2022 US Senate Democratic Dream Part III
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 like Republican seats.
This is Part III (Part I here and Part II here) of my Democratic Dream Scenario for the 2022 midterm elections. In Part I, I covered the seats currently held by Democrats and which are most likely to remain Democratic, and in Part II, I covered the “pure tossups”. In this one, I am going to cover those seats which will most likely remain Republican but could flip in the right circumstances.
OHIO
Now, I am going to go through the five Republican-held states that most likely will remain Republican after the midterm election. The first of these five is Ohio, a classic and longtime bellwether state that has recently taken a sharp turn to the Republican side. This seat was not supposed to be competitive at all to begin with, and every Democrat had written it off completely after the November 2020 election as they were evaluating their best chances at claiming a majority in the Senate after the 2022 midterms.
Incumbent Republican Senator Rob Portman is a formidable politician and an electoral juggernaut. In 2010, he won by 17 points, and in 2016, he defeated former Democratic governor Ted Strickland by 21 points. If Portman were to run again as had been expected, this seat would not be remotely competitive. However, shocking everyone in the Republican DC Establishment, he announced on January 25, 2021 that he would retire due to frustration with “partisan gridlock”. For the moment, let us put aside the irony of someone on Mitch McConnell’s leadership team complaining about “partisan gridlock” and instead look at fundamentals of the state and the race.
Ohio has become more and more hostile to Democrats in the last four decades. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both won the state twice each, but even when they won, Ohio was more Republican than the nation at large. It has remained that way for a while now. The Ohio Republican Party is, along with the Florida Republican Party, probably the most successful and impressive of the state Republican Party organizations in the nation. Even when Ohio was considered a competitive swing state, they routinely won multiple races in the state. On the other hand, the Ohio Democratic Party is all but defunct. They have next to no bench thanks to the inordinate Republican gerrymanders which have been inflicted on the state for the last three decades, and at one point, they had no money on hand. Things do not look good on paper for Democrats in Ohio, but there is still a chance that they can win the race.
On the Republican side, the primary field is very crowded and might be set to grow further. At the moment, though, the three leading Republican candidates seem to be former State Treasurer Josh Mandel, former Ohio Republican Party Chairwoman Jane Timken, and venture capitalist J.D. Vance of Hillbilly Elegy fame. Mandel and Timken are duking it out to be who can be Trump’s best toady while Vance has taken a more culturally conservative and economically populist tone. When Rick Scott was hosting an event at Mar-a-Lago a while back where potential Senate candidates could meet and curry favor with Trump, Mandel was not invited, but he was so desperate to get in that he snuck into the facility and had to be escorted out by law enforcement. For now, at least, Trump seems content to let the Ohio Republicans duke it out and fall behind whoever comes out on the other side.
Based on his track record, Mandel is a relatively mainstream center-right Republican candidate in the mold of Ronald Reagan and George Bush. However, in the Trump Era, he has gone off the deep end in his dedication and ass-kissing of the Orange Man. With some of his recent tweets, he has been taking a strong turn towards Christian and Evangelical conservatives (even implying that the Bible is more important than the Constitution when it comes to law), so it seems that he is banking on winning rural voters even if he shuns the affluent suburbs of Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Akron, Toledo, and Dayton. Timken has similarly made her brand to be Trump-lite. She is working hard to establish her bona fides as a full on MAGA minion. Interestingly, for that same Mar-a-Lago event that Mandel was not invited, Timken was invited and went, so it seems for now at least that Scott and the NRSC seem to favor her. I wonder if they are making the “Kelly Loeffler case” in justifying their support for Timken given that they want to win back suburban women. If they are, well they should go see who won the runoff in January. Regardless, whoever comes out of the primary, the Republican candidate will be a full on MAGA true believer (or at least pretends to be).
