Subterms
Emily Elconin for The New York TimesIn Michigan, which has an open seat, Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat who comfortably won re-election in November, is also taking steps toward a possible Senate run in 2024. Her moves include forming a national campaign team and meeting with leaders across the state, a person close to the congresswoman confirmed last week. More
Mr. Dolan, a state senator whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team, will compete for the Republican nomination against one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators.State Senator Matt Dolan of Ohio, a Republican, announced on Tuesday that he would run for the United States Senate against Sherrod Brown, one of the most vulnerable Democrats in 2024.It will be Mr. Dolan’s second Senate campaign, after he finished third in the Republican primary for an open seat in Ohio last year. The winner of that primary, J.D. Vance, went on to win the general election.Mr. Dolan’s family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team, and he used millions of dollars of his own money to fund his first campaign, in which he won about 23 percent of the primary vote — finishing significantly behind Mr. Vance and narrowly behind the second-place finisher, Josh Mandel.In his campaign announcement on Tuesday, Mr. Dolan, the chairman of the Ohio Senate’s finance committee, emphasized border security, fighting inflation and his support for the police. He accused Mr. Brown of “blind loyalty to his party.”“Ohioans want a problem solver who has successfully faced big challenges impacting our quality of life, not the political blame game that lacks commonsense solutions,” he said. “I have a proven conservative record of success that has yielded results for Ohio families, workers and businesses.”A tough line on immigration was also a hallmark of Mr. Dolan’s 2022 campaign, though he broke from his opponents’ hard-right line on at least one specific policy: He supported the preservation of H-1B visas that allow immigrants to work temporarily in certain industries.Mr. Dolan is a former chief assistant prosecutor in Geauga County, east of Cleveland, and a former assistant state attorney general.Ohio, a former swing state that has moved toward Republicans in recent years, represents one of several opportunities for the G.O.P. to pick up a Senate seat in 2024, with Democratic incumbents in the red states of Montana and West Virginia also up for re-election.Mr. Brown, a three-term senator and former representative, has won difficult races before, though, including in 2018, when he won re-election by more than six percentage points just two years after Donald J. Trump won in Ohio by eight.Mr. Brown has shown strong — and enduring, even in the past few years — appeal among the blue-collar voters who are essential in Ohio elections. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, he has pushed for more oversight of Wall Street and more consumer protections. He has also been a vocal proponent of expanding the child tax credit and other elements of the social safety net, including the Supplemental Security Income program for disabled and older Americans.A spokesman for Mr. Brown did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Mr. Dolan’s announcement, but Mr. Brown’s campaign quickly sent a fund-raising email to supporters calling Mr. Dolan “the first of what we expect to be many challengers jumping into the race.”Among others, Republicans are watching Frank LaRose, the Ohio secretary of state, who has not announced whether he will run but is widely expected to do so. More
A potential mess in Arizona was an unwelcome surprise for Democrats while they were still savoring their victories in 2022.When Senator Kyrsten Sinema left the Democratic Party last week, she didn’t just momentarily drive up antacid sales on Capitol Hill. She also raised the pressure on three especially vulnerable Democratic senators who are up for re-election in 2024, and are defending seats in states that have turned a shade of deep crimson since they were first elected to Congress.The 2024 map is daunting for Senate Democrats, and it will take all the political dexterity and luck they can muster to keep their 51-ish-seat majority — and then some. Twenty-three of the 33 seats up for grabs are held by Democrats or left-leaning independents. That list includes Montana, Ohio and West Virginia, where Donald Trump won in 2020 by 16, 8 and 29 percentage points.But daunting is not the same thing as impossible. Faced with steep odds in the past, Democrats have managed to find local causes to champion — remember Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin’s crusade against almond milk? — as they looked for ways to differentiate themselves from the national party. And their incumbents have proved doubters wrong in the past.“From 30,000 feet, it looks brutal, but as you get closer to the ground, I feel more optimistic about it,” said Jim Kessler, vice president for policy at Third Way, a center-left think tank. “If it’s mainstream versus extreme, we have a great shot.”For now, Democratic strategists are still poring over the results of the recent midterm elections, trying to gain a deeper understanding of what moved voters.One consensus viewpoint so far, at least among those I’ve spoken with: Democratic candidates earned just enough credit for trying to address inflation through moves like capping insulin prices to dull Republicans’ advantage on the economy. And they say that while abortion may not matter quite as much in the next election, the issue is not going away in 2024.Another lesson is crystal clear: Trump has become even more toxic to swing voters during his two years in exile. The latest evidence? A USA Today/Suffolk University poll shows Trump losing a hypothetical matchup with President Biden by nearly eight points.On the other hand, there are no signs that any of these three states have grown less difficult for Democrats over the last six years. It’s easy to forget that Barack Obama won Ohio twice, or that Montana had a Democratic governor as recently as 2021. Today, that feels like ancient history.Once Democrats turn to 2024 in earnest, their first and most important task will be ensuring that their incumbents run again. As for Republicans, they are still debating what went wrong this year, with much of the discussion centering on the mechanics of campaigns, like mail voting and ballot harvesting — rather than thornier issues, like abortion. At the same time, as G.O.P. candidates begin declaring their intentions, many are still treading cautiously when it comes to Trump.