Some big news today courtesy of Politico’s latest Senate analysis:
Republicans entered the 2020 Senate election cycle with greater exposure — including special elections, they control 23 of the 35 seats on the ballot this fall — but with some significant advantages. The GOP holds a three-seat majority, but only two of the GOP-held seats up this year are in states Clinton carried in 2016. Meanwhile, there are also two Democratic senators from Trump states up for reelection.
But the race for Senate control is now close to a coin flip. Democrats now have discernible leads in Arizona and Colorado. Retired astronaut Mark Kelly has consistently outpolled appointed Sen. Martha McSally in Arizona’s special election.
After winning last week’s Democratic primary in Colorado, former Gov. John Hickenlooper begins with a lead over GOP Sen. Cory Gardner. Gardner is a skilled politician, but he’s running in a state where Trump won only 43 percent of the vote in 2016. While the forecast is currently leaving the race in the toss-up column, Gardner is in extreme peril.
In Iowa, GOP Sen. Joni Ernst is no longer a significant favorite to win a second term. A Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll last month showed her narrowly trailing Democratic nominee Theresa Greenfield, and the race is now a toss-up.
Also joining the toss-up ranks is Republican-leaning Montana. Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock has earned high marks for his handling of the pandemic, and even polls that show Trump with a solid lead in the state have Bullock leading or tied with GOP Sen. Steve Daines.
With one toss up race moving slightly into the Democratic column, and two GOP-leaning states nudging to the highly competitive toss up rating, Republicans currently hold or are favored to win 48 seats, only one more than Democrats. The majority is at stake in the five toss-up races: Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Montana and North Carolina.
Personally I think Colorado, Maine and North Carolina all lean blue but it’s very encouraging to see Iowa and Montana move into the toss-up categories. There’s a few reasons why both races ratings have changed. Let’s start with Iowa. Elaine Godfrey’s piece in The Atlantic has a great piece explaining why Theresa Greenfield (D. IA) has a good shot at unseating U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R. IA):
Theresa greenfield was 24 years old and four months pregnant with her second child when a priest rang her doorbell with terrible news: Her husband, Rod, a lineman at the local power company, had been killed in an accident at work. Greenfield, a Democrat who is challenging Senator Joni Ernst in Iowa this year, tells the story at every virtual campaign event she holds, but she generally leaves out the smaller details: how, just hours before, she’d packed a Snickers bar in Rod’s lunch box as a treat. How the clergyman sat with her on the sofa and held her hands as he explained that Rod had been electrocuted. The way that the panic, in those first few days, consumed her: As a single parent with no income, how would she survive?
Greenfield’s answer came in the form of Social Security survivor’s benefits, a regular check that she and her sons subsisted on for many months, along with Rod’s union benefits. Her family didn’t get rich, she is careful to note, but they survived. Greenfield went on to get a degree in urban planning, and became the president of a Des Moines-based commercial real-estate firm. The story provides the foundational message of her Senate campaign: She argues that she will protect Social Security, organized labor, and the social safety net, even as Republicans like Ernst try to tear them apart. “Social Security gave me the ability to pay the rent and put milk in the refrigerator and fall asleep at night,” Greenfield told me in a Zoom interview this week from her kitchen in Des Moines, a slight glare bouncing off her plastic-rimmed cat-eye glasses. “It gave me that second chance.”
In emphasizing these core Democratic tenets, Greenfield is trying to convince Iowans—especially rural, older white ones—that her party has had their back all along. They may be starting to believe her. Just a few months ago, Ernst, the popular incumbent of “Make ’em squeal” fame, seemed like a lock for reelection. But all of a sudden, the sleepy Iowa Senate race has become one to watch: A poll taken in early June showed Greenfield three points ahead of the Republican senator, albeit within the margin of error.
In a Democratic Party that is moving ever leftward—latching on to big ideas like Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and defunding police—Greenfield’s focus on Social Security can seem a little retro. But if she unseats Ernst in November, her campaign may offer a lesson for the broader Democratic Party about how it can regain ground from Republicans in rural America, and transcend its reputation as the party of city dwellers.
Along with Ernst showing her hypocrisy on this:
Ebola was briefly a major political issue ahead of the 2014 elections -- see chapter 10 of my book -- and as a far-right U.S. Senate candidate, Iowa's Joni Ernst was eager to read from her party's script.
Indifferent to reality, Ernst said in 2014 that the Democratic president was "apathetic" about Ebola, and was "just standing back and letting things happen." The Iowa Republican added that, as far as she was concerned, Obama hadn't even "demonstrated" that he "cared" about Americans' safety.
The Ebola threat at the time, Ernst concluded, was evidence Obama's "failed leadership."
Six years later, CNN's Dana Bash asked the right question: "Only two people in the U.S. died from Ebola. Right now, there are almost 130,000 Americans dead from coronavirus. So, if President Obama showed failed leadership then, do you think President Trump is showing failed leadership now?"
When Ernst, in the midst of a re-election campaign, dodged the question entirely, the host asked again, wondering whether the senator would use the same terminology to criticize Trump as she did to condemn Obama.
"No," the Iowa Republican replied, "I think that the president is stepping forward."