On the Democratic side, national and state Democrats have all but cleared the field for incumbent Congressman Tim Ryan of the 13th Congressional District in the Mahoning Valley. Tim Ryan is a standard, traditional moderate white male Democrat in the mold of President Joe Biden and Pennsylvania Congressman Conor Lamb. However, despite his moderate persona, Ryan is actually quite liberal in some policies and is an economic populist. The Mahoning Valley is ancestrally Democratic thanks to its heavily unionized industrial workforce that backed the Democratic Party as part of the old New Deal Coalition. However, as that coalition has been continually declining, the Democratic hold on the area has been waning. For context, the 13th Congressional District is heavily gerrymandered to be a “Democratic vote sink”, meaning that it should be D+15 or higher; it is a classic “packed” district. However, despite this, as the New Deal Coalition’s union base collapsed and became more Republican, Ryan went from winning this seat by over 40 points to winning last year by around eight. Evidently, even his local name brand (which by all accounts is quite strong) is not strong enough to defy the forces of negative partisanship and national polarization.
Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley (currently running for Governor) once described Ohio as an “economically populist state”, and I think that is fundamentally correct. Sherrod Brown (the only remaining statewide-elected Democrat outside the courts) is the quintessential economic populist. He is a strong supporter of labor unions, the right to organize, expanded subsidies for agriculture, anti-trust enforcement, increasing taxes on the wealthy, increased oversight of Wall Street, expanded stimulus and tax credits, increased healthcare subsidies, and other policies centered on redistributing economic wealth downwards. Brown keeps winning by relatively comfortable margins, and I think the reason for this is his economic populism. The good thing for Democrats is that Tim Ryan is essentially a supporter of all of this and then some on the economic populist platform. He supports all this and even supports Medicare for All. Ryan is about as close to a clone of Sherrod Brown as you are going to find in both policy and personality, so Democrats’ thinking seems to be “if the model works, don’t fix what isn’t broken”, and I think that is the right mentality to have. The other side of this is that Ryan will almost certainly redistricted out of a seat, so his best shot at maintaining elected office might be to try to win a statewide race.
What is the path to victory for Democrats in Ohio? Unfortunately, it is not easy. Historically, Democrats won Ohio by dominating in the eastern part of the state in Appalachia and the cities. Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland have been Democratic strongholds (like all major cities) for a century now, and Democrats used to win by juicing up their turnout in the Three C’s and keeping margins relatively high in the mid-sized Ohio cities such as Toledo, Akron, and Dayton. They coupled this by winning large margins in the heavily unionized and historically industrial areas of eastern Ohio, and when they won, it was because the sum of these demographics was large enough to overcome the much stronger Republican dominance in the suburbs of the Three C’s and the rural areas in the central and western parts of the state. In essence, as the Democratic Party had been the Party of unions, they won the areas where unions were extremely powerful; as unions have lost power, the economic populist message has been thrown out and Appalachia’s cultural conservatism has taken over and turned those areas red.
There is still a path to victory in Ohio for Democrats, and it is similar to the path they walked to wins in Pennsylvania and Michigan recently. As in the rest of the country, the suburbs of Ohio, especially those of the Three C’s, have been moving left, but the Ohio suburbs started from a more conservative place than those in other parts of the country. As such, the transition of the suburbs from red to blue is taking a much longer time, and even if Democrats were to get the margins in Ohio suburbs that they win in Pennsylvania or Michigan, Ohio is much more rural, so those margins will not be large enough. For Ryan to win a general election, he will need to continue the suburban march left while stemming the bleeding in ancestrally Democratic Appalachian Ohio and running up huge margins in the Three C’s and the other major cities. Sherrod Brown did just this in 2018 and won a surprise victory in the state (helped by tens of millions of dollars from national Democrats who were eager to hold that seat and show that they had not given up on Ohio). If Tim Ryan is able to walk this same path, he has a chance, slim but nonzero, of winning the state. If you were asking me to put money on it, I would say that Republicans hold this seat no matter who they nominate, but Ohio is not nearly as red as people think it is. Ohio is not so red that Roy Moore would have gotten almost 50% of the vote, for instance. Let us not write off Ohio entirely just yet.