“Some of the primary noise on their side suggests they haven’t learned too much yet,” said J.B. Poersch, the president of Senate Majority PAC, a group closely associated with Senator Chuck Schumer. “There’s plenty of things for them to be nervous about.”The Democrats’ red-state defendersSo far, of the Democratic incumbents in those three states above, only Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio has definitively said he’s in. Brown has demonstrated a unique knack for winning working-class voters, even as cultural factors start to outweigh economics. He won his race by nearly seven points in 2018, while Representative Tim Ryan lost to J.D. Vance this year by roughly the same margin — far less than other statewide candidates in Ohio, but hardly encouraging for Democrats.Republicans are lining up to take on Brown, notably State Senator Matt Dolan, who finished third in this year’s Senate primary behind Vance and Josh Mandel — both of whom aggressively courted Trump and his base.Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians, is already exploring the boundaries of what constitutes acceptable criticism of Trump. “What we witnessed nationally should convince us the country is ready for substantive candidates, not personalities and election deniers,” he wrote in a recent email to Republican county chairs in Ohio. But he said he would support Trump if he were the nominee.Then there’s Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who sounds intrigued by Sinema’s decision to become an independent. “I don’t know how you get more independent than I am,” Manchin told reporters at the Capitol on Monday. “I look at all of these things, I’ve always looked at all of these things. But I have no intention of doing anything right now.”Like most things Manchin, that answer was neither a yes nor a no. He added, “I’m not a Washington Democrat.”Manchin already has an official Republican challenger: Representative Alex Mooney, who has telegraphed his line of attack in an anti-Manchin ad that ran four months ago. At least two others have shown interest: Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who ran against Manchin in 2018, and Gov. Jim Justice, who is term-limited.Montana is only slightly less intimidating terrain for Democrats. They lost both House races this year, while Republicans won a supermajority in the State Legislature.Senator Jon Tester of Montana is skilled at finding locally resonant issues to champion.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesSenator Jon Tester has said he will make a decision about running again after the holidays, though he has told reporters he feels “very positively about my chances.” Tester, who heads home to his farm most weekends, is skilled at finding locally resonant issues to champion, such as federal support for rural hospitals or floodplain mapping.Tester allies point to an emerging dynamic on the Republican side that resembles what happened in many primaries in 2022: a race to the right.One possible contender is Representative Matt Rosendale, whom Tester defeated in 2018 and who is staking out a position as one of the holdouts to Representative Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become House speaker. Another is Representative Ryan Zinke, who resigned as Trump’s interior secretary amid a flurry of investigations into his conduct. He will return to Congress early next year after winning by just three points against Monica Tranel, a political novice, despite outspending her by two to one.The rest of the mapAt the moment, Democrats appear to have just two pickup opportunities, and neither looks especially promising: Florida and Texas.And even the seemingly more comfortable seats they hold, like Nevada and Pennsylvania, are not all that comfortable. Nevada was the closest of all the big Senate races this year, with Senator Catherine Cortez Masto winning by fewer than 8,000 votes.In Pennsylvania, Republicans are hoping that David McCormick, who lost narrowly to Dr. Mehmet Oz in the primary this year, will challenge Senator Bob Casey in 2024. Democrats saw McCormick, a former hedge fund executive with deep pockets and roots in Pittsburgh, as the more formidable potential opponent, and subtly tried to help Oz. McCormick is planning to release a book in March, “Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Renew America,” that appears aimed at positioning him more squarely as a China hawk, shoring up a point of vulnerability that hurt him this year.