
Now, yes, I absolutely know that some of these states seem all but impossible for Democrats to even be competitive in (and vice versa in one case), but again, we are just going to look at what the 2022 Senate Democratic dream would look like. Naturally, the logical conclusion is that in this dream scenario, Democrats would sweep all thirteen open seats and end up with 58 US Senate seats after next year’s election. This would, of course, free them up to pursue almost anything and everything under the sun assuming they maintain control of the US House as well. Conversely, the Republican 2022 dream scenario is also a sweep of the above thirteen tossup seats, yielding a total of 55 seats. Just something of note here: It is testament to the enduring strength and greatness of the world’s oldest political party (and the largest in the Western World) that in their dream scenario, they would get more Senate seats in unfriendly territory than their rival would in their own dream scenario.
Now, I am going to go through each of these seats one by one and talk about what would be required for Democrats to win in each case. I will start with the most likely to be blue and work my way downwards to the least likely to be blue. Broadly, there are five seats that are most likely to be Democratic, three that are true tossups, and five that are likely to be held by Republicans. This analysis will be broken into three parts with the first part focused on the five currently Democratic-held seats.
COLORADO
First up, we have Colorado. Now, in all reality, this seat will not even be close to competitive next year. Michael Bennet is a formidable candidate on his own with relatively high approval ratings as well as wide name recognition in the state. Colorado has also continued to shift bluer and bluer every single election cycle since President Obama won the state in his 2008 presidential run. In his 2008 run, the state voted about three points more Democratic than the nation, but since then, Colorado has just continued to become more and more Democratic. Last year, President Joe Biden won the state by a staggering 13.5 points, meaning that the state was nine points more Democratic than the nation. Not only that, but Colorado also voted more Democratic than its neighbor to the south, New Mexico, something that has not happened since 1968. In all reality, unless we see a massive Republican wave and landslide the likes of which has not happened at the congressional level since the 1920s, Republicans have all but zero chance of winning Colorado next year. The state Democratic Party is a juggernaut, and all of the statewide elected officials are now Democratic after last year’s election threw out Cory Gardner. The only way Republicans even make Colorado competitive and make Michael Bennet sweat next year is if the national environment is at least R+9, something that has not happened since 1984 at the presidential level and not since 1928 at the congressional level.
NEVADA
The seat which I believe is most likely to be blue after next year’s elections of the truly competitive ones held by Democrats, especially in this dream scenario, is Nevada. Nevada is an interesting case study in how important electioneering and voter turnout infrastructure actually makes a huge difference. Nevada is hardly a “Deep Blue” state, and if we look solely at its demographics, it should be a light red state. The state has a lot of non-college educated white working class voters who have been continuing to swing red over the last three decades and a massive population of culturally conservative Latinos. We saw last year that these culturally conservative Latino voters are much more likely to vote Republican. The state also has a much lower rate of college educated voters (who form one of the backbones of the present Democratic Party) than the nation at large and a relatively small share of black voters (the strongest backbone of the present Democratic Party). While the Democrats start out with a slight edge in the state due to the large Latino population, as we saw last year, this demographic is far from being a “lock” for Team Blue. So, what do Democrats need to do in order to win Nevada?
The answer is actually quite simple to say but extremely difficult to put into practice: Activate the Reid Machine. The Reid Machine is a political machine built by former US Senator Harry Reid that has kept Nevada blue through all of the strongest Republican years this past decade. The Reid Machine is based around the Las Vegas-based Culinary Union. The voter registration, voter engagement, and voter turnout capabilities of the Reid Machine and the Nevada Democratic Party writ large are stuff of legend among national Democrats, and at one point, DNC leaders sent other state parties’ operatives to Nevada to study and learn the Nevada Democrats’ tactics to take back home and implement. One of the reasons Democrats were able to do so well in the Rust Belt Trifecta (Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin) in 2018 and keep them blue in 2020 was because the Party’s operatives from those states went to Nevada and learned how to actually properly electioneer. The Reid Machine is no longer directly in the hands of Harry Reid, but the machine has continued humming. Harry Reid is an extremely powerful man in the state even in retirement. He handpicked both US Senators from the state (Catherine Cortez-Masto and Jackie Rosen), all three Democratic congress members, and every single statewide Democratic elected official.
Nevada until recently had a reputation among observers of being a relatively “inelastic” state; that is, even though it always remains close, in the end, Democrats eventually pull the win out of the bag, similar to Republicans in North Carolina. Some recent election results in Nevada are D+6.7 in the 2012 presidential, D+2.4 in the 2016 presidential, D+2.4 in the 2020 presidential, D+4.1 in the 2018 gubernatorial, D+2.4 in the 2016 US Senate, and D+5 in the 2018 US Senate. Overall, these are all extremely close, so while Republicans always manage to keep the state close, Democrats seem to manage to keep winning. I largely expect this to be the case next year, too. Even in relatively strong Republican years (2010 and 2016), Nevada tends to vote for Team Blue thanks to the power and efficacy of the Reid Machine, and I just do not see that changing. Of course, a lot can happen between now and November 2022, but I do think Nevada is pretty inelastic just based on what we’ve seen.