FLORIDA
Marco Rubio is another electoral juggernaut. In the always close and competitive state of Florida, Rubio has won the equivalent of landslides (sometimes winning by up to seven points). There is no question that Rubio is a formidable opponent who has every advantage to his name in this upcoming race. Democrats in Florida have also been on a massive losing streak. They have not won the governorship in over two decades, and since 2008, they have only won three statewide federal races and six total statewide races overall. There is no question that Florida is moving Republican and will probably be where Ohio is today in about a decade. In the 2020 presidential election, there was only one swing state that shifted more Republican from 2016 when all the other swing states shifted more Democratic; that state was Florida. Even Iowa and Ohio moved more Democratic from 2016 to 2020 while Florida moved more Republican.
Compounding Democrats’ problems in Florida is the absolute uselessness of the Florida Democratic Party. The state party has been suffering from staffers with low morale and ailing infrastructure in the state. If the Nevada Democratic Party is the DNC’s pride and joy, the FDP is the DNC’s problem child whom they wish they could disown. The FDP is so incompetent and useless that at one point, they stopped paying for their staffers’ health insurance without telling them and had hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. The new FDP Chair Manny Diaz has managed to stabilize the organization by funneling some of his personal wealth into it and lobbying national Democrats and Democratic donors (chiefly Michael Bloomberg) to bail them out. Things were so bad at the FDP that earlier this year, other state Democratic Parties nationwide put together funds from their own accounts to help bail out the FDP. One of those state Democratic Parties which funded the bailout was the Alabama Democratic Party. Let us just take a second to appreciate and marvel at the fact that the FDP is so incompetent that they needed a bailout from the Alabama Democratic Party.
However, all is not lost for Democrats in Florida. They only lost the state to Trump in 2020 3.4 points, which is essentially a polling margin of error, and on the same ballot that Trump won the state, Florida voters approved a ballot measure that would increase the state’s minimum wage to $15/hr with over 60% of the vote. Clearly, even if Florida Democrats are useless, Democratic policies still have significant purchase in the state. Democrats can still win Florida if they have the right candidate and the right message. The biggest problem for them is the massive gains Republicans made in South Florida in Greater Miami. It is virtually impossible for Democrats to win statewide if they are not winning Miami-Dade County by at least fifteen points; Biden barely won it by seven. The massive red shift in Miami-Dade came on the backs of huge Republican improvements among Cuban-American, Venezuelan-American, Colombian-American, and Haitian-American demographics. As long as Republicans maintain the massive margins with these groups that they got in 2020, Florida is untouchable for Democrats.
The popular narrative has been that the massive protests last summer and the ensuing “socialism” attacks by Republicans gave them the massive wins that they won in South Florida. As ex-communist nation refugees moved sharply towards the Republicans, though, Democrats seem to have made some modest gains among seniors and white voters while also increasing their usual strength with Puerto Rican-Americans. The path to a Democratic victory in Florida runs through cutting into the margins Republicans win among Cuban-Americans, Venezuelan-Americans, Colombian-Americans, and Haitian-Americans. They will never win any of these demographics (and they have not won any of these demographics in decades), but shaving the Republican margin is the different between a 3.4 point Republican victory and a 0.2 point Democratic victory.
On the other hand, as South Florida has moved more Republican, the I-4 Corridor, Greater Jacksonville, and even the Panhandle have been moving more Democratic. The path to a Democratic victory involves getting the margins in Miami-Dade back up to at least fifteen points and continuing improvements in the I-4 corridor and Greater Tallahassee, Greater Jacksonville, and Greater Pensacola. As the Miami suburbs have moved more Republican than they already had been, the suburbs of Tampa, Orlando, Daytona Beach, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, and Pensacola have been sprinting blue just like the rest of the nation’s suburbs. If Democrats can continue that trend, they have a chance of reclaiming victory in the Sunshine State.
National Democrats have all but cleared the field for Congresswoman Val Demings to become the Democratic nominee for this seat, and by all accounts, she is as good a candidate as they could possibly put up. As a female black former chief of Orlando police, it will be extremely difficult for Republicans to tar and feather her as being “soft on crime” or sympathetic to “socialists”. In the past few years, she has made a name for herself calling out Trump Administration officials for “crimes” they committed while in office and served as one of the impeachment managers in Trump’s first trial. By all accounts, Demings should, in theory, be able to bring back Democratic margins in Miami-Dade to respectable numbers while also continuing the suburban shift with her experience as an ex-police chief.