“I’d be shocked at this point if he doesn’t run,” said Josh Novotney, a former aide to Senator Pat Toomey and a partner at SBL Strategies, a lobbying firm in Pennsylvania. But Novotney cautioned that if Trump were the nominee, it could doom Republicans’ chances of defeating Casey. In the 2022 Senate race, Oz was weighed down by Trump and by Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor, whose hard-line stances on abortion and embrace of election denialism repelled swing voters.Democratic senators are also up for re-election in Michigan and Wisconsin, where their chances look brighter. In 2018, Baldwin crushed her Republican opponent, Leah Vukmir, by nearly 11 points, while in Michigan, Senator Debbie Stabenow cruised to victory over John James, who opted to run for a House seat rather than face Stabenow again. This year, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer won re-election easily, while Democrats took full control of the State Legislature for the first time in 40 years.Sinema’s defection undeniably makes Democrats’ path more complicated. She has not said she is running, though many political observers suspect her decision to switch parties had to do with worries she would lose a Democratic primary. Neither of the two most prominent Democrats weighing a run, Representatives Ruben Gallego and Greg Stanton, has officially entered the race, however.Republicans in Arizona could nominate someone on the far right, such as Sheriff Mark Lamb, or a moderate like Karrin Taylor Robson, a lawyer who lost to Kari Lake in this year’s primary for governor. So although most analysts assume that a three-way race would help Republicans, there are too many variables to draw any firm conclusions — including whether there will even be a three-way race.For now, Democrats are philosophical about the 2024 landscape. “Every election,” Poersch said, “you’re testing: Have the rules changed, or are we playing by the same old rules?”What to readDespite modest improvements for Republicans in 2022, Democrats largely held onto their gains among suburban voters, particularly in battleground states, Trip Gabriel reports.Donald Trump’s family business lost a criminal contempt trial that was held in secret last fall, according to a newly unsealed court document and several people with knowledge of the matter. Jonah Bromwich, William Rashbaum and Ben Protess explain.President Biden signed a bill mandating federal recognition for same-sex marriages and capped his evolution toward embracing gay rights over a four-decade political career. Michael D. Shear has the details.Inflation slowed more sharply than expected in November, Jeanna Smialek reports. It was an encouraging sign for both Federal Reserve officials and consumers and raised hopes for a “soft landing,” or one in which the economy slows gradually and without a painful recession.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead 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. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More
Polls show Representative Tim Ryan competing within the margin of error against his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance, in the high-profile Ohio Senate race.CLEVELAND — When Tim Ryan speaks to Democratic crowds in the closing days of the Ohio Senate race, his biggest applause line is about the other team.A Republican official in a “deep-red county,” he recounts, his voice dropping to a stage whisper, told him, “You have no idea how many Republicans are going to quietly vote for you.”The hoots and hollers that break out represent the high hopes of a party that has lost much of its appeal to working-class voters and that sees in Mr. Ryan — a congressman from the Mahoning Valley who has an anti-China, pro-manufacturing message and whose own father is a Republican — a chance to claw back blue-collar credibility.Polls show Mr. Ryan competing within the margin of error against his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan is polling higher than President Biden’s job approval rating in Ohio surveys, and he is outperforming the Democratic candidate for governor, Nan Whaley. That suggests a potentially sizable pool of voters who intend to split their tickets between a Republican for governor and a Democrat for Senate.“This is going to be the upset of the night,” Mr. Ryan said in an interview on his campaign bus on Thursday, as he plied the pro-Democrat shoreline of Lake Erie from Toledo to Cleveland.“There’s a lot of Republicans who would never tell a pollster that they’re voting for me,” he said. “They don’t want to put a yard sign up. They don’t want to get in a fight with the neighbor who’s got the ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ flag.”He said his internal polling showed 12 percent or more of Republicans “coming our way.”But there is also the cold reality of a midterm environment tilting against Democrats almost everywhere, with inflation the top voter concern. Polling in Ohio in recent elections has undercounted the backing for Republican candidates. And there has been a political realignment of Ohio voters in the past decade, which has largely pushed the state off the battleground map.J.D. Vance listening to local elected officials at the annual Darke County Republican Party Hog Roast.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesWhite Ohioans without college degrees have shifted toward Republicans up and down the ballot, while suburban, college-educated voters have moved to favor Democrats, though less consistently.“Ohio is a much more Republican state than Texas is,” said Mike Hartley, a Republican strategist with 25 years of experience in Ohio. “Democrats talk about things that for a lot of Ohioans offends their core principles and sensibilities, and they run away from the pocketbook issues.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: The debate performance by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is still recovering from a stroke, has thrust questions of health to the center of the pivotal race and raised Democratic anxieties.G.O.P. Inflation Plans: Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture Congress, but few economists expect their proposals to bring down rising prices.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Former President Donald J. Trump twice won Ohio with ease by appealing to the economic and cultural anxieties of working-class white voters. In 2020, he grew his support in the state’s industrial northeast — Mr. Ryan’s base — and became the first Republican presidential candidate in 50 years to win Mahoning County, which is home to Youngstown.Bob Paduchik, chairman of the Republican Party of Ohio, brushed off the notion of quiet Republican support for Mr. Ryan. He said county-level absentee voting data and an analysis using Republican National Committee modeling predicted a clean Vance victory.