A reminder before we begin-if these are the races that are going to decide the majority, the Democrats will need to win four of them to take back the Senate, the Republicans will need three to hold onto it.
 |
| Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) |
Incumbent: Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL), who won a highly competitive special election for this seat in 2020
The Challenger: There are too many to count. Serious options in the race already include Rep. Bradley Byrne, State Auditor Jim Zeigler, and State Reps. John Rogers & Arnold Mooney. However, a plethora of other candidates are considering the race, including disgraced former Governor Robert Bentley and Jones's 2017 opponent Roy Moore, the former State Supreme Court Chief Justice who was accused of inappropriate conduct with teenage girls during his last campaign. Senate seats are a rare opportunity for promotion for Alabama Republicans-it's not hard to see why they're all going after Jones.
The Race: Jones started this contest as the most vulnerable senator on the map, and it's going to take a miracle for him not to end it in the same position. Jones's win in 2017 was largely a fluke-literally everything had to go right for him to win the seat: a solid recruit, a terrible Republican challenger, pretty much every moderate siding against the GOP, depressed Republican turnout, and seismic Democratic turnout. That will be impossible to duplicate during a presidential race, particularly one with such strong interest on both sides of the aisle. As a result, it's difficult to see Jones winning a second term and not following in the recent footsteps of Claire McCaskill, Heidi Heitkamp, and Joe Donnelly, senators whose states simply got too red for them. Admittedly, he can take hope in Jon Tester & Joe Manchin, but both of those men had established themselves more fully before taking their victories last year. About the best that Jones can hope for is Biden at the top of the ticket (he's already made an endorsement), and to compete against Roy Moore again...and even then he'd have worse than 50/50 odds. Most Democrats assume they'll need to pickup four seats simply to make up for Jones.
Incumbent: Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ), who somehow is a sitting US Senator despite the fact that she lost the election last year (she was appointed to the Senate after Jon Kyl resigned)
The Challenger: Here is probably the only Senate race where no one can point fingers at Schumer, as he got exactly the candidate he wanted, and managed to clear the primary in the process. Democrats will be standing with Mark Kelly, a retired astronaut and the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was the victim of an assassination attempt in 2011 and has since become a strong advocate for gun control legislation.
The Race: This will be very competitive. In 2018, Kyrsten Sinema proved that a Democrat could win a Senate race in Arizona, something that hadn't been done since 1988. But perhaps more compelling for Kelly was that Democrats Katie Hobbs, Kathy Hoffman, & Sandra Kennedy all won statewide elections as well, making Arizona one of the only states in the country to elect members of both parties statewide in 2018 (in the Trump Era, ticket-splitting has become increasingly rare, and as a result, all five of the Republican seats we'll profile here are going to be states that the Democratic nominee could conceivably win in 2020). Kelly is an unproven candidate, and that can be an issue against someone as seasoned as McSally, but his fundraising numbers have been eye-popping (it doesn't hurt that he's really the only game in town right now if you want to donate to a first-tier Senate challenger), and if 2018 is an indication of Arizona as a purple state, he might be able to take advantage of anti-Trump sentiment to go after McSally. After all, it already cost her one Senate election.
 |
| State House Majority Leader Alice Madden (D-CO) |
Incumbent: Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), a first-term US Senator who made a successful last minute bid for the Senate in 2014 and bested Mark Udall during that year's Republican wave.
The Challenger: Challengers, to be more accurate. While Doug Jones is the most vulnerable senator on the map right now, if we just focus on Republican senators, there's no one in more trouble than Gardner. Colorado has been drifting blue for a while now, and in 2018 they proved it by electing only Democrats statewide, and having a longtime swing seat Republican in the Denver suburbs get crushed under the weight of Trump's unpopularity in the state. As a result, Gardner's the last man standing and very vulnerable. Among the more prominent challengers are Ambassador Dan Baer, State Sen. Mike Johnston, State House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, Us Attorney John Walsh, and State House Majority Leader Alice Madden, with State Sen. Kerry Donovan, State Treasurer Cary Kennedy, and Secretary of State Jena Griswold all exploring the race. Those last three names are important because right now Madden has the race to herself in terms of gender, and I'd argue would have a leg-up in such a situation, as was borne out repeatedly during the 2018 elections (where sole female candidates were able to win shaplintered primary races with multiple men).
The Race: As I said, this has a logjam of candidates for a reason (I didn't list John Hickenlooper as a missed recruit up-top because I don't think the D's need him, and considering his environmental record, it's entirely possible he'd lose the primary anyway). Colorado is not really discussed as a swing state anymore, at least not one that would be readily accessible in 2020 unless Trump vastly outperforms, and Gardner can look to Dean Heller for advice on how to defeat a wave against a generic Democrat (none of these candidates are going to light the world on fire): namely, lose by as little as possible and hope for a high-paying lobbying job. It's probable that the parties swap Colorado & Alabama, and fight out the true battle in the remaining four seats.
 |
| State Sen. Liz Mathis (D-IA) |
The Incumbent: Joni Ernst (R-IA) who won a surprise victory in 2014 after Rep. Bruce Braley imploded on impact during the Republican wave.