In fact, Ernst is even starting to realize that bear hugging Trump is exactly a winning strategy:
Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican up for reelection in November, on Sunday sought to distance herself from President Donald Trump’s fiery rhetoric over the weekend regarding nationwide protests and the removal of symbols associated with America’s racist past.
The senator’s remarks came after the president warned supporters in a speech Friday at Mount Rushmore of a brewing “left-wing cultural revolution” and “angry mobs” he alleged are “trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.”
Trump echoed that divisive message Saturday in a White House address ostensibly intended to celebrate July 4, assailing those protesting against racial injustice and police brutality as “anarchist agitators” who “have absolutely no clue what they are doing.”
Asked Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” if she was comfortable with the president’s language in recent days, given that she will be on the ballot with him in less than four months, Ernst
argued there exists a “great level of frustration across the United States all the way around.”
But the senator also acknowledged that “we do have blemishes in our history, and we need to come together and have some very hard discussions about our past.” She added: “The great thing about this nation is that we can learn from those blemishes, learn from those hard times in the past, and continue to evolve as a continually blessed nation.”
Pressed by host Dana Bash on whether she agreed the majority of the protests “are actually peaceful and not the way the president described them,” Ernst again seemingly broke with Trump. “Yes, I do think that there are so many peaceful protests, and that’s exactly the kind of discussion and exhibition that we want to see,” she said.
While Ernst warned that incidents of violence and the destruction of private and public property cannot be tolerated, she insisted that if Americans “want to improve our country, we all need to come together.”
Ernst also suggested Trump should approve the Senate’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes an amendment authored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that would force the Pentagon to remove names, monuments and paraphernalia honoring the Confederacy from military bases over the next three years.
As for Montana, Gabriel Furshong’s piece in The Nation goes into how Governor Steve Bullock’s (D. MT) record on governing the state, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, is making his race against U.S. Senator Steve Daines (R. MT) and might have an effect on other Senate races in red states:
On June 18, The Cook Political Report moved Montana’s Senate Race from “lean republican” to a “toss-up,” placing the race among the five most competitive in the country alongside Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and North Carolina, where GOP incumbents are also endangered.
“Of our five Toss Ups, if I had to rank them, I think Montana is still the most difficult,” said Jessica Taylor, the senate and governors editor for the Report, but “Montana has clearly become one of the better options” for Democrats to pick up a seat.
And if national forecasters believe Daines is vulnerable in a place like Montana, then “it’s possible that Republicans in many other places might be vulnerable too, in places we’re not even thinking about yet,” according to Parker. “Maybe Lindsay Graham in South Carolina and John Cornyn in Texas.”
The bottom line is that if Bullock can pull off an upset in Montana, then Democrats will likely have many reasons to celebrate all across the country, including a Biden victory and majorities in both chambers. Bullock has probably spent ample time pondering these possibilities, but he had other things on his mind when I caught up with him in late June. After the press conference concluded, we visited for a few minutes from opposite sides of a broad corridor in the capitol building, and he seemed reluctant to comment on the campaign.
“We can’t let the political food fights of the day get in the way of what, hopefully, is that shared aspiration for our kids and our grandkids to have greater opportunities than [we]’ve ever had,” he explained. He paused for several seconds, searching for a way to illustrate his point.
Then he told me about a run he took early that morning and how someone stopped him along the way to express concern about Covid-19. “I can’t get away from being governor, and I think that’s important because then politics doesn’t become some kind of abstract game.”
“You know politics impacts people directly, because the people that you’re serving will tell you when you’re doing something right and tell you when you’re doing something wrong.”
In November, Montana voters will do just that, and control of the Senate will likely depend on what they have to say.
It’s certainly reflecting in the latest polling:
Montana Governor Steve Bullock is leading Republican Senator Steve Daines four months ahead of their key Senate race, new polling data shows.
The latest survey from the University of Montana found that a little more than 47 percent of state voters would vote for Bullock were an election held today.
By comparison, 43 percent of Montanans told pollsters that they would re-elect Daines—putting the GOP incumbent four points behind his Democratic challenger. A further 9 percent of state voters said they hadn't decided who they would vote for in the coming Senate race.
His lead over Daines in the new University of Montana survey is also down on previous head-to-head polling from April.
According to one poll conducted by Montana State University between April 10 and April 27, Bullock had a 7-point lead over Daines-putting him 3 points up on his lead in the new University of Montana survey.
Going back to March, a survey from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling found Bullock and Daines were neck-and-neck on 47 percent support each.
Analysts at The Cook Political Report now rate the Montana race as a "toss up" contest, along with Senate races in the swing states of Arizona and North Carolina.
Pledging to throw his weight behind Daines' campaign, President Donald Trump tweeted: "No Contest. Steve blows him away. So important for Montana. I'll be there to help Steve win big!!!"
Both these races are going to be tight and Joe Biden is proving to be competitive in Iowa. Biden most likely won’t win Montana but he’s performing there better than Hillary Clinton was in 2016 and that will help with Bullock going more crossover votes. Either way, let’s make sure that we are ready to win the White House and the Senate while also expanding our majority in the House. Click below to donate and get involved with Greenfield, Bullock and Biden’s campaigns:
Joe Biden
Iowa:
Theresa Greenfield
Abby Finkenauer
Cindy Axne
Rita Hart
JD Scholten
Montana:
Steve Bullock
Mike Cooney
Kathleen Williams