“I don’t know what he thinks he’s looking at,” he said of Mr. Ryan’s assertion of hidden support. “But I’ll take our data, which is based on the R.N.C. modeling, which has hundreds of millions of dollars invested in it.”Despite Mr. Trump’s success in Ohio, Democrats point to the example of Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat and gruff-voiced champion of organized labor who won re-election in 2018 by appealing to working-class voters who might not have liked his progressive social priorities, but believed he would fight for their jobs.Mr. Ryan touring a job training facility at McKinley United Methodist Church in Dayton, Ohio. Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Ryan, casting himself partly in the Brown mold, is the grandson of a steelworker and a longtime opponent of trade deals that hurt American factories. He has said that President Biden should not seek re-election and he opposed Nancy Pelosi for House speaker. A former college quarterback, he appears in his ads throwing darts in a bar or footballs at TV sets. “You want culture wars? I’m not your guy,” he says.Mr. Ryan pitches himself to voters weary of the divisiveness and anger broiling in America. “I have this conversation with my dad all the time,” he said in the interview, adding that his father “probably” voted for Mr. Trump, twice.“People are tired of the insanity,” Mr. Ryan told a gathering of Democratic activists on the shore of Lake Erie in Sandusky on Thursday. “We’re Ohio. Ohio doesn’t do crazy.”It was a sideswipe at Mr. Vance, who has campaigned with the far-right Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, has flirted with the conspiracy theory that Democrats want to “replace” existing voters with immigrants and has defended Alex Jones as “more reputable” than an MSNBC host.On Friday, speaking to supporters at the county Republican headquarters in Canton, Mr. Vance portrayed his opponent as disingenuous in claiming to be a new-model Democrat. Mr. Vance joked that “maybe we should have invited Tim Ryan” because of the Democrat’s efforts to distance himself from his own party.“This guy is not the moderate that he pretends to be,” Mr. Vance continued. “He’s a guy who bends the knee to Nancy Pelosi and does what he’s told.”One sign that Mr. Ryan remains a long shot is the lack of TV advertising from big-spending groups tied to the Democratic Senate leadership, which have poured tens of millions of dollars into races elsewhere.Mr. Ryan has compensated by raising a staggering $48 million on his own. The money flowed from small donors around the country, many annoyed by Mr. Vance’s political evolution, from the “Hillbilly Elegy” author who denounced Mr. Trump in 2016 as “cultural heroin” to a stalwart Trump supporter. At a rally in Ohio last month, the former president joked that Mr. Vance “is kissing my ass” to win his support.Mr. Vance’s supporters in Cincinnati reacting to the news that he won the Republican primary in May.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Trump is scheduled to return to the state the day before the election for a rally with Mr. Vance in Dayton. Asked at a brief news conference on Friday whether he needed a boost from the former president, Mr. Vance said: “I like the president. I thought his policies deliver prosperity for the state of Ohio, and he wants to come to Ohio, and we’d love to have him in Ohio. It’s really that simple.”Unlike Mr. Ryan, who has shunned campaigning with national Democratic figures, Mr. Vance has embraced national G.O.P. leaders, appearing in Canton with the Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, and Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the Republican Senate campaign arm.Mr. Vance has largely relied on the Republican cavalry from out of state, most significantly for $28 million in TV ads from a super PAC aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader.Mr. Vance on his own has raised $12.7 million, after his campaign was supported almost exclusively by a super PAC funded by $15 million from the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who once employed Mr. Vance. After Mr. Vance won his primary, Mr. Thiel moved on to other races.On Friday, Ms. McDaniel reminded reporters that polls in Ohio historically have widely missed support for Republicans.“J.D. is actually polling higher than President Trump was heading into the election in 2020,” she said. Mr. Trump went on to win the state by eight percentage points.“What people were seeing in the polling is not new in this state,” Mr. Vance told reporters. “It always overstates things to the benefit of the Democrats.”With a little more than one week before the election on Nov. 8, Mr. Ryan has been making an appeal to unity in these fractured times.“I know you feel the same way as I do,” he told activists in an autoworkers union hall in Cleveland on Thursday night. “I don’t want any more hate. I don’t want any more anger.” He added: “I want people who care about each other. I want some forgiveness. I want some grace.” More
Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted an online conversation with Molly Jong-Fast, the writer of the “Wait, What?” newsletter for The Atlantic, and Doug Sosnik, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, to discuss whether the Democrats have shifted the narrative of the midterm elections.FRANK BRUNI: Doug, Molly, an apology — because we’re doing this in cyberspace rather than a physical place, I cannot offer you any refreshments, which is a shame, because I do a killer crudité.MOLLY JONG-FAST: The case of Dr. Oz is baffling. I continue to be completely in awe of how bad he is at this.DOUG SOSNIK: He is a terrible candidate, but he is really just one of many right-wing and unqualified candidates running for the Senate and governor. Herschel Walker in Georgia and most of the Republican ticket in Arizona are probably even more unqualified.BRUNI: Let’s pivot from roughage to the rough-and-tumble of the midterms. There’s a stirring of Democratic hearts, a blooming of Democratic hopes, a belief that falling gas prices, key legislative accomplishments and concern about abortion rights equal a reprieve from the kind of midterm debacle that Democrats feared just a month or two ago.Doug, do you now envision Democrats doing much better than we once thought possible?SOSNIK: I do. Up until the start of the primaries and the Dobbs decision overturning Roe, this looked like a classic midterm election in which the party in power gets shellacked. It has happened in the past four midterm elections.BRUNI: Is it possible we’re reading too much into the abortion factor?JONG-FAST: No, abortion is a much bigger deal than any of the pundit class realizes. Because abortion isn’t just about abortion.BRUNI: Doug, do you agree?SOSNIK: I am increasingly nervous about making predictions, but I do feel safe in saying that this issue will increase in importance as more people see the real-life implications of the Roe decision. So, yes, I agree that it will impact the midterms. But it will actually take on even more importance in 2024 and beyond.JONG-FAST: One of the biggest things we’ve seen since the Dobbs decision is doctors terrified to treat women who are having gynecological complications. In 1973, one of the reasons Roe was decided so broadly was because some doctors didn’t feel safe treating women. We’re having a messy return to that, which is a nightmare for the right.SOSNIK: For decades, the getting-candidates-elected wing of the Republican Party — which means people like Mitch McConnell — has had a free ride with the issue of abortion. They have been able to use it to seed their base but have not been forced to pay a political price. With the overturning of Roe, that has all changed. And polling shows that a majority of Americans don’t agree with their extreme positions.JONG-FAST: I also think a lot of suburban women are really, really mad, and people who don’t care about politics at all are furious. Remember the whole news cycle devoted to the 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio having to go out of state for an abortion. Roe is seismic.BRUNI: I noticed that in an NBC News poll released last week, abortion wasn’t one of the top five answers when voters were asked about the most important issue facing the country. Fascinatingly — and to me, hearteningly — more voters chose threats to democracy than the cost of living or jobs and the economy. Do you think that could truly be a motivating, consequential factor in the midterms? Or do you think abortion will still make the bigger difference?SOSNIK: There are two issues in midterms: turnout and persuasion. I am quite confident that the abortion issue will motivate people to vote. The NBC poll shows that Democrats have closed the enthusiasm gap for voting to two points, which since March is a 15-point improvement. And for persuasion, those suburban women swing voters will be motivated by this issue to not only vote but to vote against the Republicans.BRUNI: Is this election really going to be all about turnout, or will swing voters matter just as much? And which groups of Democratic voters are you most worried won’t, in the end, turn out to the extent that they should?SOSNIK: Yes, this midterm will be primarily about turnout. For Democrats, I would start by worrying about young people turning out, which was no doubt on the administration’s mind when it released a plan on Wednesday to forgive student loans.There is also a pretty sizable group of Democrats who have soured on President Biden. They are critical for the Democrats to turn out.BRUNI: Molly, Doug just mentioned President Biden’s announcement that he was forgiving some college debt for some Americans. Is that decision likely to be a net positive for the party, drawing grateful voters to the polls, or a net negative, alienating some Democrats — and energizing many Republicans — who think he’s being fiscally profligate and playing favorites?JONG-FAST: I grew up extremely privileged and for years grappled with the issue of fairness. In my mind, $10,000 was the floor for debt forgiveness. I am particularly pleased with the $20,000 for Pell grant recipients who qualify. I never thought America was a fair country, and it’s become increasingly unfair. Biden was elected with this promise, and he’s keeping it. I think that should help turn out the base.SOSNIK: Student loan forgiveness is a Rorschach test for voters. If you believe in government and a progressive agenda, it is great news. If you think that the Democrats are a bunch of big spenders and worried about the elites — the 38 percent of the country that gets a four-year college degree — then it will work against them.BRUNI: Will former President Donald Trump’s feud with the Department of Justice and the F.B.I. after the Mar-a-Lago search boost Republican turnout and work to the party’s advantage?JONG-FAST: Trump has been fighting with parts of the government for years. I’m not sure how fresh that narrative is. The people who are Trump’s people will continue to be Trump’s people, but much of this persecution-complex narrative is old.SOSNIK: The F.B.I. raid goes with several other items — Jan. 6, Roe, the Trump-endorsed right-wing nominees — that are driving this to be what I’d call a choice election.There have been only two elections since World War II when the incumbent party did not lose House seats in the midterms — 1998 and 2002 — 2002 was an outlier, since it was really a reaction to 9/11.Nineteen ninety-eight was a choice election: We were in the middle of impeachment when the country largely felt that the Republicans were overreaching; 2022 could be only the second choice midterm election since World War II.BRUNI: Democratic hopes focus on keeping control of the Senate