Hello, I’m John McCormack, and welcome to the Horse Race, a new weekly newsletter in which my National Review colleague Brittany Bernstein and I will keep you up to date on the latest developments in the 2022 midterm campaigns.
If you’re hoping to see the end of Democratic control of (at least one chamber of) Congress, there are several hopeful signs around. It’s the end of September, and President Biden’s job-approval rating — after bottoming out and then bouncing back from a catastrophic 37 percent in July — has stalled out around 43 percent in the polling averages. The economy is back to being the issue at the top of voters’ minds. The well-respected pollster Gary Langer recently found Republicans leading by five points among likely voters in the latest generic congressional-ballot poll conducted for the Washington Post and ABC News.
But, if you’re a political conservative with a properly conservative (read: pessimistic) disposition, you can’t help but worry that the worst-case scenario — Democratic control of government unchecked by Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and the Senate’s 60-vote rule — is still a possibility.
In the latest issue of National Review, I take a look at the unlikely but plausible scenario in which the Democrats hold the House and pick up the two Senate seats they need to gut the filibuster and implement a wide array of left-wing policies they’ve failed to enact over the past two years.
Right now, FiveThirtyEight gives Democrats a 31 percent chance of holding the House. A one-in-three chance is nothing to ignore, and a national political environment in which Democrats keep the House is one in which they probably make a net gain of two seats in the Senate.
That’s why Wisconsin is probably the most important 2022 Senate race in the country — because it’s probably the race on which this worst-case scenario (for conservatives) hinges.
In the FiveThirtyEight Senate race forecasts, all Democratic incumbents in competitive races are slightly favored (Georgia and Nevada) or heavily favored (Arizona, New Hampshire, and Colorado) to win. The website also shows Democrat John Fetterman favored in his race against Republican Mehmet Oz to fill the seat of Pat Toomey. FiveThirtyEight’s four-to-one odds for Fetterman seem a bit too good in light of several polls showing the two in the mid 40s and separated by low single digits, but it’s certainly true that Democrats are more likely to pick off Pennsylvania than Wisconsin.
With 51 Senate seats and the House, Democrats could do more than they’ve done over the past two years — more social-welfare spending and unlimited taxpayer funding of elective abortions (at least) for Medicaid recipients. But progressives couldn’t really run wild until they get 52 Senate seats and gut the filibuster.
That’s why all eyes should be on Wisconsin, a toss-up race where incumbent GOP senator Ron Johnson leads Democrat Mandela Barnes by 1.5 points.
The polling situation has improved for Johnson: He trailed in every poll in August but has a slight lead in three of four polls conducted in September (and trails by just one point in the fourth).
It’s a close race, but Johnson has at least a few things working in his favor.
The first is Joe Biden’s poor approval rating — 43 percent approve to 54 percent who disapprove in the latest Marquette poll — and voter anger over inflation and the economy.
The second is that the demographics of the state’s voters — a high percentage of whom are non-college whites — could help Johnson withstand a backlash over abortion among college-educated white voters.
The third is that Johnson’s opponent is a progressive “true believer” who is out of step with the state as an advocate of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. Moderate Democrats and their allies in the press have been worrying all year that Barnes could blow a winnable race for them. In particular, Barnes has been hammered for being a “defund the police” Democrat.
While there are several key races to watch over the closing weeks of the 2022 campaign, Wisconsin will get special attention (not simply because it is the greatest state in the union) in this newsletter. With that, I’ll hand over the reins to Brittany, who takes a closer look at the trouble Barnes is facing on this issue in her full roundup of campaign news.
—John McCormack
Campaign Roundup
As John noted, crime is likely to prove one of several defining factors in the midterms, with 60 percent of registered voters saying violent crime is “very important” to their vote in the 2022 congressional elections. That makes crime the third-most important issue behind the economy (77 percent) and gun policy (62 percent).
In no state is that more true than Wisconsin, where Democrat Mandela Barnes’s history of being soft on crime as the state’s lieutenant governor could pose a huge problem for him in the close race against incumbent GOP senator Ron Johnson.
