Democrats See a Chance in Texas, Florida, But Could Get Beto-ed

On Friday, a little shimmer of optimism ran across the Democratic Party as new polls showed that maybe, maybe the Senate isn’t going to flip to the Republicans this fall.

Yes, things are looking grim for the blue team in Montana right now. The latest poll there shows incumbent Sen. Jon Tester down by 6 points and Republican challenger Tim Sheehy over the 50-percent threshold.

With Joe Manchin’s retirement handing Republicans a gain in West Virginia, Democrats can’t afford to lose even one more seat and still hold the Senate. With a 51-seat Senate majority, anything beyond West Virginia means that even if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the presidency and puts Tim Walz in to cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate, Republicans will get the upper chamber back.

And it’s not just Tester. The trend has not been the friend of Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, either. Like Tester, Brown benefited in the early going from the advantages of incumbency—high name identification and fundraising—but now finds that as voters tune into the election, his initial advantages have faded. If former President Donald Trump is on track to win Ohio by 10 points and Montana by 15, how likely is it that even a popular Democratic incumbent will be able to survive the rush of Republican-leaning, lower propensity, presidential-year-only voters who flood into the electorate between now and November?

It’s not impossible, and Democrats have only just begun the work of ruining the reputations of the little-known challengers, with much more to come. But in 2020, there was only one Senate race that went the other way from its state’s presidential preference: Susan Collins in Maine. In 2016, there were none. 

Incumbents have bigger advantages in lower-turnout midterm years when that other quarter of the electorate that only votes in presidential years stays home. But when those folks show up, they push the whole ballot in the direction of the majority party in the state, whatever it may be.

And don’t forget that because Maine divides its electoral votes by congressional district, there were additional incentives for Republicans in the state’s 2nd District to show up. Collins got a boost in the state’s interior as Maine Republicans showed up in force to win a single Electoral College vote for Trump. Tester can hope for a similar effect from a ballot measure this fall that would preserve access to elective abortions in Montana, but in both Montana and Ohio, Democrats will be under no illusions about how the race will go on the presidential level.

But what’s that skimming across the Gulf of Mexico like a pair of marbled godwits in the morning sun? New polls from Texas and Florida that show the Senate races in the two biggest red states to be quite competitive. 

In Florida, incumbent Sen. Rick Scott is coming in with 46 percent to 45 percent for the Democratic challenger, former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, and 9 percent undecided. In Texas, Sen. Ted Cruz notched 48 percent support compared to 44 percent for Democratic challenger Rep. Colin Allred, and 8 percent are undecided. 

When later in the day Friday, former Rep. Liz Cheney added her support to Allred’s bid, you could almost feel the joy on the Democratic side.

It’s not insane to think that these races will be competitive. Both states have substantial numbers of young voters and lots of black voters, too. If the newfound Democratic enthusiasm for the presidential race translates into increased turnout for the blue team’s lower propensity voters, maybe there’s a windfall for Mucarsel-Powell and Allred. And while reliably Republican on the presidential level, Texas and Florida are not as red as Ohio and Montana. Trump won Texas by 6 points and Florida by 3 points in 2020 and will do well to replicate those numbers this year.

And the candidate quality favors the Dems, at least for now. Mucarsel-Powell benefits from being a very generic kind of Democrat who represented a swing district in South Florida. And Allred has a different advantage. He’s as moderate as the suburban Dallas district he represents and, perhaps most importantly for Texas, was a star linebacker at Baylor University before he went on to four seasons in the NFL.

If Democrats could win one of those two, the thinking goes, they could afford to lose in Ohio or Montana and still hold the Senate.

There’s some truth to all that, and Democrats hold a large enough campaign cash advantage right now to indulge in some probing. But they ought to beware getting Beto-ed down there.

Allred and Mucarsel-Powell do not offer the obvious dangers of onetime progressive heartthrob Beto O’Rourke, but one could easily see a similar phenomenon taking shape this year.

How do you think that 9 percent undecided in Florida and 8 percent undecided in Texas will break? Does one imagine that there is a big trove of Democratic-leaning voters in these states unsure of how to vote? Or is it more likely that the undecideds will break roughly along the partisanship of the state as a whole?

