2022 U.S. Senate Elections
Coming up on November 8, 2022. Given the closely divided nature of the current Senate the results of the 2022 mid-terms could be a political turning point for the U.S. Thirty-four Senate seats (out of one hundred) are up for election in 2022, twenty of which are currently held by Republicans and fourteen by Democrats. Here's a list of what I consider the races to keep an eye on. Each state is listed with its Partisan Voting Index (PVI), as assessed by The Cook Political Report. PVI compares a jurisdiction's partisan vote in the last two presidential elections to the national partisan vote, measuring how much more Democratic or Republican the jurisdiction is than the country as a whole.
Seats held by retiring incumbents
When an established Senator retires it introduces a lot of uncertainty into the system. Even in states with a strong partisan lean (e.g. Alabama) the question of who emerges from the primary can have important ramifications.
First term incumbents seeking re-election
The first re-election campaign is always the hardest. Here are the races where candidates seek to transition from possible one-time fluke to fixture of the Senate.
The potential prize for Democrats is a net pick-up of two seats, which would mean they don't have to care about Joe Manchin or Kyrstin Sinema until January 2025 at the earliest. A net gain of one seat means they could ignore one of them. For Republicans the big prize is a net gain of one seat, which would return control of the Senate to them.
So, thoughts about any or all of these races?
Seats held by retiring incumbents
When an established Senator retires it introduces a lot of uncertainty into the system. Even in states with a strong partisan lean (e.g. Alabama) the question of who emerges from the primary can have important ramifications.
- Alabama (R+15): Republican Richard Shelby has decided to retire after a mere 36 years in the Senate. While he will almost certainly be replaced by a Republican, the question of which Republican remains open.
- - Missouri (R+11): After a squeaker of a re-election in 2016 Roy Blunt has decided he won't seek another term in 2022. The most notable Republican vying for this seat is former governor Eric Greitens, who is mostly noted for having to resign in disgrace. Google is your friend if you want the sordid details. The Republican primary promises to be very vigorous. Though it's a very red state, Missouri has been willing to elect Democrats to the Senate in the recent past if the Republican candidate was odious enough.
- - North Carolina (R+3): Republican Richard Burr has decided not to seek a fourth term in this red state that's trending purple. Multiple candidates have already declared themselves for both major party primaries.
- - Ohio (R+6): Republican Rob Portman has decided that two terms in the U.S. Senate are enough. The current favorite in the Republican primary is former state treasurer Josh Mandel, though there are several other candidates like venture capitalist and Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance, who is being financially backed by literal vampire Peter Thiel. The Democratic primary candidates are less colorful.
- - Pennsylvania (R+2): After two terms Republican Pat Toomey has decided not to run again. Since Pennsylvania is very much a swing state these days the primaries are already packed on both sides.
- - Vermont (D+15): Patrick Leahy has announced that he will not seek a ninth term, returning to the private sector next year at the spry young age of 82. As an interesting historical fact, Leahy is the only Democrat the voters of Vermont have ever sent to the U.S. Senate. (Bernie Sanders is technically an independent who caucuses with the Democrats.)
First term incumbents seeking re-election
The first re-election campaign is always the hardest. Here are the races where candidates seek to transition from possible one-time fluke to fixture of the Senate.
- Arizona (R+3): Democrat Mark Kelly won a special election in 2020 to fill out the remainder of John McCain's term, so he's back to run for a full term of his own. He has no primary challengers at the moment and there are about half a dozen or so Republicans competing with each other to run against Kelly in the general election.
- - California (D+14): Technically this would be the first U.S. Senate election for Democrat Alex Padilla, who was appointed (not elected) to fill the vacancy created when Kamala Harris became vice president. Padilla has at least one serious Democratic primary challenger and several Republicans are competing in their primary to take on Padilla if he gains the nomination. This is probably the best chance the Republicans have had of winning one of California's Senate seats in three decades, though it's not a good chance.
- - Georgia (R+3): Because he was sent to the Senate by special election, Democrat Raphael Warnock has to defend his seat after only two years of incumbency. Similarly to Kelly in Arizona he has the problem of only having two years in office to point to and he can't run as an outsider because he's already in the Senate. The current Republican primary favorite is former NFL running back Herschel Walker. Walker has never run for elected office before, but then again neither had Warnock before winning his Senate seat in 2020.
- - Illinois (D+7): Democrat Tammy Duckworth will be seeking a second term. Because Illinois voters are already familiar with her from her two terms in the House of Representatives Duckworth is probably the least vulnerable Democratic freshman Senator. She has no Democratic primary challengers and the Republican primary field is (so far) muted.
- - Indiana (R+11): Republican Todd Young will be asking the voters of this strongly Republican state to return him to the Senate He has no serious primary challengers and so far very few Democrats have declared themselves for their primary.