There has been some turmoil in the Nevada Democratic Party and a very high-profile breakup between the NVDP and the Reid Machine earlier this year. Surrogates and supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign took over the Nevada Democratic Party from more “Establishment” Democrats in the state. It even caused the Reid Machine to enter into a not-so-quiet feud with the NVDP. A lot of the operatives of the Reid Machine who were employed in the NVDP resigned immediately after the election results, and they transferred money from the NVDP accounts to the DSCC to reelect Catherine Cortez-Masto. Also, with Cortez-Masto’s and Reid’s blessing, the DNC has stopped funding the NVDP and instead has been funneling money to the Washoe County Democratic Party. The plan is to utilize the Washoe County Democratic Party as the unofficial state Democratic Party so that the DNC and Establishment Democrats do not have to deal with the progressives who have taken over the NVDP.
There has been some consternation that this infighting within the NVDP will cause significant internal divisions such that it could give Nevada Republicans a clear opening to take over the state again after having been embarrassed repeatedly over the last decade. Admittedly, the infighting in the Georgia Republican Party between last November and January did a lot to help Democrats sneak into victories in the US Senate runoffs this year, so while this concern is warranted, I personally am not too worried about it – yet. My reaction is basically this: Sure, the Reid Machine and the Nevada Democratic Party are feuding right now, but what is either one of them going to do when they both need each other? The only way Democrats keep winning in Nevada is if the Reid Machine and the NVDP keep an alliance functional and maintain a strong election infrastructure in the state. Also, what is the Reid Machine going to do to punish the NVDP? It is not going to be supporting the election of Republicans; it is still fundamentally interested in making sure Democrats keep winning in the state. This is doubly true for the Nevada Democratic Party. While it might be a forced marriage full of familial arguments, the Reid Machine, Nevada Democratic Party, and Washoe County Democratic Party all have vested interests in continuing to elect Democrats to statewide office in the state. As of right now, I think the infighting among Nevada Democrats is largely a distraction that will fade as we get further down the line. The last thing any of them want is to see Trump sycophant Adam Laxalt become the next US Senator from the state.
ARIZONA
The next seat which I think is most likely to stay blue is Arizona. Mark Kelly defeated Martha McSally last year in a special election to finish out the final two years of the late Senator John McCain’s term. Kelly won by about 2.4 points and significantly outran Biden who won the state by 0.3 points. Arizona has been shifting blue for a long, long time now due to the growth of Phoenix’s and Tuscon’s suburbs with college educated voters, and it is currently in a similar place politically to where Colorado was about a decade ago. Ever since Joe Arpaio’s bigotry made national headlines about a decade ago with his inhumane and illegal actions against migrants in the state, the very large Mexican-American population in the state has been doing a lot of hard work on the ground to lay the foundation for Democratic wins. The first fruit of this hard labor was eaten in 2018 when current US Senator Kyrsten Sinema defeated Martha McSally by 2.4 points. Arizona Democrats have been on a roll since then. They have continually gained seats in the State House and State Senate, won the Secretary of State’s office, won the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s office, both US Senate seats, the presidential election in 2020, and a majority of the US House delegation. Arizona Democrats have been on a whirlwind of victories lately, and their electioneering and voter mobilization infrastructure is next only to the Nevada Democratic Party’s in the nation at this point.
Mark Kelly is a formidable opponent with almost unmatched prowess in fundraising capabilities from nationwide liberals and grassroots donors in addition to being able to draw in vast sums of money from Wall Street, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and Silicon Valley. He will be tough to beat for Republicans, but Arizona is far from a slam dunk for Democrats. They will have to continue to work very, very hard to win in the state. Past successes are not automatic guarantees of future successes (just ask Bill Nelson and Cory Gardner).