The challengers could certainly win, but so might have O’Rourke. And the appeal of winning in a red state, particularly against someone so loathed on the left as Cruz, was intoxicating to the very online left. The huge gobs of money that flowed to Texas didn’t flow to other, more winnable races.

Holy croakano! We welcome your feedback, so please email us with your tips, corrections, reactions, amplifications, etc. at STIREWALTISMS@THEDISPATCH.COM. If you’d like to be considered for publication, please include your real name and hometown. If you don’t want your comments to be made public, please specify.

STATSHOT

General Election

Donald Trump: 45.6% (↑ 1.6 points from two weeks ago)
Kamala Harris: 48.6%  (↑ 1.4)
[Average includes: Emerson College: Trump 48% – Harris 51%; TIPP: Trump 45% – Harris 48%; Suffolk/USA Today: Trump 43% – Harris 48%; Wall Street Journal: Trump 45% – Harris 47%; Quinnipiac: Trump 47% – Harris 49%]

Generic Ballot

Democrats: 46.6% (↓ 1.2 points from two weeks ago)

Republicans: 44.0% (↓ 2.4)

[Average includes: Emerson College: 48% Democrats – 44% Republicans; Suffolk/USA Today: 48% Democrats – 43% Republicans; Wall Street Journal: 47% Democrats – 46% Republicans; Ipsos/Reuters: 42% Democrats – 41% Republicans; Monmouth: 48% Democrats – 46% Republicans] 

TIME OUT: ANSWERING THE CALL

Wall Street Journal: “New England’s tallest peak. Supermarket-sized, tax-free liquor stores at highway rest stops. First-in-the-nation primary. Legal fireworks and helmet-free motorcycle rides. New Hampshire, with its ‘Live Free or Die’ motto, boasts many distinctions. Gov. Chris Sununu is trying to safeguard another: its lone area code. … New Hampshire belongs to a shrunken fraternity of states with just one code for long-distance dials. But a hangup looms. The growing state is running low on numbers under its current code, 603, and could need a second one in a few years’ time. … This isn’t the New England state’s first attempt to put a new code on hold, and it succeeded before. ‘Had everyone just rolled over and said that this was inevitable, we would have lost the 603 in 1998,’ Sununu said. … New Hampshire is among the last 11 single-area-code states, down from 35 when codes were introduced in 1947. … Somewhere along the line, area codes morphed from tools to help call long distance without switchboard operators to cultural identifiers.”

HARRIS PULLS IN $360 MILLION, SETS FUNDRAISING RECORD

Politico: “Kamala Harris raked in $361 million last month, widening her cash advantage over Donald Trump with what the vice president’s campaign described as the best grassroots fundraising month in presidential history. … Harris’ haul nearly tripled the $130 million brought in by the former president during the same period, as the campaigns have turned toward the final fall finish. Harris’ campaign and other affiliated committees have $404 million in cash on hand and a $100 million advantage over Trump’s nearly $300 million war chest. … Her campaign said she’s raised more than $615 million since she took over the top of the ticket in late July. … Flush with cash, the Harris campaign has pumped enormous sums into political advertising, swamping the airwaves with $370 million worth of TV and digital ads from Labor Day through Election Day.”

And transfers $25 million to down-ballot Dems: Washington Post: “Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee plan to transfer nearly $25 million to support down-ballot Democratic candidates in state and federal races this year. … The funds include $10 million transfers to both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. … The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which focuses on winning control of state legislative bodies, will receive $2.5 million, while the Democratic Governors Association and the Democratic Attorneys General Association will each receive $1 million. … Democrats are hoping that high turnout in blue states can help them retake the House this year, while the prospect of holding on to the Senate is more challenging.” 

Tacks to center continue as Harris breaks with Biden on capital gains: Wall Street Journal: “Kamala Harris proposed a less drastic increase in the top capital-gains tax rate on Wednesday, breaking with a plan President Biden outlined in his budget blueprint earlier this year. … The all-in top rate would be 33% … Biden, by contrast, wanted a near-doubling of today’s 23.8% top rate to 44.6%, taxing capital gains at roughly the same rate as ordinary income. The break from Biden on the capital-gains tax rate—the clearest effort yet from her campaign to distance herself from the president—comes days before her debate with former President Donald Trump, who has tried to tie her to Biden’s economic policies and attacked her for being too far to the left.”