- - Louisiana (R+12): Republican John Kennedy (no, not that John Kennedy) is seeking a second term and is likely to get it. So far no major Louisiana Democrats have declared themselves as candidates, though that may change.
- - Maryland (D+14): Democrat Chris Van Hollen is seeking a second term. He has no serious challengers yet but Maryland's current governor, Republican Larry Hogan, has hinted at his interest in running.
- - Nevada (EVEN): Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto is rolling the dice for another Senate term representing this swing state. There are already several Republican who have declared their interest in running against her.
- - New Hampshire (EVEN): Democrat Maggie Hassan is seeking a second term in the Senate. So far there don't seem to be any serious declared opponents and one potentially serious one, current New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu, has stated that he's not interested in running for Senate.
The potential prize for Democrats is a net pick-up of two seats, which would mean they don't have to care about Joe Manchin or Kyrstin Sinema until January 2025 at the earliest. A net gain of one seat means they could ignore one of them. For Republicans the big prize is a net gain of one seat, which would return control of the Senate to them.
So, thoughts about any or all of these races?
Tagged:
Comments
California has a single non-partisan primary. All the candidates appear on one ballot, and the top two procede to the general election ballot, no matter which party they belong to. This was supposed to give us more centrist candidates, but so far it's mainly meant that a moderate Democrat and a somewhat more left-ish Democrat go up against each other in the general.
I haven't heard of any of the Republicans who have declared, and without name recognition, Republicans don't have much of a chance at state-wide office in California. We haven't had a Republican senator since 1992, and 2010 was the last year there were any Republicans in state-wide office in California.
The Democratic challenger is also someone I hadn't heard of; he's on the state Board of Equalization, which most people haven't heard of and couldn't tell you anything about.
Things could change, but at this point I'd put my money on Padilla to win.
But the Democrats are irrelevant after November 2024 surely?
The 2022 Senate elections are part of that. Democrats need to pick up a couple seats, since Sinema and Manchin aren't reliable Democratic votes.
This seems pretty authoritarian, and disturbingly familiar to anyone with a sense of history.
So how would this work? Here's the Washington Post.
So a bunch of cops who answer directly to the governor are theoretically going to be monitoring elections, including ones in which the governor is a candidate. (Florida and Georgia have both Senate and gubernatorial elections in 2022.) That seems pretty authoritarian, as does the template of "don't use existing institutions, build your own loyal security forces from scratch".
One of the interesting ways this is often phrased is the way @quetzalcoatl put it; "Can't the Dems stop it?", which seems to assume that there will be no political pushback against authoritarianism from within the Republican party. This is probably realistic, but their complicity (or eager cooperation) should be explicitly noted.
How can they possibly stop it?
S&M have guaranteed it.
Which is why these off year elections are so crucial. If the Democrats can pick up at least two seats in the Senate, they can counter Sinema and Manchin.
But the real problem will be keeping the House of Representatives. So many Democrat Representatives are retiring. Many state legislatures are Republican controlled and they are redrawing the Representative Districts to their favor.
It is going to be a tough election and the next two years are going to be very difficult.
I certainly hope the House Select Committee will deliver their report before January 2023 and will make the expected criminal referrals on you know who.
But he is also facing possible charges through New York and Georgia.
I think it is only a matter of time before his house of cards come tumbling down.
Re: recent posts about voting rights: given the inevitable links to racism, it's potentially going to be very difficult to discuss the subject under Purgatory rules.
If you want to discuss the issue in depth (and you're more than welcome to do so) someone will need to create a suitable OP in Epiphanies.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
But you know he's right @Gramps49, or his lawyer was. He could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, he'd still be elected. Justice is absolutely, utterly irrelevant. It's the wrong story for his constituents. They won't hear it. Being intelligent, rational, fair is meaningless. This is not merely tribal. This is class warfare. Like in knife fights. There are no rules.
Martin, please lay off the doom-mongering. Justice is not irrelevant, Trump voters are not a monolithic block, and even if they were defeating Trump is/was as much about getting people to turn out to vote for those opposing him. If he's behind bars, no rallies, no tweets, no interviews, no ads, you don't think that will put a damper on his election charges. Even if it's only civil action and courts prove that he's near bankrupt and force him to admit under oath that he lied repeatedly then Democrats can plaster the footage, along with any choice comments from the judge, all over the airwaves and internet.
I wouldn't dream of doom mongering @Arethosemyfeet. Any more than the Guardian would. Any more than I'd dream of less than four degrees by century's end. Which is all part of the same failure that is US democracy.
What I'm saying Martin, is that you don't have to do that. They do it. Amping up the fear is covered, mmmkay?
