This is not the way Republicans wanted to start the year.
Missouri’s Roy Blunt became the fifth Republican senator on Monday to announce he will not be pursuing reelection, a retirement wave that predicts an ugly campaign season next year and gives Democrats new hope in retaining their wafer-thin majority in the Senate.
History suggests that Republicans are still well positioned to reclaim at least one chamber from Congress next year. But officials in both parties agree that the wave of GOP departures will make the challenge posed by Republicans in the Senate more difficult.
“Any time you lose an incumbent, it’s bad news,” said Republican strategist Rick Tyler, who recently worked for failed senatorial candidate Todd Akin in Missouri nearly a decade ago. Missouri is not necessarily a safe state for Republicans. Democrats have won there. ”
The exit of 71-year-old Blunt is a reminder of how the country’s politics have changed since the rise of Donald Trump. Blunt and his retiring GOP colleagues from Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Alabama represent an old guard who fought for conservative policies but at times opposed the deeply personal attacks and unequal governance that dominated the Trump era.
Their departure will leave a void likely to be filled by a new generation of Republicans more willing to embrace Trumpism – or by Democrats.
Several Missouri Republicans are expected to seek the nomination to replace Blunt, but none will be more divisive than former Governor Eric Greitens, who stepped down in 2018 amid the fallout of a sex scandal and ethics investigation. The Missouri Republican base has since rallied behind him, believing he was being unfairly prosecuted.
Greitens already considered going for the GOP nomination before Blunt’s announcement. He is expected to announce his candidacy Tuesday morning.
Two prominent Missouri Democrats, former Senator Claire McCaskill and 2016 senatorial candidate Jason Kander, both said they would not be running for the open seat.
Ahead of Greitens’ announcement, some Republicans were concerned that he could endanger the Senate seat if he emerges as the party’s candidate.
Steven Law, a key ally of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and CEO of the Senate Leadership Fund, warned that Republicans are starting to repeat the mistakes of 2010, when the GOP lost the Senate majority to flawed far-right candidates. embrace.
Law specifically cited Greitens’ impending announcement.
“We have the chance to regain a majority,” Law said. “But in 2010 that opportunity was lost on the side of the Senate because non-selectable candidates were nominated.”
In 2010, tea party favorite Christine O’Donnell defeated a longtime GOP congressman in the Delaware Senate primaries before losing to a landslide in the general election after reports of personal financial troubles, questionable use of campaign funds, and allegations she had been studying. witchcraft.”
Two years later, in Indiana, Richard Mourdock defeated Senator Richard Lugar to six terms in the GOP primary of 2012, but imploded after a debate in which he said pregnancy as a result of rape is “ something God intended. ” In Missouri, Republican candidate Akin lost after pushing for a local talk show that women’s bodies have ways to prevent pregnancy in cases of “ legitimate rape. ”
In the decade since the Akin debacle, Missouri politics, like those of the nation, have evolved to give both sides opportunities.
States like Missouri, Ohio and Iowa, which have recently been considered swing states, are leaning away from Democrats. At the same time, earlier red states like North Carolina and Georgia are leaning away from Republicans.
Missouri has not elected a Democratic senator since McCaskill defeated Akin in 2012. Trump carried the state by 15 percentage points last November. Trump was carrying Ohio, where Republican Senator Rob Portman will not seek reelection next year, by 8 percentage points. The former president won by the same margin in Iowa, where 87-year-old Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is contemplating retirement.
Democrats are expected to be more competitive in North Carolina, where Trump took a victory by just 1 percentage point, and in Wisconsin, Republican Senator Ron Johnson was allowed to go ahead with a campaign promise to search no more than two terms.
Democrats have not lost a single incumbent in retirement, but they are defending vulnerable incumbents in Georgia and Arizona, among others.
They have no margin for error. Republicans will claim the Senate majority for the last two years of President Joe Biden’s term if they get even one additional seat in November.
Traditionally, the party occupying the White House suffers significant losses in the first by-election of a new president. For example, President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party lost 63 seats in the House and six in the Senate in 2010.
Democrats hope Trump will become an unwitting ally by 2022. The former Republican president has vowed to play an active role in the midterm elections, most notably by supporting pro-Trump candidates in primaries. That leaves little room for established Republicans like Blunt, who are popular statewide.
“The challenge for Republicans is the race to the bottom in the Republican primaries,” said Morgan Jackson, a leading Democratic strategist based in North Carolina. It’s not about what you say, it’s about how loud and angry you say it. That is a completely different view of the world. “
Jackson said, “It’s a safe bet” Republicans will win the House majority, but he is optimistic that Trump’s meddling in Senate primaries will help curtail Democrats’ losses.
“Maybe it won’t be a good cycle, but maybe it won’t be a bad cycle,” he said.
JB Poersch, who heads the Democratically-Allied Senate Majority PAC, noted that Republicans are focused on the country’s culture wars, while Democrats are in the process of sending billions of dollars to working-class Americans affected by the pandemic. That contrast will help the Democrats, he said.
“There is an economic argument for the working family that Democrats can still make in the middle of the country, in places like Missouri and Ohio, and keep them competitive,” he said.
Meanwhile, at a news conference on Monday, Blunt predicted political success for Republicans in Missouri and beyond. He also reflected on the 2010 election, when Democrats across the country were punished for embracing Obama’s fiscal stimulus and health care overhaul.
“I think 2022 will be a great year in the country and I think it will be a great year in this Senate race,” Blunt told reporters. “The Republican Party will be fine.”