The Challenger: I name-checked Bullock, Abrams, and O'Rourke up-top because they are Grade-A challengers in races that probably won't be competitive without them. But they're also races the Democrats are by-no-means going to win even with them in the race, which is probably why they're skipping the contests. All three are likely to go to Donald Trump in 2020, and in an era where ticket-splitting is endangered, it's probable that they're going to go GOP even with an impressive candidate in the race. Iowa is the start of the real recruiting problem for the Democrats, and it continues to the below two seats. Iowa is winnable-it went for Obama twice, and Democrats picked up two House seats (and nearly the governor's mansion) last year. But so far Schumer has done nothing but strike out, watching two top tier candidates (Gov. Tom Vilsack & Rep. Cindy Axne) pass, and another (State Auditor Rob Sand) has done pretty much everything he can to insist he's not running. Democrats could end up with JD Scholten, but I can tell you-if your best candidate is someone who recently lost a House race, you're in bad shape. Former news anchor State Sen. Liz Mathis is the best remaining name in the race, and has expressed some interest, though she notably has not entered the race yet.
The Race: This will be the hardest of the three states that remain on this list. Even assuming they get someone like Mathis in there (if you're an Iowan, start emailing her to beg her to get in), Ernst is still very popular and while that will ware if she has a decent challenger, it's still going to be tough. Arguably this seat, more than anything else on the map, is one of the reasons I'm leaning toward Joe Biden for the nomination, as he has the connection to make with Iowa moderates that no other challenger seems capable of achieving. Iowa loves their incumbents, so if they can't take Ernst out this year, it's probable they never will.
 |
| State House Speaker Sara Gideon (D-ME) |
The Incumbent: Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), a four-term senator who has made near weekly national headlines for the "will she side with Trump this week?" sort of hemming-and-hawing, even being portrayed by Cecily Strong on Saturday Night Live this week.
The Challenger: Again-this is a race where Schumer desperately needs a top-tier challenger, but none has emerged. Collins is a really strong fundraiser, and despite the blue-lean of this state (she and Gardner are the only two Republicans in the Senate who represent Clinton states), she hasn't struggled to win here since her initial election. The two most often mentioned candidates are State House Speaker Sara Gideon and former State House Speaker Hannah Pingree. Pingree is the daughter of Rep. Chellie Pingree, which doesn't always play well (the elder Pingree will be on the ballot for reelection), so I'm hoping for Gideon, who has expressed interest. But, like Mathis, she hasn't actually entered the contest yet.
The Race: Like I said, Collins is very tough to beat, but history is filled with incumbents that were very hard to beat until they weren't (Lincoln Chafee, Gordon Smith, and of course Collins' hero Margaret Chase Smith come to mind). Collins' vote for Brett Kavanaugh resulted in her eventual opponent getting a $4 million paycheck the second they get through the primary, so they'll be well-armed with cash (not to mention Collins has become something of a pariah with national Democratic grassroots, so there will be an appetite to beat her), and Collins has never had to run on the same ticket as Trump, but Maine is one of the few genuinely independent states in the country, and she has her fans. The big push for a candidate like Gideon will be to hug the Democratic nominee hard, hoping that they will win Maine and carry them along for the ride. I'd imagine you'll hear the word Trump in every attack ad against Collins.
 |
| State Treasurer Janet Cowell (D-NC) |
The Incumbent: Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), a first-term incumbent who just barely beat Kay Hagan six years ago in a tough wave cycle.
The Challenger: The Democrats have a few options here, though none have actually bit the bullet, and I'm going to highlight three. The best of the options is former State Treasurer Janet Cowell, who was publicly floating balloons for this race last week and would be Schumer's first real coup since Mark Kelly. Cowell was the candidate he wanted against Richard Burr in 2016, but she passed. Tillis isn't as popular as Burr, and could be hit from his right flank in the primary, so this might be an easier win for Cowell. The woman who did run in 2016, State Rep. Deborah Ross, is also a possibility, and she did run a solid campaign in 2020 so she wouldn't be embarrassing herself at another go, but she's still a recent statewide loser, and that's never a great endorsement unless you vastly outperformed expectations (she didn't, she under-performed Clinton by a percentage point). Finally, you have State Sen. Jeff Jackson, a war veteran (could work well in North Carolina) who is relatively moderate (again, a coup in North Carolina), but has never run a statewide race. That didn't hurt Tillis & Hagan who jumped to the state legislature to the US Senate, but I still think Democrats would prefer Cowell all things being equal.
The Race: Tillis is going to have to lean in hard on Donald Trump in the coming months to ensure he doesn't lose a conservative challenge to venture capitalist Garland Tucker. This will give someone like Cowell room to stake out in the middle (Side Note: One of my biggest pet peeves is liberals who claim "they'd win if they nominated a real progressive," because that happened with Ross, who was more liberal than North Carolina as a whole & yet still lost because this theory is absurdly false in swing-or-red states unless your name is Beto O'Rourke and you're running against Ted Cruz). Cowell will likely need the Democrat to win, though, to actually take this as incumbency probably gives Tillis a point or two. That's not far-fetched-Trump's numbers in the Carolinas are not great, and I'd wager this might be more achievable than even Florida, but it's still a state that Mitt Romney also won. I personally think that the order goes CO, AZ, ME, NC, & IA in terms of most likely to be picked up, so assuming that Alabama goes red, North Carolina is probably the tipping point state (hence why I've got a google alert for Janet Cowell right now to see if she runs).
No comments:
Post a Comment