or even expanding their majority there. Is the House a lost cause?JONG-FAST: The result of the special election in New York’s 19th Congressional District on Tuesday — widely considered a bellwether contest for control of the House in November, and in which the Democrat, Pat Ryan, beat a well-known, favored Republican, Marc Molinaro, by two points — makes people think that it is possible for Democrats to keep the House.I know that Democrats have about dozens of fewer safe seats than Republicans. And they hold a very slim majority — Republicans need to pick up a net of five seats to regain the majority. But I still think it’s possible Democrats hold the House.SOSNIK: It will be very difficult for the Democrats to hold the House. They have one of the narrowest margins in the House since the late-19th century. Because of reapportionment and redistricting, the Republicans have a much more favorable battlefield. There are now, in the new map, 16 seats held by Democrats in districts that would have likely voted for Trump. Expecting a bad cycle, over 30 Democrats in the House announced that they would retire.The Cook Report has the Republicans already picking up a net of seven seats, with the majority of the remaining competitive races held by Democrats.BRUNI: I’m going to list Democratic candidates in high-profile Senate races in purple or reddish states that aren’t incontrovertibly hostile terrain for the party. For each candidate, tell me if you think victory is probable, possible or improbable. Be bold.John Fetterman, Pennsylvania.SOSNIK: Probable.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: Raphael Warnock, Georgia.SOSNIK: Probable.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: Cheri Beasley, North Carolina.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Possible.BRUNI: Val Demings, Florida.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Ugh, Florida.BRUNI: Mark Kelly, Arizona.SOSNIK: Probable.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: Mandela Barnes, Wisconsin.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: Tim Ryan, Ohio.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Possible.BRUNI: Catherine Cortez Masto, Nevada.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: Name a Democratic candidate this cycle — for Senate, House or governor — who has most positively surprised and impressed you, and tell me why.JONG-FAST: Fetterman is really good at this, and so is his wife. Ryan has been really good. I think Mandela Barnes is really smart. I’ve interviewed all of those guys for my podcast and thought they were just really good at messaging in a way Democrats are historically not. Val Demings is a once-in-a-lifetime politician, but Florida is Florida.SOSNIK: Tim Ryan. I don’t know if he can win, but he has proved that a Democrat can be competitive in a state that I now consider a Republican stronghold.BRUNI: OK, let’s do a lightning round of final questions. For starters, the Biden presidency so far, rated on a scale of 1 (big disappointment) to 5 (big success), with a sentence or less justifying your rating.JONG-FAST: Four. I wasn’t a Biden person, but he’s quietly gotten a lot done, more than I thought he could.SOSNIK: Four. They have accomplished a lot under very difficult circumstances.BRUNI: The percentage chance that Biden runs for a second term?JONG-FAST: Fifty percent.SOSNIK: Twenty-five percent.BRUNI: If Biden doesn’t run and there’s a Democratic primary, name someone other than or in addition to Kamala Harris whom you’d like to see enter the fray, and tell me in a phrase why.JONG-FAST: I hate this question. I want to move to a pineapple under the sea.SOSNIK: Sherrod Brown. He is an authentic person who understands the pulse of this country.JONG-FAST: I also like Sherrod Brown.BRUNI: What’s the one issue you think is being most shortchanged, not just in discussions about the midterms but in our political discussions generally?JONG-FAST: The Supreme Court. If Democrats keep the House and the Senate, Biden is still going to have to deal with the wildly out-of-step courts. He will hate doing that, but he’s going to have to.SOSNIK: I agree with Molly. On a broader level, we have just completed a realignment in American politics where class, more than race, is driving our politics.BRUNI: Last but by no means least, you must spend either an hour over crudité with the noted gourmand Mehmet Oz or an hour gardening with the noted environmentalist Herschel Walker. What do you choose, and briefly, why?JONG-FAST: I’m a terrible hypochondriac, and Oz was an extremely good surgeon. I would spend an hour with him talking about all my medical anxieties. Does this mole look like anything?SOSNIK: The fact that you are raising that question tells you how bad the candidate recruitment has been for the Republicans this cycle.Other than carrying a football and not getting tackled, Walker has not accomplished much in his life, and his pattern of personal behavior shows him to be unfit to hold elected office.BRUNI: Well, I once spent hours with Oz for a profile and watched him do open-heart surgery, so I’m pulling weeds with Walker, just out of curiosity. And for the fresh air.Frank Bruni (@FrankBruni) is a professor of public policy at Duke, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter and can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) writes the “Wait, What?” newsletter for The Atlantic. Doug Sosnik was a senior adviser in President Bill Clinton’s White House from 1994 to 2000 and is a counselor to the Brunswick Group.