On the other hand, Rubio seems to be all but unbeatable. He has latent strength in the suburbs of I-4, and his connection to the Cuban-American community run deep and long. If you were asking me to put money on it, I would say Rubio wins this race no matter how tough a fight Demings and Democrats put up. Florida is just fundamentally moving in a more Republican direction as culturally conservative Latinos drive the state that way, and as the forces of negative partisanship and national polarization continue to take hold, it just seems very difficult for Democrats to make much headway in the state. However, national Democrats have refused to write off the state (which is a good thing), and they have pledged virtually unlimited resources to take down both Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio. Time will tell if this money will have been wasted once all is said and done, but for now, Rubio is virtually unbeatable in my estimation.
MISSOURI
Now we’re getting into the last three states that could flip blue in the most extraordinary of circumstances but which almost certainly will not. The first of these is Missouri, another longtime Midwestern bellwether that has taken a sharp turn towards Republicans since the mid-2000s. Missouri is a very rural state with a lot of cultural similarities to the Deep South, so it is natural that Democrats have virtually no chance of winning here. However, “virtually no chance” does not mean “zero chance”. Claire McCaskill lost her Senate seat to Josh Hawley in 2018 by about six points, and in 2016, Democrat Jason Kander only lost to incumbent Senator Roy Blunt by about three points. In the most exceptional of circumstances, it is still possible for Democrats to be competitive and even win Missouri. So has such a chance showed itself for the 2022 midterm elections? Yes.
If Roy Blunt were running for reelection, this seat would not even be close to competitive; in fact, even despite the fact that he is retiring, this seat should not even be close to competitive. However, the presence of former Governor Eric Greitens in the Republican primary field has made things extremely interesting. Greitens had to resign as Governor a few years ago on allegations of sexual misconduct and a looming impeachment by the State Legislature (which is supermajority Republican in both chambers). He admitted to having an extramarital affair, and in the course of the affair, credible accusations of sexual blackmail have been revealed. However, despite all this negative attention, Greitens has not been chased out of the Republican primary field. The Republican field is diverse and set to grow even larger, but Greitens has a small but durable base of support in the state. In a crowded primary field, that might just be enough for Greitens to win the Republican nomination with a plurality.
National Republicans have taken note and been doing everything in their power to prevent Greitens from winning the primary and have worked very hard, with success up until now, to keep Trump from endorsing Greitens. Missouri and national Republicans are having nightmares about a redux of the 2012 Senate contest in the state where Todd Aikin made his infamous comments about “legitimate rape”, which led Claire McCaskill to romp the state to a sixteen point victory even as President Obama lost the state by almost ten points. Not only that, but several Republican Senate candidates were also tied to and were asked to answer for Aikin’s comments, and Republicans lost a lot of seats in the Senate elections that year which should not have been even remotely competitive (North Dakota, Indiana, and Montana for instance). National Republicans are trying to prevent that nightmare scenario from repeating itself with a potential Greitens nomination.
As it is, it seems that the Republican field is coming down to State Attorney General Eric Schmitt and State Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick. However, US Representatives Jason Smitch, Ann Wagner, and Billy Long are also contemplating a run. Any of these candidates would be a huge favorite to win the race no matter who Democrats put up against them. As it is, though, Democrats currently do not have any big names in the race. Former Governor Jay Nixon is reportedly considering jumping in, and if he were to jump in, he would be the biggest name on the Democratic side. Defeated Senator Clare McCaskill has ruled out a run as has Jason Kander who kept Blunt’s last victory to a margin of less than three points. Right now, though, the name who Democrats seem to be coalescing around is former State Senator Scott Sifton.