Team Trump scales up Nevada operation: Nevada Independent: “Former President Donald Trump’s campaign is ramping up its presence in Nevada on the airwaves and through volunteer efforts as the race tightens, closing the gap with Democrats’ more established ground game in the Silver State. The Trump campaign now has five Nevada offices open — four in Southern Nevada and one in Northern Nevada — and is relying on its ‘Trump Force 47’ program to recruit volunteers, a nationwide effort that began in late May. … Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) have held public events in Las Vegas in the past month, and pro-Trump advertising in Nevada has recently skyrocketed. … But Trump’s campaign infrastructure still lags behind Harris’ campaign, which inherited all of the Biden campaign’s ground game when he dropped out.” 

Poll: Harris leads in battle for Nebraska electoral vote: Split Ticket: “Two of Nebraska’s congressional districts are safely Republican, but the 2nd district, which includes Omaha and its suburbs, is a Democratic-leaning seat. Our survey finds Kamala Harris with a significant lead in the 2nd district [47% to 42%]. Although it is worth just one electoral vote, it may prove to be a crucial one. … If Harris were to sweep Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania but lose the Sun Belt (Nevada, Arizona, Georgia), she would only have 269 electoral votes – necessitating a victory in Nebraska’s 2nd. Under its post-redistricting boundaries, this educated metropolitan district would have voted Trump +2 in 2016, but flipped to Biden +6 in 2020.”

GOP SOUNDS THE ALARM OVER DEM SPENDING ADVANTAGE

Politico: “Republicans are racing to plug a massive money hole — before it’s too late. … In some key Senate battlegrounds, Democrats are so flush with cash that they are outspending Republicans by tens of millions on the air. That’s forced the GOP to lean heavily on super PACs, which can raise unlimited amounts of money but must pay higher rates for the same ad slots. … Money raised by Democratic challengers has been noticeably strong. More than a half dozen vulnerable Republican members trailed their Democratic opponents in cash-on-hand at the end of June — a dangerous place for an incumbent. … Democrats are outspending Republicans in six of the top eight Senate races, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. In Arizona, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego and his allies have a $57 million advantage on the air over Republican Kari Lake. Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and their allies both have $41 million edges over their respective Republican challengers.” 

Poll: Sheehy leads Tester as Republicans come home: Axios: “New polling by AARP shows [Tim Sheehy] up 49% to [Sen. Jon Tester’s] 41% when the full ballot with third-party candidates is included — and 51% to 45% in a head-to-head race. … Republican strategists tell Axios they are bullish about their chances of flipping the Montana seat. ‘Even in the 2020 Senate race, which Steve [Daines] won by double digits, we never saw numbers as strong as we are seeing now from Tim Sheehy,’ NRSC executive director Jason Thielman told Axios. … Tester is a unique candidate — a Democrat who has managed to win in an otherwise deeply-red state for three elections in a row. … But this is the first time he has had to campaign with former President Trump on the ballot.” 

McCormick hits Casey on fracking: Pennsylvania Capital Star: “On July 26, Pennsylvania’s Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Dave McCormick, visited a fracking rig in Warren County. One reason for his trip? To link Harris with his opponent in the race, Democratic Sen. Bob Casey. … While Harris said she was in favor of a ban on fracking during the 2020 Democratic primary, she has since reversed course, and Casey has never supported a fracking ban. … McCormick’s ad signals a shift in strategy in one of the most competitive and expensive Senate races in the country. It’s also suggestive of the important role that energy, environmental and climate issues could play in Pennsylvania this fall. … As the summer winds down, the race is close; polls show Casey with a narrow lead.” 

BRIEFLY

Virginia Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears announces 2025 gubernatorial bid—Washington Post

Dem enthusiasm approaches Obama-era highs—Gallup

Uphill battle for Alaska’s ranked-choice voting repeal effort—The Down Ballot

After divisive primary, South Carolina’s Timmons draws serious Dem challenger—The Post and Courier

WITHIN EARSHOT: REPUBLICAN OR REPUBLICAN’T?

“What’s frustrating me is I firmly believe that House Republicans are going to lose the majority, and we’re going to lose it because of ourselves.”—Texas Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales is pessimistic about his party’s chances of holding the House in November. 