However, the state Republican Party is in a civil war at the moment and has been since the bruising 2018 losses that they suffered. Kelli Ward, the state party chair, is a total Trump-sycophant in a state which rejected Donald Trump and his acolytes multiple times now and where the demographics are in Democrats’ favor. By continuing to peddle this sham of an “election audit”, all they are doing is steeling the resolve of Arizona Democrats to continue winning elections. Currently, the NRSC’s preferred candidate seems to be the state Attorney General Mark Brnovich who is admittedly a very strong recruit. However, similar to the sledgehammer that he took to Governor Doug Ducey, Donald Trump has made Brnovich one of his targets of ire because the AG refused to go along with Trump’s false allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Brnovich stood up for the integrity of Arizona’s vote count, along with Ducey, and Trump has put a target on his back since then. Similar to the infighting which so greatly hurt the Georgia Democratic Party for the last year, this internal feud seems to be all set to turn the Arizona Republican Party the next more divided. However, even if Brnovich is a strong candidate to potentially defeat Mark Kelly (which I do not believe that he is), he first has to get through the Republican primary where Trump sycophants Andy Biggs and Kelli Ward are publicly considering mounting campaigns. In a Republican primary where there are multiple people vying for the title of “Biggest Trump Fan”, my money is not on Mark Brnovich to win that fight. Throw in the fact that Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel is bankrolling a campaign by Blake Masters, and Brnovich might find himself in a primary that is just as tough if not tougher than his potential matchup against Kelly. Regardless, this “Battle of the Marks” is going to be extremely entertaining to watch as it plays out.
GEORGIA
Now, I am probably going to shock a lot of observers by saying that Georgia is more likely to stay blue than New Hampshire, but I do believe this will be the case. Senator Raphael Warnock won a runoff on January 5, 2021 to complete the term of now-retired Senator Johnny Isakson (on the same day Senator Jon Ossoff won a runoff for a full term to the other Georgia seat). Warnock is no slouch of a candidate. If first-past-the-post rules had been in place for the November 2020 general election, he would have won by a comfortable margin. As it is, of the four candidates that competed in the US Senate runoffs in January, Warnock did the absolute and relative best. He got about 20,000 more votes than Ossoff in the runoff, and he won with a margin of 2.1 points versus Ossoff’s margin of 1.2 points. Warnock’s ability to mobilize the black vote in Georgia is almost unmatched, and to make things even better, he is almost certainly going to be running on the same ticket as Stacey Abrams for her challenge to become the nation’s first female black governor.
Georgia is another state that continues to shift more and more blue day by day as the Great Migration reverses and Metro Atlanta booms and expands further and further outward with the growth of college-education voters. Warnock is the perfect candidate for Democrats in the state in that he is able to activate and turnout the core constituencies of the present-day Democratic Party: black voters and educated suburbanites. Warnock’s and Ossoff’s victors in January were a jaw-dropping moment for observers of US politics. The state had been shifting blue for some time, but the idea that in one election cycle, Democrats would win the state at the presidential level and sweep the US Senate seats was all but unthinkable. I remember being absolutely, completely floored and dumbfounded when I saw the results pouring in live that night. With the benefit of incumbency, Warnock should be even tougher for Republicans to defeat now, especially considering that Democrats have not come close to maximizing their vote totals in Metro Atlanta. For context, Joe Biden won Loudoun County, Virginia (suburbs of Washington, D.C.) by 25 points last year while winning Gwinnett County, Georgia (suburbs of Atlanta) by 18 points. Democrats, in this case led by Warnock and Abrams, are in a prime position to continue expanding the Democratic vote share in Metro Atlanta.
This is not to forget the formidable political machine that Stacey Abrams has built in the state with her PACs Fair Fight and New Georgia Project and the Georgia Democratic Party itself. Long ridiculed as one of the weakest and most useless among its peers, thanks in large part to the hard work and tireless dedication of Stacey Abrams, the Georgia Democratic Party is now considered to be an absolute electoral juggernaut similar to the Nevada Democratic Party. The Abrams Machine is not to be trifled with, and Abrams herself is not to be underestimated. The infrastructure that she has almost singlehandedly built in the state to make Democrats not just competitive but thrive in the state cannot be overstated. Under Abrams’ stewardship, the Georgia Democratic Party has been on a massive upswing in just the last four years. The GADP broke supermajorities in the state legislature, elected formidable down ballot candidates, flipped the boards of commissioners of almost all of the suburban counties surrounding Fulton (home of Atlanta), voted for Joe Biden, shaved a 10-4 Republican advantage in the US House delegation to 8-6, and took over both US Senate seats in one night. Stacey Abrams has built a political machine in Georgia that Boss Tweed would be proud of.
Right now, Donald Trump is begging retired NFL star Herschel Walker to run against Warnock, and all indications seem to be that Walker is intending to do just that. However, Walker is up against a singular problem that will dog him throughout the campaign season: He has lived in Texas, not Georgia, for several years. Carpetbagging is one of the most serious charges against a candidate in an election, and a run by Walker would be a huge boon for the Georgia Democratic Party because they can simply tie every Republican running up and down the ballot in the state to carpetbagging Walker. Not only is Warnock all set to defeat Walker handily, I would not be surprised if Walker’s carpetbagging sweeps in multiple Democratic statewide officeholders. The other big name who has indicated that he is considering a run is retiring Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court Harold Melton. Melton would admittedly be a much stronger candidate, in my opinion, but still, I don’t see Warnock losing to Melton. This all also operates under the assumption that the Georgia Republican Party stops its infighting and gets its act together in order to actually fully and competently contest the state in the first place.
