A year ago, the possibility of Democrats capturing the U.S. Senate seemed far-fetched. On Tuesday night, those doubts were distant memories as Democrats racked up stunning U.S. Senate victories, claiming Republican seats in Iowa, Kansas, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, and appeared on track to flip Ohio and Maine, while holding Georgia.
Democrats flipped the U.S. House, and NBC News estimated they could finish with 244 seats when the counting was over. Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader in the chamber, will almost certainly be the first African American Speaker of the House.
In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott conceded his race to Gina Hinojosa, who just weeks ago had little chance of defeating the three-term Republican. Democrats seemed poised to pick up the governorship in Iowa, and they flipped both houses of New Hampshire’s legislature. In county after county, across the country, Democrats won in Trump territory.
President Donald Trump is hardly the first president to see his party get drubbed in Congress and the states. It happened to Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Dwight Eisenhower, among others. Still, it’s hard to think of another president who was so personally responsible for the decisions that jettisoned his party’s control. Policy decisions, most notably the Iran War and tariffs, sent prices soaring and put the kibosh on his promises to lower costs. From pushing Thom Tillis out of his North Carolina U.S. Senate seat to handpicking Darline Graham to succeed her brother, the late Senator Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, Trump’s interventions in GOP races backfired. Even his push for mid-decade redistricting seems to have backfired as Democratic candidates from Florida to Ohio to Texas survived efforts to gerrymander them out of existence.
Conversely, Democratic Leader Senator Chuck Schumer appears in a stronger position to keep his post should he seek it in the new Congress. He recruited plenty of winners, despite the embarrassment of his pick for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat: Representative Haley Stevens, who endorsed the GOP U.S. Senate nominee, Mike Rogers, in what Schumer and many Democrats dubbed “a betrayal.”
The night kicked off with Georgia Democratic Senator John Ossoff winning a second term, being declared the victor just minutes after the polls closed. A year ago, the freshman senator was thought to be in trouble, but after running a stellar campaign and facing a hapless GOP challenger, he coasted to an easy victory. Just four years ago, Trump easily won Georgia. Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms took an early lead and held on to win the Georgia governorship, making her the nation’s first female African-American governor. In New Hampshire, Democrat Chris Pappas won the U.S. Senate seat vacated by retiring Senator Jeanne Shaheen. Pappas, a U.S. representative, beat back what had been expected to be a strong challenge from former U.S. Senator John Sununu, who sought to reclaim his old seat. He becomes the first openly gay male U.S. Senator. In North Carolina, former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper will succeed the retiring Republican U.S. Senator Thom Tillis, who declined to run again after crossing swords with President Trump, who vowed to find a challenger to Tillis. Cooper is the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate seat in the Tar Heel state in 18 years. Annie Andrews won her U.S. Senate bid in South Carolina. The last Democrat to win a U.S. Senate seat in the Palmetto State was the late Ernest “Fritz” Hollings in 1998.
In Florida, Democrats seemed competitive in the gubernatorial race, where they’ve been shut out since 1994. Still, David Jolly, a Republican-turned-Democrat, fell short in his bid for the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee. U.S. Representative Byron Donalds will be the state’s next governor. But several GOP House incumbents in the Sunshine State and elsewhere were sweating, suggesting that redistricting efforts led by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis have failed to boost GOP fortunes. Kathy Kastor, a Democratic House incumbent, held on to her seat, despite Florida statehouse Republicans drawing her a much tougher district. But Senator Ashley Moody held on against Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist, who ran surprisingly well in her bid. Moody will serve the two years remaining in Marco Rubio’s term. She was appointed to fill Rubio’s U.S. Senate seat when he was tapped to be Donald Trump’s Secretary of State.
In Ohio, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Sherrod Brown bolted out to an early lead while James Talarico was running strong in Texas, where no Democrat has been elected to the U.S. Senate since 1988. Gina Hinojosa was very competitive in her bid to be the first Democrat elected governor in the Lone Star State since 1990. Some counties showed a 50-point swing to Democratic candidates from Trump’s 2024 victory.
There’s no sign yet that President Trump’s frantic campaign efforts have paid off. However, endangered Senate Republicans in Nebraska, Kansas, Alaska, and Ohio still hold on against what appears to be a Blue Wave, though that seemed less likely as the night went on. Trump went to those states frequently this fall.
Democrats had worried that Donald Trump’s administration might try to steal the midterm election through intimidation, theft, and other subterfuge. Still, as millions of Americans headed to the polls on Tuesday for the midterms, Democratic hopes were buoyed. Nothing significantly untoward has been reported at the polls.
In two marquee U.S. Senate races in Michigan and Maine, Troy Jackson seemed poised to end Susan Collins’s 30-year U.S. Senate career. She would be the first chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations committee to be defeated since Warren Magnuson of Washington State lost his seat in the 1980 wave that elected Ronald Reagan and flipped the U.S. Senate.
For those trying to determine the policy fallout from Democrats capturing the House and perhaps the Senate, it’s worth looking back at presidents who lost control of chambers during their terms. Bill Clinton’s Democrats lost control of both chambers in 1994, but he went on to win reelection handily two years later. Dwight Eisenhower’s Republicans lost control of the House and Senate in 1954, but Ike went on to reelection and six successful years in the White House. Politics has become much more polarized since then, but history reminds us that presidents can get things done even when an opposing party controls Congress.
This piece will be updated throughout Election Night and Wednesday
The post BLUENAMI: Democrats Will Control Congress appeared first on Washington Monthly.