Missouri is an extremely rural state, so by its very nature, Democrats will have almost no chance. The suburbs of St. Louis and Kansas City are moving blue just like suburbs nationally are, but they are still pretty Republican overall. However, even if the Democrat is able to replicate margins found in Pennsylvania’s and Michigan’s suburbs in Missouri’s, the state’s urban and suburban areas are just not populous enough for them to win based on this coalition alone; they would have to see some reversion to Democrats among the rural areas. If Eric Greitens wins the Republican nomination, Democrats can get a strong candidate (probably Jason Kander), and Democrats pump over $100 million into the state for the race, they have slim chance to win the seat. Otherwise, it is not happening, but it is an interesting thought experiment in the Democratic dream scenario. However, the flip side of this is that if Greitens does win the Republican nomination, the state might be so red that it would be impossible to beat him regardless. I am not personally too worried about that, yet, because, again, Missouri is not so red that Roy Moore would get almost 50% of vote – or so I tell myself for now. No matter what, though, let us all just hope and pray that Eric Greitens does not become a US Senator anytime soon, and in the process of doing that, if we get a Democratic Senator from Missouri, that is all the better.
IOWA
Iowa is an interesting state to consider as even remotely competitive at this point, but this is not entirely out of the blue. Iowa is a historic swing state that has leaned slightly blue; for instance, even as he lost nationally, Al Gore won Iowa in 2000. Barack Obama also won Iowa twice, and he won by about ten points the first time. However, since 2012, Iowa, similar to Ohio and Florida, has taken a sharp turn towards the Republicans. There are now no statewide Democratic federal officeholders in Iowa. However, three of the state’s row offices (Attorney General, Auditor, and Treasurer) are still Democratic, and in 2018, Democrats win three of the four congressional districts and almost won all four; they won the state popular vote for the US House by about four points. Even in 2020, Iowa shifted about 1.5 points towards Democrats from 2016 even as Donald Trump won the state by about eight points, Joni Ernst won the other Senate seat by about seven points, and Republicans won the US House popular vote by about six points. Iowa is not so red that Democrats have no chance of winning the state at all. They have won recent statewide races and even almost swept the congressional delegation in 2018; that is hardly a state that they should write off completely.
The incumbent, Chuck Grassley, though, is unbeatable. He has been in public office for almost all of his adult life, and this has been for so long that he has represented some part of Iowa or all of Iowa for a third of the time that Iowa itself has been a state. After winning for the first time in 1980 by eight points, he has never received less than 60% of the vote. He has swept all 99 counties on his path to victory multiple times, including Polk County the home of Des Moines. However, Grassley is old: 87. He has not indicated whether or not he will run again, but based on the fundraising he has been doing, it seems that he will. If he runs, there is no chance at all of beating Grassley.
Even if Chuck Grassley does not run for reelection, though, his grandson Pat Grassley (currently Speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives) might jump in the race to succeed his grandfather. If he does, the Grassley name and brand alone will be enough to carry him to victory in this extremely rural and culturally conservative state. However, based on what he has said so far, it seems that Pat Grassley is very happy to be the Speaker of the Iowa House and does not have intention of running for US Senate. Of course, this can change at any point in time, but if both Chuck Grassley retires and Pat Grassley does not run, there is an outside chance Democrats have on making this seat competitive and even potentially winning it.
Iowa is an extremely rural state, so it is very difficult to imagine a Democrat winning in the home of corn and soy beans, but Iowa also has a rich history of electing Democrats. Even in 2020, Democrats lost the state by six to eight points in the races; this is hardly a state that they cannot compete in. The path to Democrats winning in Iowa is very, very, very narrow, but it does exist. While it is considered to be uniform agricultural, this is actually not the case. A lot of eastern Iowa is actually part of the Rust Belt, and this is where Iowa Democrats have historically found their strength. Eastern Iowa is heavily unionized and has a rich industrial history that gives it some commonalities with neighboring Illinois and even parts of Southwestern Pennsylvania. The Rust Belt has been hollowed out and our industrial might decimated for decades now, but there is still some latent Democratic strength left in eastern Iowa shown by the fact that Democrats won both eastern congressional seats in 2018 and only lost one of them by six votes last year.