Dave Wasserman said it best a while back, and I’m going to paraphrase him: “Georgia and Arizona today are where Virginia and Colorado were a decade ago. The Republicans might be able to gerrymander themselves into another decade of majorities in these states, but the writing is on the wall. These states are ticking time bombs for them.”
NEW HAMPSHIRE
Perhaps it might come as a bit of a surprise that of the competitive currently Democratic-held seats, I think New Hampshire is the most likely to flip considering that it is, without a doubt, the most Democratic of this list (exempting Colorado). Like the rest of New England, since the 1980s, New Hampshire has been moving consistently bluer though New Hampshire has been going through this transition at a slower pace than the region at large. New England is ancestrally Republican, but the region is now the most Democratic in the country. However, two states have remained relatively competitive: Maine and New Hampshire. Of these two, New Hampshire is definitely the more competitive of the two. Maggie Hassan is up for reelection next year after having defeated Republican incumbent Kelly Ayotte in 2016 by about 1,000 votes.
At the federal level, New Hampshire has been becoming more and more Democratic with both US House seats and US Senate seats held by Democrats. In 2020, Chris Pappas won the 1st Congressional District by five points, Ann Kuster won the 2nd Congressional District by ten points, Joe Biden won the presidential race by seven points, and incumbent US Senator Jeanne Shaheen won by sixteen points. The last Republican to win a federal statewide race in New Hampshire is Kelly Ayotte who won the Class III Senate seat in 2010 by 23 points. On the other hand, at the state level, New Hampshire remains extremely competitive, and on the same ballot that Democrats swept the federal races last year, Republicans flipped both chambers of the state Legislature, retook the majority on the Executive Council, and reelected Governor Chris Sununu by 32 points.
The Sununu name and brand has a long and storied history in New Hampshire politics, which helped the governor win reelection in an epic landslide, and his coattails helped Republicans just barely win back the state Legislature and Executive Council simultaneously. Naturally, national Republicans are begging Sununu to challenge Maggie Hassan next year. The reason I rate Hassan as the Democrat most likely to lose her Senate seat next year is because Sununu has not given any clear indication that he either will or will not challenge her. If he did jump into the race, he would be a formidable opponent, and Hassan would be in for the fight of her life.
However, even if Sununu does run, there are some points to note first. Hassan herself is an electoral juggernaut, and New Hampshire (like Montana) has a long and storied history of ticket splitting that has continued into the modern era. In the 2010 national Republican wave, Democratic Governor John Lynch won reelection by eight points, and in the 2014 national pseudo-Republican wave, Maggie Hassan herself won reelection by five points. Not only that, when Hassan ran for the Senate seat in 2016, she defeated Kelly Ayotte who is no electoral slouch either (remember that Ayotte had won previously by 23 points in 2010).
When voting in federal races, one thing to remember is that voters are not just voting for their specific US Senator or US Representative; they are voting for the Senate Majority Leader and Speaker of the House. Mitch McConnell is extremely unpopular in New Hampshire, and if Sununu were to run, Hassan and national Democrats will gladly pump tens of millions of dollars into the state to make sure that the electorate knows that if Sununu wins the race, they would be responsible for turning over control of the US Senate to Mitch McConnell. Democrats have made clear that they intend to run against Mitch McConnell in next year’s Senate races (much like Republicans have been running against Nancy Pelosi for two decades now), and Sununu knows this. For all his vaunted popularity that he currently enjoys, he should also remember that going into the 2016 Senate election, Ayotte was also pretty popular, and that did not stop Hassan from defeating her.
On the other hand, Sununu’s popularity is high enough that if he were to run for reelection as governor, he is all but certain to be a shoo-in for the job for a fourth term. Not only that, it is almost certain that if he were to run for reelection, the New Hampshire state Legislature will stay red as well as the Executive Council. Sununu must consider whether he is willing to risk a chance of losing a job that, by all accounts, he loves in order to see his name be tarred and feathered with the extremely unpopular brand of the national Republican Party and Mitch McConnell. Sununu is an extremely intelligent and tactical politician, and he is certainly wondering if he does in fact want to take that risk. Consider me skeptical that Sununu would take that chance, and if Republicans run anyone else in that seat, Hassan is pretty much guaranteed to win reelection. And even if Sununu does run, let us not forget that on the same ballot that Kelly Ayotte won the Senate election in 2010 by around 20 points, the Democratic governor was simultaneously reelected by eight points.
In Part II, I will look at and analyze the three true tossup seats (all of which are currently held by Republicans).