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDemocrats Want a Stronger Edge in the Senate. Ohio Could Be Crucial.The retirement of a moderate Republican senator and conservative infighting have raised Democratic ambitions in the state, a longtime political bellwether that is increasingly tilting red.Ohio served as a political bellwether and swing-state proving ground for years, but has recently been dominated by Republicans.Credit…Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMarch 6, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCOLUMBUS, Ohio — For Democrats of late, winning in Ohio has been a bit like Lucy and the football.First, Hillary Clinton made a late push there in 2016, returning to the state on the weekend before the election with no less a local celebrity than LeBron James, even though she had stayed away for much of the fall. Then, in the 2018 governor’s race, Democrats were optimistic about Richard Cordray, the wonky former head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And in November, it was President Biden who made an 11th-hour stop in Ohio, even though his campaign was also skeptical about its chances there.Each candidate lost, and for the two presidential hopefuls, it was not even close.But Ohio Democrats are getting their hopes up again, aiming to capitalize on Senator Rob Portman’s surprise announcement last month that he was retiring and on Republican infighting after more than a decade of G.O.P. dominance at the state level.“I think people will look for something different,” Senator Sherrod Brown, the only remaining Democrat in statewide office, said of his party’s chances to pick up the Portman seat in 2022. “There’s a whole lot of people whose lives have gotten worse in the last five to 10 years.”If Democrats are to increase their Senate seats significantly beyond the 50 they now hold, with the party relying on Vice President Kamala Harris as a tiebreaker in the event of a 50-50 deadlock, states like Ohio are essential. They owe their narrow advantage to the fast-growing South and West, having picked up Republican-held seats in three states — Georgia, Arizona and Colorado — that Mr. Biden also carried in November.Yet the president’s recent challenges with some of his appointments and coronavirus relief legislation make the limitations of such fragile Senate control vividly clear: To claim something larger than what’s effectively a Joe Manchin majority, in which appointments and the shape of legislation can be determined by a single red-state senator, Democrats will have to go on the offensive next year in a part of the country that has proved far more fickle for them: the industrial Midwest.Mr. Biden’s hopes for working with a more expansive majority will hinge on whether his party can capture a cluster of Republican-held seats across the Big Ten region: in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa. Former President Barack Obama won all of those states both times he ran, but they have become more forbidding for Democrats, or at least more competitive, as working-class white voters have become more reliable Republicans since the rise of former President Donald J. Trump.“If we’re going to have a real majority for Biden, we’ve got to figure out how we can get up to 52 to 53 seats, and that means Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin,” said Doug Thornell, a Democratic strategist. (Iowa, which has been as difficult for Democrats as Ohio in recent years, may be competitive as a Senate battleground, but only if its longtime Senator Charles E. Grassley, 87, retires.)Senator Rob Portman of Ohio announced he would not seek re-election in 2022, creating an open seat during the midterm elections.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesBeyond the question of the Senate majority, how these states behave in 2022 could carry profound implications. If they revert to a more Democratic orientation in the aftermath of the Trump era, it would suggest that the rightward shift of working-class white voters in recent years was driven by affection for one outsize figure. If Republicans win across the region, though, it may portend a more enduring realignment and raise sobering questions for Democrats about the Senate and presidential maps.And few states, in the Midwest or beyond, have the symbolic resonance of Ohio, which for decades served as a political bellwether and swing-state proving ground. Now, however, even the most optimistic Ohio Democrats acknowledge that they reside in a Republican-leaning state and must take lessons on how to compete from their ideological counterparts in other precincts of red-state America.“We should look at how Democrats won in Montana and Kansas,” said Mayor Nan Whaley of Dayton, who is planning a run for governor next year. “That’s a new place for us to look because we’ve always been a battleground, but national messages don’t fit right into Ohio.”One of the most consequential questions for Ohio Democrats is out of their hands: What direction will Republicans take in the Biden era? “Where they land is going to be a big deal,” Ms. Whaley said.Had Mr. Portman run for re-election, this would have been a far less weighty question in Ohio. He and Gov. Mike DeWine, another establishment-aligned and well-known incumbent, would have campaigned on their own political brands, never confronting Mr. Trump but also never embracing him, either.Now, though, the open Senate seat is thrusting the loyalty-obsessed former president to the forefront of his party’s nascent primary, as the announced candidates compete to see who can hug Mr. Trump tightest.Josh Mandel, a former state treasurer who twice ran against Mr. Brown before withdrawing from the 2018 race and disappearing from public view, has resurfaced as an ardent MAGA man. In interviews and tweets since entering the race to succeed Mr. Portman, he has claimed that Mr. Trump’s second impeachment prompted him to run — never mind his previous two bids — and vowed to advance Mr. Trump’s “America First Agenda.”Perhaps more striking, though, is the maneuvering by Jane Timken, a wealthy executive who was elevated to the chair of the Ohio Republican Party in 2017 in part because Mr. Trump took the extraordinary step as president-elect to make calls to party activists on her behalf.Mr. Portman, hinting where his eventual preferences may lie, has praised