Comment on this story
comment
Sen. Mark Kelly (D) was slated to win re-election in Arizona over Republican Blake Masters on Friday, boosting Democrats’ chances of retaining control of the Senate for another two years.
The victory gives Democrats 49 seats in the Senate, just short of the 50 they need to control the chamber, where Vice President Harris has tie-breaking power. Republicans, who also picked up 49 seats, now need to flip seats in both Nevada and Georgia to take control of the chamber.
Although the Georgia race won’t be decided until the December runoff, Democrats are cautiously optimistic that they can clinch a majority sooner as more mail-in ballots are counted in Nevada’s tight race.
Democratic control of the Senate would give Biden some leverage for his agenda on Capitol Hill, regardless of the outcome in the House, which also remained undecided Friday night. Republican control of the Senate would further complicate Biden’s agenda over the next two years, positioning the GOP to delay or block the confirmation of Biden’s cabinet officials and judges.
Republicans entered the midterm elections needing to pick up just one seat to take control of the upper house of Congress, which is evenly divided this year. His path to victory was narrowed on election night when Democrats flipped a crucial Senate seat in Pennsylvania, with Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) edging celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, another Republican candidate for first time pushed by former President Donald Trump in the primaries. .
The Arizona race was one of the most contested races of the year. Kelly, a former astronaut, beat Masters, a venture capitalist, after an expensive race in which the Democrat cast himself as a moderate who would work across the aisle. Some Republicans felt down about their chances in the purple state this fall, as Democrats outscored them and held a significant lead with independents. But polls showed the race narrowing to a toss in the final stretch.
Kelly led by nearly six percent with more than 80 percent of the vote counted late Friday.
Arizona once looked ripe for a GOP rebound, with inflation particularly high and a backlash in the state to the Biden administration’s border policies. Masters tried to cast Kelly as a rubber stamp for Biden. But like so many other races this year, Democrats prevailed despite a daunting political environment, portraying their opponent as an extremist and capitalizing on anger over strict new abortion bans after the end of the Roe v. Wade.
Masters won the nomination with Trump’s endorsement and $15 million in support from tech billionaire Peter Thiel, a friend and mentor. He echoed the former president’s false claims about the 2020 election in a campaign ad, saying Trump won. A first-time candidate, Masters quickly stoked some anxiety in the GOP that its candidates in critical races were underperforming.
The Senate Leadership Fund, a group aligned with Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R), began pulling out of the race weeks after the primary, though other Republican groups eventually helped Masters compete in the airwaves with Kelly, one of the Senate’s top fundraisers. .
Masters criticized McConnell during the primaries and renewed that criticism this week, calling McConnell and the Republican establishment “incompetent” on Fox News.
“If I had chosen to spend money in Arizona, this career would have been over,” Masters said. “We would hold a majority in the Senate right now.”
Masters gave Democrats an opening during a summer debate when he weighed in on privatizing Social Security. Democrats also spent heavily to highlight his evolving comments on abortion, as he backed away from calls for a “federal person law” in the general election and passed a proposed national ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Kelly’s campaign had already produced and tested negative ads against Masters before the Aug. 3 primary, Kelly aides said, and found that the strongest ads used Masters’ own language, particularly about the abortion and Social Security. In August, when Masters had limited resources and Republican groups had few television bookings supporting him, Kelly’s campaign used that vacuum to dramatically increase its television budget.
Internally, this strategy became known as the “boom”, a bet that it would be worth spending resources early because it would help define the Masters for general election voters.
In Kelly’s campaign polls conducted between late July and early September, unfavorable ratings for Masters rose from 35 percent to 48 percent, said the aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe decisions. private strategies. Masters himself identified the Democratic strategy, saying in an Aug. 19 radio interview, “They’re trying to attack me, you know, they’re trying to kill the baby in the crib here.”
Kelly’s ads, meanwhile, sought to bolster his brand as an independent Democrat and seek to distance himself from Biden on the border issue. His first ad addressed the economic hardships created by inflation by telling the story of his upbringing as the son of two policemen.
“From day one, this campaign has been about the many Arizonans (Democrats, Independents and Republicans) who believe in working together to address the important challenges we face,” Kelly said in a statement Friday after calling the race .
The Masters campaign had no comment Friday night when asked if he would accept.
A Masters campaign fundraising appeal Thursday did not allege impropriety, but argued that “some of the issues that we’ve seen happen during this election are troubling.” He added: “We expect a contested road and legal battles to come.”
In an appearance Friday night on Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s show, Masters went further, claiming without evidence that Maricopa County, home to more than half of Arizona’s voters, he had “shuffled” the ballots on two occasions. A campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for evidence underlying those claims, and a county spokesman also did not immediately respond.
In Georgia, Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D) ran narrowly ahead of Republican candidate Herschel Walker, a former football player. But neither candidate reached the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff.
Also in Arizona, Democrat Adrian Fontes was expected to win the race for secretary of state, defeating Republican Mark Finchem, a far-right state lawmaker who sought oversight of Arizona’s election while lobbying unfounded to decertify the results from 2020.
Finchem was one of several Republican candidates for secretary of state who campaigned on Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. If elected, he would have served as a battleground state’s top election official in 2024. The secretary of state certifies statewide results.
“We know that Republicans and independents are interested in the truth,” Fontes said in an interview moments after calling his race. “We know they are not interested in lies. What it says is that democracy, at least for the time being, will survive in this republic.”
In Nevada, where votes were still being counted, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) narrowly trailed GOP nominee Adam Laxalt, a former state attorney general, on Friday. But Democrats see encouraging signs that mail-in ballots from urban areas will catch up.
While Republicans hoped to take back the House, a goal they have yet to achieve, they faced a more uncertain fight for the Senate. Republicans picked up competitive seats in North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin in Tuesday’s election, while Democrats won in Colorado, New Hampshire and Washington state.
The GOP needs to pick up just five seats for a majority in the House and has expressed confidence they will prevail. But his gains so far have not amounted to a red wave, paving the way for a narrower majority in which the leadership will need more united support from an often-conflicting caucus to enact its agenda.
Republican Joe Lombardo is also expected to unseat Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak in Nevada on Friday, handing the GOP its first pick in a gubernatorial race this election cycle.
In a statement released before the race was called Friday night, Sisolak said “it looks like we’re going to be a percentage point or so short of winning” and that he believes in “our electoral system, in democracy and in honor of the will of the voters of Nevada.” He pointed to the struggles of the past four years, including the pandemic and inflation, and said he reached out to Lombardo to wish him well.
During the campaign, Lombardo, the sheriff of Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, criticized Sisolak’s handling of crime, education and the coronavirus pandemic. He said he would be a “pro-life governor” but tried to downplay the issue, saying he would follow “the vote of the people” as Sisolak accused him of changing positions for political expediency.
“Our victory is a victory for all Nevadans who want our state back on track,” Lombardo said in a statement Friday night. “It’s a win for small business owners, for parents, for students and for law enforcement.”
Lombardo’s victory marks the first GOP gubernatorial takeover in a year in which many Democratic incumbents defied GOP hopes of a red wave, winning in tight races in Wisconsin, Michigan, Kansas and Oregon, where a independent candidate split the Democratic vote.
Stanley-Becker reported from Arizona. Yvonne Wingett Sanchez in Arizona contributed to this report.