The battle for the Senate gets more interesting
Welcome to The Campaign Moment, your guide to the biggest moments in a 2024 election with a Senate map that’s suddenly expanding — maybe.
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The big moment
Here’s a fun stat for you.
The political data website 538 this week debuted its polling averages for 2024 Senate races. And a few of the tighter ones might surprise you. Three of the five most competitive races are in Florida, Texas and Nebraska. Republican incumbents led by fewer than five points in each.
All of them are polling more competitively than high-profile swing-state Senate races you’ve probably heard a lot more about. But in contrast to the gobs of money spent in those swing-state races, none of them have received major investment from the national parties and outside groups.
Well, that’s changing. National Democrats on Thursday morning announced they will be making a “multimillion dollar TV investment” to defeat Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.). These are Democrats’ first significant offensive plays on a map that put the party in an overwhelmingly defensive posture. And they seem to reflect the first major shift in a battle for the Senate that rests on a knife’s edge.
A couple of early reflections.
One is that there is a real question about just how substantial these investments will be. These are very expensive states, and a few million dollars is a drop in the bucket. Political parties will often spend in a state to tempt the other side to invest, too — as a sort of head fake.
But if this is a genuine effort to put these states in play, a big question is why.
One interpretation is that the races are really that promising; the polls are close enough, after all! But another is that Democrats suddenly feel more that they need them to have a shot at holding their narrow Senate majority, so they have to try.
Democrats have polled well in those other, swing-state races and even in red-leaning Ohio, where Republican Bernie Moreno just created more problems for himself with his comments on postmenopausal women and abortion rights. But Republicans need to flip only two seats. One state — West Virginia — is basically a goner for Democrats, while polling in the current tipping-point state — Montana — has proven stubborn for Democrats. Republican Tim Sheehy generally leads Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) by the mid-single-digits.
If Democrats think Montana is getting away from them, they really need to play some offense. And Florida and Texas are basically what they have to work with — while Nebraska is something of a fascinating wild card.
So with increasing attention being paid to these states, it’s a good time to look at them. While they’re polling close, there’s plenty to suggest Democrats shouldn’t necessarily hold their breath.
Florida
Scott has led former congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Fla.) by the mid-to-low single digits in lots of recent polls. And he’s never proven a big electoral winner; in fact, he’s won his last three statewide races by 1.2 points or less. Florida is also a former vital swing state at the presidential level.
That said, Scott did win all three of those races, and Florida has trended Republican in the Trump era. In fact, the party won both a Senate race and the gubernatorial race in 2022 by more than 16 points. Mucarsel-Powell was also an unheralded recruit for the party.
A lot will come down to whether Democrats go for this state at the presidential level, where polling is also competitive. But it’s not as crucial a state for Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign as it is for Senate Democrats. If Harris wins Florida, she’s probably already won the presidency.
Texas
Cruz’s electoral history also would seem to have Democrats and Rep. Colin Allred (D-Tex.) licking their chops; he defeated former congressman Beto O’Rourke (D-Tex.) in 2018 by less than three points, and his current polling lead is similar. Democrats have also had high hopes for making Texas more competitive, given the fast growth in the Hispanic population there.
But there’s been a big difference in Texas between being competitive and actually winning. A Democrat hasn’t won statewide office there since 1994, and Democrats and analysts generally believe that the party’s ability to change that still lies years away. Trump carried the state by six points in 2020, and statewide Republicans won by larger margins in 2022.
Nebraska
While this one isn’t on par with Florida and Texas, it is worth watching — if for no other reason than the interesting dynamics.
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) faces not a Democratic opponent but an independent, Dan Osborn, who has earned plaudits for the campaign he’s run in a deep-red state. We don’t have recent high-quality, independent polling, but the polling we do have shows the race neck-and-neck. (An older Fischer poll showed her ahead by more than 20 points.)
Democrats have approached this race as they have a number of red states in recent years, forgoing their own nominee in hopes that an independent can knock off a GOP incumbent. Osborn hasn’t said which party he’d caucus with, but defeating Fischer would at least complicate Republicans’ majority math.
That said, history suggests such independent candidates fade. That’s what happened in Kansas in 2014, in Alaska in 2020 and in Utah in 2022. In all three cases, the independent looked as if they’d make it a real race before losing by more than 10 points.
There is one recent case where it worked: the 2014 Alaska governor’s race. But that was not a federal race, and all the evidence suggests voters view federal races differently, understanding their choice to be a vote for one side or the other.
Another moment you may have missed
One of the biggest political stories in the country right now comes from New York City, where Mayor Eric Adams (D) was just indicted on allegations of bribery, wire fraud and seeking illegal campaign donations from foreign sources.
While New York certainly has a long history of political corruption, it’s actually the first time an incumbent mayor has been charged.
As for what that means for the 2024 campaign?
There is, of course, the question of whether Adams resigns. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) also has the power to remove him if she wants. If Adams does go, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams (D) becomes acting mayor, and the city holds a nonpartisan, ranked-choice special election within 90 days.
Beyond that, there’s the political food fight. Adams is now the latest high-profile Democrat to be charged by the Justice Department, undercutting the baseless claims of Donald Trump that the DOJ is “weaponized” against him and his allies. The DOJ has in recent years indicted not just Adams, but also former senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.) and President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
Of course, that’s not going to dissuade too many conspiracy theorists. And meanwhile, Adams is claiming he was actually politically targeted, while many on the right are surmising he was singled out because he strayed too much from Democratic Party orthodoxy.
There remains no evidence for these claims, but the evidence laid out in Adams’s indictment is extensive.
A momentous quote from the past
“ ‘Regardless of the fact that David’s a homeboy and all that, the boy’s a Nazi, and that’s a real problem,’ ” said Mr. Higgins who, nevertheless voted for Mr. Duke in the governor’s race.”
The passage is from a 1992 article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which quoted now-Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) when he was 30 years old. The piece resurfaced Wednesday after Higgins made a racist post on X about Haitians, which he soon deleted.
David Duke is a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard who at the time was getting real support running as a Republican for statewide office in Louisiana. The situation gave the national Republican Party fits, with then-President George H.W. Bush ultimately disavowing Duke. Higgins apparently made a different political calculation.
Democrats have moved to censure Higgins for Wednesday’s post. Despite Republican leaders claiming Higgins had expressed regret for the post, Higgins later stood by its contents.