Ms. Timken, saying that “over the last couple of years, she has somehow managed through her communications and her organizing to keep all wings of the party moving in the same direction.”Jane Timken, right, a wealthy executive who was elevated to the chair of the Ohio Republican Party in 2017, is expected to begin a campaign for the Senate seat.Credit…Aaron Doster/Associated PressYet Ms. Timken’s conduct since the start of this year illustrates the high-wire act Mr. Trump may force Republicans to execute in next year’s election.The weekend after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Ms. Timken, then still the state party chair, sent an email to Republicans urging them to “remember that whether it comes to our country or our party, our shared progress and prosperity is never about one person, one candidate or one government official.”A few weeks later, addressing a question about the decision by Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio to vote to impeach Mr. Trump, Ms. Timken said she was not sure she would have made the same choice but added that he had “a rational reason” for his vote. She called him “an effective legislator.”Ms. Timken changed her tune, however, just hours before quitting her state party post last month as she prepared to enter the Senate race.“Anthony Gonzalez made the wrong decision on impeachment and I disagree with his vote,” she said. “This sham impeachment is illegal and unconstitutional.”And then, just this week, Ms. Timken, under pressure to show her fealty to Mr. Trump, issued a statement demanding that Mr. Gonzalez resign from his seat. Her campaign, seeing private polling that showed an overwhelming majority of Ohio Republicans wanted to oust Mr. Gonzalez, realized it needed to put the issue to bed, according to one adviser.Tim Ryan, a Democrat who represents a district in northeastern Ohio in Congress, is considering a run for Senate in the stateCredit…Eric Thayer for The New York TimesA number of Ohio Republicans were struck by the speed of her shift, including one who may also enter the Senate race: Representative Steve Stivers, the former chair of the House G.O.P. campaign arm.“Wait till you quit before you attack somebody,” Mr. Stivers said of Ms. Timken’s broadside on Mr. Gonzalez.While he has yet to announce his intentions, Mr. Stivers, who has said he would prefer Mr. Trump to enjoy a quiet retirement à la George W. Bush, believes the competition to cozy up to the former president could leave an opening in the primary.“My lane is looking pretty empty,” he said. “I should be able to go about 180 miles per hour in it.”Though it’s uncertain how strong Mr. Trump’s political standing will be next year, particularly if he were to be indicted in one of the criminal investigations he faces, many veterans of Ohio politics believe the only path to the Republican Senate nomination is through the former president.“Jane would be honored to have the president’s endorsement,” said Corry Bliss, who ran Mr. Portman’s 2016 campaign and is advising Ms. Timken. He made sure to note that she had been Mr. Trump’s “handpicked chair.”To a number of Ohio Republicans, the importance of their eventual nominee pales in comparison to what they believe is the fundamental political math of a state that absorbs the Rust Belt and Appalachia. “Our suburban losses are dwarfed by their losses among working-class whites,” said Nick Everhart, a Columbus-based G.O.P. strategist.Ohio Democrats don’t deny that they are underdogs — or that to win, they may need the Republican Party to remain fractured.They point to the scandal-plagued Statehouse, where the House speaker is under federal indictment on corruption charges, as well as tensions between Trumpian legislators and the mild-mannered Mr. DeWine. Then there’s Mr. Trump and the widening gap between how he’s viewed by Republican activists and the broader electorate.“I don’t know if I’d call it a prerequisite for us to win, but their chaos is our opportunity,” said Liz Walters, the newly elected Ohio Democratic state chair.But Ohio Democrats may have their own drama.Emilia Strong Sykes, the state House minority leader, said progressive groups had encouraged her to run for the Senate seat.Credit…Paul Vernon/Associated PressWhile Representative Tim Ryan, a veteran Youngstown-area lawmaker, has been clear about his intent to run for Mr. Portman’s seat, he may face a primary that would highlight some of the tensions in the Democratic coalition.Lamenting how Mr. Trump had tapped into the “angst, anger and frustration” of onetime Ohio Democrats, longtime Representative Marcy Kaptur said that Mr. Ryan, who like her represents one of the lowest-income, predominantly white districts in the country, would “be able to reach people” the party has lost.A handful of other Democrats are considering entering the Senate race. They include Amy Acton, the former director of the state health department; Emilia Strong Sykes, the state House minority leader; and Kevin Boyce, a local official in Columbus who previously served in the state House. Ms. Sykes said the party’s turnout efforts in Ohio’s cities had been “awful” and called for a new approach.“Recreating Sherrod Brown — that doesn’t work because Sherrod Brown is Sherrod Brown,” she said, a barely veiled reference to Mr. Ryan’s attempt to pitch himself as a white populist. “We’re going to have to find a candidate who’s exciting and can appeal to women and people of color.”Ms. Sykes, who is Black, said she had been encouraged to run for the Senate by a handful of progressive advocacy groups and was assessing the landscape.She spoke for a number of Ohio Democrats when she said that Mr. Portman’s surprise retirement had prompted an otherwise depressed party to again place hope over history.“Had he not done that, it would’ve been a lost cause,” she said of the senator’s exit. “But now there’s new energy and we have to at least try.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