MAILBAG

“Have you always hated the primary system or is it how it’s being utilized now that creates your distaste? I ask because I used to be an enthusiastic supporter of it because I felt in a two-party system the people needed to have more of a say in what teams made the finals. Over time I now see how it’s accelerated the polarization we see in American politics today. I always wonder, however, if my change of opinion is a result of my seeing the destructiveness of a primary system or if it’s just that it’s not creating the results I desire. Under the old system someone like Trump never makes it through, but there’s clearly a very large number of people who want him as their president. Are we being elitists for trying to change the system just because we don’t like the guy it produced?”—Craig Berry, Frankfort, Illinois

Mr. Berry,

Believe it or not, the problems with primaries at the presidential level are far less bad than what our current system produces in Congress and at the state level.

With a presidential nomination, you get a high degree of interest and a decent degree of scrutiny among voters. It may be odd to give Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina such an extraordinary degree of influence over who may become president, but the voters there do tend to take it seriously. And, if anything, the press covers the races too intently.

An astonishing 51 percent of eligible voters took part in this year’s New Hampshire presidential primaries, and that was with no real contest on the Democratic side. But how about in races other than for president?

Something like 20 percent of eligible voters participated in primary elections in 2022, but beneath the surface it’s much, much worse than that. In New York, just 3 percent of eligible voters showed up. And who are those people? Certainly not a cross-section of the larger electorate, nor of the parties whose candidates that fraction is picking.

Add to that gerrymandering, which means that there are only ever three or four dozen of the 435 House seats that are genuinely competitive in general elections. Consequently, we have developed some terrible incentives for our politicians. 

The path to Congress runs through low-turnout primary elections dominated by activists and kooks and then boat-race general elections. It may be democratic, but it is most assuredly not representative.

All best,

c

“Like many pundits, you’ve asserted that Democratic Party bosses ‘forced’ Joe Biden out of the race. Not ‘pressured’ or ‘persuaded’ but ‘forced.’ I get it that ‘forced’ is more dramatic and, therefore, appealing to someone in your line of work. But is it accurate? The delegates were committed to Biden and there is no obvious mechanism for the party bosses to strip them away from him. He could have gone forward and been nominated. I watched Biden’s speech at the convention. There were no signs that he’d been drugged or coerced or that he feared a hidden assassin monitoring his words. In fact, Biden declared that he withdrew not because he was forced but because he loved his country more than the job and it was obvious to everyone in the world that he was motivated by a desire to defeat MAGA-ism not by coercion. For us rubes in flyover country would you please describe how the party bosses ‘forced’ Biden to withdraw? Should we imagine Nancy hovering over Joe and telling him brains or his signature were going to be on the withdrawal documents?”—Brian Pierson, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Mr. Pierson,

I’m afraid I’m missing something in the difference between “pressured” and “forced.” If we say of someone that they “forced her hand” or that “he was forced to choose,” we don’t typically mean that the threat of violence was involved. We mean that all other options had become untenable.

Sure, President Biden could have pushed his party off a cliff and gone down in history as an extraordinarily selfish man, even for our very selfish age. And for a few weeks, he tried to prove to his party that he was a credible threat to do just that. 

What resulted was an ugly affair in which Biden would make increasingly adamant public statements about his determination to stay in the race and then top Democrats would say, “think again.” 

As more and more members of his party withdrew their support, Biden found his bluff had been called. A party, it is said, is not a suicide pact. Democrats made it clear that if Biden stayed in the race, he would do it in isolation, rejected by a party that would run away from him in a bid to save as many down-ballot races as possible.

Lots of praise has been heaped on Biden for having the patriotic grace to step aside and put his own interests behind those of the country. George Clooney, one of the leading Democrats who, ahem, forced Biden off the ticket compared the current president to the first one just this week. 

“The person who should be applauded is the president, who did the most selfless thing that anybody’s done since George Washington,” Clooney told reporters. 

Yeesh.

Washington stunned his political allies and the nation who loved him with a precedent-setting decision not to seek a second term. Biden eventually gave in to mounting pressure to not continue with an obviously doomed re-election bid. What Biden did wasn’t even as impressive as Lyndon Johnson, who jumped out of the 1968 race before anybody could force him to do so.

Democrats are understandably grateful that Biden eventually did the right thing, but history will not forget the 24 days in the summer of 2024 when a sitting president was done in by a steady pressure campaign by his own party. He did not go gently.