Except that the self perceptions of lots of Americans, dare I say most Americans is that they are, in fact, "intelligent, rational and fair". Lots of Americans, including lots of Americans who voted for Trump, believe that they live in a country where there are in fact rules. These found my hope that Americans will see off this latest challenge from its internal authoritarian and populist tendencies.
It occurs to me that you might not think that the survival of American democracy is something to hope for. If not, let me know and I shall seek to dazzle you all with my half-baked, minimally researched and lightly-held reasons why you are wrong in a new thread.
Had 2016 been a pre-peat of 2020, the line would just be remembered, if at all, as ridiculous bombast from a failed candidate.
And none of this is to say that Trump isn't still a threat(though I think a more likely scenario is a different GOP candidate winning in 2024), just that "He could kill people and still win!!" doesn't quite prove what the doommongers think it does.
@stetson. Fine logic. At what point in the next two years does the GOP cease to be Trump's?
I can't predict that at this point, or even give ironclad assurances that it WILL cease to be such.
I will say that, personally, I do get a slight sense that Trump is beginning to fade from relevance, but it's not the spectacular combustion that his opponents think he deserves.
If you believe with all your heart that someone deserves to be dragged out of the public square in one fell swoop, then anything short of that is going to seem like an ongoing triumph for the man. I think this partly accounts for the continued perception that Trump is some unstoppable juggernaut.
I also suspect that stuff like "Hang Pence" did not endear Trump to the Republican establishment, and most of them, while publically maintaining a face of party unity, in the end will look for ways to trip him up. It won't be like "We now hate Donald Trump and everything he stands for!!!", but more like "Well, time for some new leadership, Ted Cruz is a good man" etc.
No, but that doesn't prove they really want him for 2024. It could just be a case of not wanting to damage their prospects by embarrassing their own party.
Well, unlike Nixon in 1974 or Thatcher in the early 90s, Trump doesn't currently occupy any governmental or party position. So, there's no set procedure to get rid of him, or even any job for him to be booted from. So it would be a much more informal and decentralized process. People run for the nomination, party bigwigs endorse candidates other than Trump, eventually everyone rallies around one not-Trumper etc.
As for Nixon being the more honourable man, well, even not getting into what I have to assume is a much higher body-count, do a duckduckgo on "Chennault Affair"(which actually relates pretty closely to his body-count).
They want him gone but want someone else to be seen to stick the knife in, because they're venal cowards who care more about their own career than justice or the good of the country.
Another thing to consider is that, as we go forward in time, the political mood will likely change from what it was during the second impeachment trial in Jan/Feb. 2021. This may or may not work to the detriment of Trump's prospects, though my prediction is that it will.
They could have done their party proud (well, relatively speaking anyway) in 2016 by standing solidly behind one of the twenty-odd qualified candidates who were running rather than behind the least qualified -- no, the one not qualified at all.
So that's a no to liberal democracy? Chuck the whole lot overboard a-la Pol Pot and start again from year 0?
The 2022 mid-terms could be a good test of this. The Republican elite will be looking at whether or not Trump's endorsement is really the magic bullet they think it is. Do Trump-endorsed candidates do better in primaries? In the general? How close were the races where Trump endorsed someone going to be anyway? It's not a huge leap to predict that Republican candidate Tommy Tuberville will win in Alabama. It's a little dicier if you put your weight behind David Purdue and Kelly Loeffler and they both lose in Georgia.
-
-
-
I keep thinking I should have added Churchill's postscript. But no. I mean it.
And no @Simon Toad, it should only be done peacefully, decently and in order, Christianly, doing no harm, fairly, righteously.
And God speed @Crœsos.
If you are not talking theologically, then the underlying assumption is that there are good people and systems, existentially. Also, its bad strategy to label a whole swathe of things evil, as it tends to put people off side who might otherwise be allies.
Were you speaking theologically? Please let me know if I misunderstood you.
If a term applies to everything it becomes essentially meaningless. I've never been a big fan of bothsidesism and being unable to distinguish between moderate liberalism and early stage fascism seems kind of . . . broken.
Yes, I suppose "label[ing] a whole swathe of things evil" might lose you some support among the less fervent supporters of a herrenvolk republic, but what's often left out of such calculations is the support lost from those who see very clearly that you will never stand up on their behalf. Plus there's the danger that if you don't stand for anything you won't get the support of anyone. Despite what a lot of political consultants might say the appetite for indecisiveness, empty platitudes, and inaction is actually pretty limited.
If Martin's talking in some other sense, then arguably he called you evil, assuming you are a Democrat, or involved (for eg by voting) in a democratic capitalist system. This is what he wrote:
Theology follows the arc of justice; full, incarnational, real world, life-before-death, social justice. Or it's meaningless. In Jesus and the earliest Church it all began to come together, but took over 1700 years to reach much higher on the arc in Wilberforce, Henry George, Gandhi and Dr. King. The arc is now completely spent. By capitalism regardless of its political facades. We might get to 4000 degrees because of it a lot sooner than 4.
