Democrats' list of priorities for the fall
Winning the House comes first, followed by Senate races in swing states. But the party could be better served by targeting state legislatures than long-shot Senate seats.
Neither party has a monopoly on shortsightedness; it just manifests itself in different ways at different times. Right now, it’s Republicans who don’t seem to be grappling with the long-term consequences of their actions. Conservatives who embrace the unitary executive theory ignore the implications of this ongoing massive one-way transfer of power from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other. At some point, the shoe will be on the other foot, and Democrats will be able to wield that all-powerful unitary executive cudgel using all of the authority being so aggressively used by President Trump and his administration today.
After all, the last five presidents have taken office with their party holding both the Senate and the House majorities and have left either four or eight years later without holding the White House or either chamber of Congress. Parties generally take a beating in midterms when they occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and those losses extend well down the ballot, derailing some careers and providing opportunities for those in the opposite party.
A president with terrible approval ratings provides a golden opportunity for the opposition. Trump’s low approvals among independents create an enormous handicap for Republican candidates running in purple states and districts, constituencies where carrying the GOP mantle is insufficient for victory. Their task is a tall one: winning a disproportionately large share of independent voters while the head of their party is favored by just 34 percent of independents in the most recent New York Times/Siena University poll (62 percent disapprove).
The new Wall Street Journal poll pegged Trump’s approval among independents slightly better, at 41 percent (57 percent disapprove).
Several other things jump out from the crosstabs. More Republicans disapprove of Trump’s performance (14 percent in NYT/Siena and 8 percent in WSJ) than Democrats approve (4 percent in NYT/Siena and 5 percent in WSJ). That suggests both a greater Democratic enthusiasm and the potential for Republicans voting in lower numbers, which is a chronic problem for a president’s party in midterm elections. At the same time, the impressive approval numbers that Trump does have among Republicans (86 percent in NYT/Siena and 91 percent in WSJ) mean that those few Democrats running in red states and districts can expect fewer defections from the ranks of Republicans than they would hope.
The way things are going, it would be very hard for Democrats not to capture a House majority in November, yet given how few competitive districts remain, it will also be tough to build up much of a majority beyond the minimum 218 seats needed for control.
Democrats fantasize about winning a majority in the Senate as well, though a study of the seats up for grabs and the voting patterns in some of these “reach” states suggests that this is something of a fool’s errand. Just as it is very rare for Republicans to capture a seat in a blue, Democratic-tilting state, it’s just as hard for Democrats to seize a seat with strong Republican-tilting tendencies. There just might be a reason why there are zero Democrats holding statewide offices in any of the three red states that Democrats are talking up as potential Senate pickups—Alaska, Nebraska, and Texas.
Democrats celebrating former Rep. Mary Peltola’s entrance into the Alaska race overlook that her big win in the September 2022 special election was a ranked-choice election with the Republican vote largely split between former Gov. Sarah Palin and Nick Begich. Peltola received 37 percent of the first-choice votes, Palin 30 percent, and Begich 26 percent, with the rest of the vote split over a couple dozen others running. The second choices for the voters who cast a ballot for Begich or any of the other candidates were then counted, with Peltola getting 51.48 percent to Palin’s 48.52 percent. In other words, this was less a show of force by Peltola than a matter of besting a very weak Palin. In the regular 2022 election, less than two months later, Peltola prevailed again over Palin and Begich. There is little reason to believe that GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan will be nearly as weak an opponent as Palin was.
Iowa is the one red state Democrats are eyeing as a long-shot opportunity that actually does have one Democrat holding statewide office—the very impressive state Auditor Rob Sand, who is running for governor. He’s got a chance. Yet as tough as it is for gubernatorial and other constitutional-office candidates to capture a statewide race in a state of the opposite hue, U.S. Senate races are even tougher to crack.
So what should Democrats focus on? Obviously, winning that House majority, with any kind of cushion they can build, would be at the top of the list; the second would be reelecting freshman Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia, holding onto their open Senate seats in Michigan and New Hampshire, unseating Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, and winning the open Republican Senate seat in North Carolina. After that, Senate seats grow exponentially more difficult.
But as hard as it is for some to recall that there are offices outside of the ZIP codes of 20500, 20510, and 20515, there are plenty of important races on the ballot, and Democrats ought to be drooling over recapturing some of the influence in state capitols lost over the last 20 years.
With Washington and Congress growing increasingly dysfunctional, the power vacuum is partially shifting to the states. In November there will be 36 governorships on the ballot, each party defending 18. That also happens to be the number of open gubernatorial races this year. Keep in mind that the party holding the White House has suffered a net loss of governorships in 18 of the 20 midterm elections since the end of World War II, the exceptions being in 1986 and 2022. The average outcome of the 20 was a net loss of four governorships; the worst was a loss of 11 in 1970.
This year, five of the seven swing states are holding gubernatorial elections: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Democrats are defending open governorships in California, Colorado, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, and New Mexico, as well as nine incumbents in other blue states. Republicans have 10 open gubernatorial posts up, although the Georgia race is the only one in a swing state (Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wyoming are open as well).
Other statewide constitutional offices up for election this year include 30 popularly elected attorneys general and 26 secretaries of state. Finally, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, regularly scheduled elections in 46 states will determine control of 88 of the nation’s 99 state legislative chambers. There are a total of 1,162 state Senate and 4,960 state House seats up this year.
A recent analysis by Louis Jacobson in Sabato’s Crystal Ball found that both the state Senate and House chambers in swingy Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin are “toss ups,” as well as both the upper and lower bodies in Minnesota and the New Hampshire House. According to Jacobson, Democrats seem to have an edge in the Maine House and the Pennsylvania House, while the GOP seems to have a similar advantage in the New Hampshire and Pennsylvania Senates. Jacobson sees both the upper and lower chambers of the Alaska legislature remaining ruled by a two-party coalition.
Another factor to consider is that these statewide constitutional and state legislative offices serve as the farm teams for the two parties, the seed corn for the future, and dictate the options that the parties have for good candidates five or 10 years later.