We all get forced into things in our lives, and it’s no fun. So there’s something almost admirable about Biden’s tenacity in the face of mounting evidence that he had lost the confidence of the American people. But at its core, it is a very sad story, and a cautionary one for all of us as we face our own limitations.

All best,

c

“Chris, you’re right on with: ‘Wishing ill on other people is corrosive to our character and perpetuates the cycle of resentment.’ As a Republican who is easily roused to anger, I have to remind myself of Marcus Aurelius’ advice: ‘Your soul becomes stained with the color of its thoughts …’”—Brian Liddicoat, Watsonville, California

Mr. Liddicoat,

Amen, amen! As my old daddy used to say, “Hating someone is like drinking poison and hoping that the other guy dies.”

All best,

c

You should email us! Write to STIREWALTISMS@THEDISPATCH.COM with your tips, kudos, criticisms, insights, rediscovered words, wonderful names, recipes, and, always, good jokes. Please include your real name—at least first and last—and hometown. Make sure to let us know in the email if you want to keep your submission private. My colleague, the tweedy Nate Moore, and I will look for your emails and then share the most interesting ones and my responses here. Clickety clack!

CUTLINE CONTEST: C’MON, COACH 

This shot of a lighter moment on stage between Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz at the Democratic National Convention could be good fodder for the cutline contest, but it’s the presence of Minnesota’s first lady, Gwen Walz, that makes it great. And you did not fail us, gentle readers. Starting with our first weekly winner in the September monthly contest:  

“5 yards, encroachment”—Dave Carter, Palmer, Alaska

Winner, Attitude Adjustment Division:

“Gwen Walz prepares karate move upon spotting ‘joyless’ delegate.”—Linda McKee,  DuBois, Pennsylvania

Winner, Sternum Finders Division:

“I don’t see anything. I guess that piece of steak went on down.”—Michael Smith, Georgetown, Kentucky

Winner, To The Left, To The Left Division:

“Gwen looks away as Tim breaks the news that Beyoncé not coming.”—David Porter, Tampa, Florida

Winner, Oh Yeah, No Division:

“Gwen Walz worries she didn’t buy enough cans of Cream of Mushroom soup for the hotdishes she’ll be making for the DNC Delegates.”—Tripp Whitbeck, Arlington, Virginia

Winner, Stop Me If You’ve Heard It Division:

“Governor Walz tells VP Harris favorite Packers joke that wife Gwen has heard over 150 times and can only manage a wry smile at anymore.”—Craig Berry, Frankfort, Illinois

Winner, Rodham Division:

“I’m sorry Kamala, this may be an old line, but I’m with her.”—Richard Basuk, New York, New York

Winner, Tsk Tsk Division:

“I don’t think she heard it, but she’s going to smell it in about 2 seconds.”—Mike Walden, Overland Park, Kansas

August Winner

Which brings us to the crowning of our August contest winner, who won for his caption for this photo of Harris campaigning with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, whom she passed over for a spot as her running mate in favor of Walz. Reader Peter Schwartz of Auburn, Alabama, nailed it with: “Some of my best friends are Jewish.”

Please send us your mailing address, Mr. Schwartz, so we can send you your prize, a button from the 1972 Libertarian presidential campaign that featured John Hospers and his running mate, Theodora “Tonie” Nathan, who, because of a faithless elector in Virginia, became the first Jewish American to win an Electoral College vote, 28 years before Joe Leiberman would repeat the feat.

In addition, Mr. Schwartz will be the eighth entrant in our annual contest and the prize of an Edwards of Virginia Wigwam ham—or smoked turkey! 

TRUST FALL

Denver Post: “A group of 15 office workers left Friday morning for Mount Shavano’s summit in Chaffee County, but only 14 returned. … One hiker was left behind on the mountain summit, stranded as strong storms passed through the area. … The 15 hikers were on a work retreat and left the Blanks Cabin Trailhead at sunrise Friday morning. … ‘In what might cause some awkward encounters at the office in the coming days and weeks, one member of their party was left to complete his final summit push alone,’ search and rescue officials said. … The man reached the peak of Mount Shavano around 11:30 a.m. but, when he turned to descend the mountain, became disoriented when he found that the group had picked up the belongings being used as trail markers as they hiked down before him. … The man was found above the North Fork drainage, in a gully below Espirit Point.” 

Nate Moore contributed to this report.