My throat is open and bared to you @Dafyd.
The prosperity gospel is theology by the way, just bad theology.
This year's US mid-term elections will be pivotal. If the Democrats lose either of the two houses of Congress, the chances that the US will become a full democracy again will be substantially diminished.
But sure, go ahead and veer way off-topic. Most of you aren't Americans, so the outcome of these elections won't matter to you. Until it does, when it will matter a lot.
Yeah if you like. Evil is as evil does. America has a way to go compared with the UK, but picked up the mantle of slaving all too well, a bit of genocide with Native Americans started by the English too, and in the Philippines, Jim Crow on its way back like it never went away (which it never did really did it?).
Be sure and tell Jesus He got the good news wrong.
And please bother @Ruth. Theology includes orthopraxis like you describe. The rest is just words.
America has yet to be a full democracy.
As @stetson suggests, a separate thread would be a good idea if you want to discuss the nature of evil. It risks derailing this one.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
And they can't change that in a hurry because the provision for amendments to the US constitution specifically exclude changes to the composition of the Senate.
I suppose that - and other things along with slaves being 2/3 of a person - were put into the US constitution to sell it to the smaller states at the time of its drafting.
That, plus the experience of Trump nearly breaking it, suggest to me that, good as it was in its day, it really needs a bit of a facelift. Getting rid of the second amendment would be a great idea (although you could reasonably argue it's being misinterpreted) and more clearly defining what the Supreme Court can and can't do.
There's no rule that says the U.S. Constitution can't be amended to reform the Senate. The Constitution does specify that "no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate", but that's held to refer to the regular legislative process, not amending the Constitution itself.
Three-fifths.
It mattered as to how to count people for representation in the House of Representatives and electing the president, though not for the Senate. Representatives are apportioned based on population, not number of voters. The southern states, where slavery was more prevalent* in 1787, wanted enslaved people to be counted for the purposes of representation in the House of Representative but not for the purposes of federal taxation (which was done on a per capita basis at the time). The northern states, which held relatively fewer people in slavery, argued that as non-voters enslaved Americans shouldn't count for purposes of representation but that since they were productive laborers they should be counted for tax purposes. The compromise position was that enslaved persons were counted as three-fifths of a person for both purposes.
This had knock-on effects in electing the president, since the number of electors each state held was equal to their Congressional representation (House + Senate). To illustrate this, according to the 1790 census Massachusetts had the largest free population of any state, but Virginia was bigger both in terms of total population and under the terms of the three-fifths compromise. Thus Massachusetts (which at the time included the territory we now know as Maine) had 16 electoral votes in 1792 while Virginia (which at the time included what we now call West Virginia) had 21.
*It tends to be forgotten that at the time the Constitution was drafted and ratified slavery was legal and present in all states except Massachusetts. The "peculiar institution" wasn't exclusive to the south in the early days of the republic.
Slavery was a factor for determining representation in the House, not the Senate, because House representation depends on population, not on the number of voters. The purpose of counting each enslaved person as 3/5 of a person (not 2/3) of was to increase the population count of the southern states and thus increase the number of representatives they would have in the House of Representatives. In South Carolina over 40% of the population was enslaved when the Constitution was written -- take them out of the census count, and South Carolina would have sent a lot fewer people to Congress. Today, roughly 5 million people of California's population of almost 40 million are not citizens and thus can't vote, but they each count as a person in determining how many representatives we send to the House.
The Senate is of course a whole other thing -- and John Collins is right about the small states. Wyoming's 576,850 people (2020 census) are represented by two senators and one representative -- 192,283 each. California's 39,538,223 people are represented by two senators and 53 representatives -- 718,877 each. And yes, it cheeses me off.
I talked to a friend who works for the government of NV and takes an active interest in state politics, and he is of the opinion that Cortez Masto has this seat sewn up -- he says Harry Reid's machine is still operating quite well and they're on her side, and that she has the service workers union all lined up on her side as well. The unions are the door-knocking foot soldiers for the Democratic party, and they're pretty strong in Las Vegas, so while of course it remains to be seen if my friend is right, it makes sense to me.
Our constitution picked up the same point - there is an equal number of Senators for each State, while lower house Representatives have roughly equal numbers of constituents. I say roughly equal, because the constitution provides that there were to be at least 5 Representatives from each State in the lower house. This gives substantial over-representation to Tasmania, the state with the lowest population. Tasmania would not have 5 Representatives were the electorate populations roughly the same size as those in the mainland states. And on top of that, there are the 12 senators returned from each other State. The only answer Ruth is that it is a price for federation.