Fringe GOP nominees give Democrats hope for the midterms

Republicans have every reason to be optimistic about their party’s political prospects in this year’s midterm elections.

Democrats are widely blamed for soaring inflation, President Biden’s approval rating just hit a record low and the GOP has approximately a 2-point advantage in the generic ballot for Congress. On top of that, the party of the president has lost House seats in every midterm election — except for two — since 1946 and has only gained Senate seats in four.

Even though it is essentially a guarantee that the GOP will win control of the House, the fate of the Senate is much less uncertain. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight rates the Senate as a toss-up and gives Republicans a 53 percent chance of taking control of the chamber; comparatively, his forecast gives the GOP an 88 percent chance of winning the House.

Ultimately, this pronounced disparity is explained by the fact that, in several key toss-up Senate races, Republicans are running weak candidates whose extreme positions, lack of experience or personal embattlements make them far more vulnerable in a statewide race than a more mainstream Republican would be.

In the race for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat, which is being vacated by Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, the progressive Democrat John Fetterman leads Trump-ally and television doctor Mehmet Oz in every general election poll conducted thus far, and FiveThirtyEight’s forecast model gives Fetterman an advantage.

During a red-wave election year in a purple state like Pennsylvania, one would expect a progressive candidate like Fetterman to fare much worse than his Republican opponent, especially in an open-seat race. However, Oz has a very high negative rating coming out of the primary because of opponent David McCormick’s effective attacks, and has few, if any, ties to Pennsylvania.

In Georgia, the GOP is also running a celebrity Senate nominee with no experience, who seems to be even less viable as a general election candidate than Oz, notwithstanding the fact that Georgia leans further right politically than Pennsylvania.

Former NFL star Herschel Walker, Trump’s handpicked nominee, has been embattled in a number of problematic personal scandals, including the discovery of three children he told staff he did not have and lying about working in law enforcement. Walker also openly espouses conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election, COVID-19 and evolution.

As a result, Walker is underperforming Georgia’s G.O.P. gubernatorial nominee Brian Kemp by roughly four points in public polling. Though Georgia is one of the redder swing states, both FiveThirtyEight and The Cook Political Report rate Walker’s race against incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock as a toss-up. 

In Arizona, another purple state, Trump-backed venture capitalist Blake Masters will likely be the Republican candidate facing incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, who FiveThirtyEight gives a slight edge in their forecast.

Masters is one of the most politically extreme GOP Senate candidates in a swing state. He is a staunch proponent of far-right conspiracy theories, including Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ about the 2020 election and the anti-immigrant Great Replacement Theory. He is also anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion and anti-American aid to Ukraine, placing him well out of the mainstream.

In Nevada, Republican Adam Laxalt, former state attorney general, is running against Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto. While Laxalt supports Trump and largely embraces the right’s 2020 election lies, he is an experienced politician who is considered somewhat more mainstream within his own party compared to Oz, Walker and Masters.

The result of this toss-up Senate race — between an establishment Democratic incumbent and an experienced Republican — will arguably be more indicative of Democrats’ overall midterm performance than the races in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona. Indeed, a Cortez-Masto victory could signal pared-down House and state-level losses for Democrats this year.

To be sure, Democrats are by no means a shoo-in to win any of these races — or control of the Senate — in November. However, the G.O.P.’s failure to nominate more moderate and palatable candidates in these key statewide races is giving Democrats a reasonable chance of retaining their slim Senate majority, even in a red-wave election year.

On the other hand, the fact that these Senate races are rated as toss-ups — even with Republicans running fringe candidates — is indicative of how favorable the national political climate is for the G.O.P. 

And to be sure, if 2022 ends up being a red-wave election like 1994 or 2010, the weakness of individual GOP candidates will be less important than the overall pro-Republican tide.

In that same vein, the Biden administration’s policies on the border and immigration could end up badly hurting both Cortez-Masto and Kelly, notwithstanding the individual positions these candidates might well take.

If Democratic candidates in these swing-state Senate races — and national Democrats as a whole — aren’t able to effectively sell themselves as a reasonable and moderate alternative to extreme Republicans, President Biden and his party will face several trying years in opposition in both the House and Senate.

Douglas E. Schoen is a political consultant who served as an adviser to former President Clinton and to the 2020 presidential campaign of Michael Bloomberg. He is the author of “The End of Democracy? Russia and China on the Rise and America in Retreat.”