The Milwaukee Police Association, the union for the city’s rank-and-file cops, recently endorsed Johnson — while two law-enforcement officers said they were wrongly included on Barnes’s list of endorsees.
Barnes officially came out against defunding the police in January. Yet Heather Smith from the Wisconsin-based John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy says Barnes is trying to rewrite history and “gaslight” the public on the issue.
Barnes, whose campaign has received funding from five groups that support defunding the police, tweeted in July 2020: “Defunding the police only dreams of being as radical as a Donald Trump pardon.”
And recent polling shows that crime is top of mind for Wisconsin voters, just as it is for voters across the country:
A recent Marquette University Law School poll found that 88 percent of Wisconsin voters are concerned about crime and 87 percent are concerned about gun violence. The issues came in behind only inflation, which concerned 94 percent of voters.
Smith predicted crime will be “one of the defining issues of this race” because of the growing concern about crime among Wisconsinites and Barnes’s “strong personal record of being anti-police, soft on crime and putting felons before families.”
—Brittany Bernstein
RealClearPolitics Polling Averages
Generic congressional ballot: Republicans + 0.3
Republican Senate candidates lead:
Ohio: R+1.2 (Vance 46.2%, Ryan 45.0%)
North Carolina: R+2.0 (Budd 45.8%, Beasley 43.8%)
Nevada: R+1.7 (Laxalt 45.5%, Cortez Masto 43.8%)
Wisconsin: R+1.5 (Johnson 48.3%, Barnes 46.8%)
Democratic Senate candidates lead:
New Hampshire: D+8.0 (Hassan 48.0%, Bolduc 40.0%)
Pennsylvania: D+4.5 (Fetterman 48.9%, Oz 44.4%)
Arizona: D+6.2 (Kelly 47.5%, Masters 41.3%)
Georgia: D+0.3 (Warnock 47.0%, Walker 46.7%)
Race-Ratings Update
The Cook Political Report shifted the Arizona Senate race from “Toss Up” to “Lean Democrat,” explaining that Democratic incumbent senator Mark Kelly, who has raised more than $54 million in total for his campaign, has a massive financial advantage over Republican opponent Blake Masters.
Cook also shifted three U.S. House races:
- Arizona GOP representative David Schweikert’s race moved from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up.”
- Arizona Democratic representative Tom O’Halleran’s race moved from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican.”
- Texas’s Democratic representative Henry Cuellar’s race moved from “Toss Up” to “Lean Democrat.”
The Cook Political Report notes that Republicans need to win just six of the 31 “Toss Up” seats to win a House majority.
Around NR
• Rich Lowry argues that crime is a legitimate election issue, despite liberal assertions that efforts to hold Democrats accountable for rising crime is racist:
Crime isn’t a racial issue; it’s about affording all Americans, and especially vulnerable communities, the protection they deserve from lawlessness. Obviously, violent crime is not a blight on the lives of upper-middle-class white people.
• Democrat Stacey Abrams is fulfilling her pledge to keep abortion “front and center” in the Georgia gubernatorial race — but the hyperfocus on a contentious social issue doesn’t seem to be paying off in purple Georgia. Republican Brian Kemp led Abrams by seven points in a poll conducted in the days after Abrams appeared on The View to advocate for abortion on demand “until the time of birth.” And despite her national profile, Abrams is underperforming relative to fellow Georgia Democrat Raphael Warnock, who led Republican Herschel Walker by five points in a recent Marist poll. Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that “Georgia Democrats have grown increasingly pessimistic about Stacey Abrams’s chances of ousting Gov. Brian Kemp from office.” And that was before she claimed “there is no such thing as a [fetal] heartbeat at six weeks” of pregnancy. Besides being politically unhelpful, Abrams’s claim is also simply false, as Pradheep Shanker explained in detail yesterday at NRO.