On the Republican side, if neither of the Grassleys run, it is unclear who would take the chance to run though both current US Representative Ashely Hinson and former Acting US Attorney General Matt Whittaker are considering jumping in. Neither of these candidates are nearly as strong as the Grassley name brand, and if the race comes down to one of them, Democrats have a nonzero chance of competing and winning the seat. On the Democratic side, the leading candidates seem to be former US Representative Abby Finkenauer and current US Representative Cindy Axne (who represents the congressional district that includes most of the Greater Des Moines Metro). There are really no particularly strong candidates on the Democratic side, but the same is true for the Republican side (again, if neither of the Grassleys runs). In the 2020 Senate cycle, Iowa was the greatest heartbreak because Schumer’s recruit, Theresa Greenfield, was actually a phenomenal candidate. If Greenfield were to run again, I personally think she would do better and maybe even win, but what do I know? If either of the Grassleys runs for the seat, Iowa is a guaranteed Republican hold; if neither does, there is a slim opening for a Democrat to energize the suburbs of Des Moines and Omaha and marry that with latent Democratic strength in the heavily unionized east and multiple college towns to a victory in the state. But I would not bet on it.
ALASKA
And now the last one we get to is Alaska. Alaska is an interesting state politically because every political rule you think of on the national level is reversed. The rural areas are blue while the urban areas are red, and the Alaska Republican Party supports the state’s version of universal basic income while the Alaska Democratic Party does not. At the federal level, though, Alaska is a strongly Republican state, but it is not exclusively Republican. A Democrat won a US Senate seat in Alaska as recently as 2008. As red as the state is, the large population of Native Alaskans has made the state surprisingly competitive in some instances. Also, Anchorage has been moving blue for some time now and finally flipped blue at the presidential level last year for the first time since LBJ’s nationwide Democratic landslide of 1964. Anchorage’s suburbs have been moving blue for some time now, too.
Democrats have made serious gains in Alaska recently without even trying to, and this culminated last year in losing presidential election by about ten points, the US Senate election by thirteen points, and the US House election by nine points. To put that in perspective, as recently as 2014, Republicans were winning Alaska’s races by over twenty points across the board. The state has been trending blue for some time now as Anchorage and its suburbs have become more Democratic and as the Alaskan Native vote remains extremely Democratic. Next year, there is a very, very, very, very, very slim chance for Democrats to flip Lisa Murkowski’s seat from red to blue.
Lisa Murkowski has drawn the ire of Donald Trump by voting to convict him in the second impeachment trial, and he has vowed to campaign against her in this election cycle to defeat her. Murkowski has a strong base of support with the Alaskan Native population as well as Greater Anchorage, and this has led her to win as a write-in candidate back in 2010. However, by drawing Trump’s ire, Murkowski has put a target on her back, and both Trump and the Alaska Republican Party have instead endorsed Kelly Tshibaka. Tshibaka is a total Trump sycophant, but in a state that is becoming more Democratic and where the Native Alaskan population is a key voting bloc, it remains to be seen if things could shake up because of it.
An additional wrinkle in the Alaska Senate race next year is the institution of ranked choice voting. All candidates will run in a jungle primary, and the top four vote-getters will advance to a general election which will use ranked choice voting. Independent (and intended Democrat) Al Gross is publicly contemplating a run for the seat after he lost last year’s Senate race by a closer than expected margin. Gross is about as good a Democratic candidate as you are going to find in Alaska. If the Alaska Republican Party ends up imploding with infighting as happened with the Georgia Republican Party earlier this year, it is possible that Gross is able to put together a ranked choice majority of Anchorage urbanites, Metro Anchorage suburbanites, college town residents, and Native Alaskans away from people who would normally vote for Murkowski and ride that coalition to victory. I would not bet on it, though.
It is possible for Democrats to win as many as 58 Senate seats next year, and if they did, they would be virtually unbound from any and all political constraints. If they win even 53 seats and hold the House, the filibuster is almost certainly dead, and if they win more than that, there are a million other possibilities that open up for them.
What are your thoughts on Lucas Kunce for MO? It’s painful OH/IA/FL will remain in GOP hands but I’m not ready to write them off…