• Florida GOP senator Marco Rubio is hammering his Democratic opponent Val Demings for backing a right to abortion up until the moment of birth. Demings claims that’s not true, and “fact checkers” at Politifact and the Washington Post are trying to cover for Demings, but John McCormack explains why those fact checks are faulty and Rubio is right:
Question for @GlennKesslerWP:
If “in reality” Germany permits abortion until 22 weeks because it has a mental-health exception, then isn’t it also true that “in reality” the congressional Democrats’ bill permits abortion through all 9 months? https://t.co/FaZjaTDlcr pic.twitter.com/H6ayXmVRjr
— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) September 22, 2022
• A new ad from the Republican Governors Association Kansas 2022 PAC accuses Kansas governor Laura Kelly of lying to voters about her position on biological men competing in women’s sports. The Democratic governor, who is in a tight race for reelection, aired an ad last week saying “of course men should not play girls sports,” despite having twice vetoed legislative efforts to keep males from competing in girls’ sports. Diana Glebova explains the governor’s efforts to flip-flop:
After coming under fire from progressives and LGBT activists, Kelly reversed course in a follow-up interview, arguing that her comment in the ad referred only to “a male over the age of 18” trying to participate against minor females in sports. She did not specify in what venue such a competition might occur.
Despite the unambiguous claim she made in the ad, Kelly now says that decisions about gender segregation in college sports should be made by the NCAA, rather than the Kansas legislature.
• Ryan Mills spoke to some veteran Florida political consultants for a look at how Hurricane Ian is a test of leadership for Governor Ron DeSantis:
With six weeks before Election Day, the storm offers DeSantis an opportunity to showcase his leadership skills during a non-partisan emergency, Florida-based political analysts and strategists told National Review. As the state’s chief executive, DeSantis is already getting loads of free TV time to give updates on the state’s emergency management operations. And if the storm makes landfall in a large population center or does significant damage, he can lead from the ground, meeting with residents and business owners to help them recover.
“We never wish for natural disasters or emergencies during campaigns. But the one thing these situations do is they allow a platform for good leaders to lead,” said Marc Reichelderfer, a Tallahassee-based Republican political consultant.
Around the Web
Bill Galston: “If Democrats won’t compromise on issues like immigration and cultural values, they’ll lose working-class voters for good.”
• George Will seems like a “yes” on Pennsylvania GOP Senate candidate Mehmet Oz but is a definite “no” on Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano:
Pennsylvania is on fire. Since 1915, the Red Ash colliery has been burning beneath the hills near Wilkes-Barre, and dozens of other fires smolder in abandoned coal mines. This year, however, the important heat is on Pennsylvania’s surface, in the contest to become the state’s next governor, the 2022 election that poses the most risk to the nation. Risk assessment involves weighing the probability of an event against the event’s potential destructiveness. So:
Suppose voters pick the Republican candidate, Doug Mastriano. And suppose that late in the evening of Nov. 5, 2024, Gov. Mastriano thinks Pennsylvanians picked the wrong person to receive the state’s presidential electoral votes. Today, candidate Mastriano promises that, as governor, he will have the executive power, and a mandate, to intervene, thus plunging the nation into chaos.
• James Carville on the Democrats’ strategy of spending tens of millions of dollars elevating extreme GOP candidates: “Could it backfire? Yeah. But I don’t think it will. It’s an acceptable risk worth taking.”
• Sarah Isgur on Senate debate season:
- Wisconsin: GOP Sen. Ron Johnson will debate Democrat Mandela Barnes on October 7 and October 13.
- Georgia: Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock will debate Republican Herschel Walker October 14.
- Ohio: Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan will debate Republican J.D. Vance on October 10 and 17.
- Arizona: Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly will debate Republican Blake Masters on October 6.
- Washington: Democratic Sen. Patty Murray will debate Republican Tiffany Smiley on October 23.
- North Carolina: Democrat Cheri Beasley will debate Republican Rep. Ted Budd on October 7.
• David Byler: “This little-known election predictor should worry Democrats”
• David Wasserman: “The six types of races that will decide control of the House in 2022”