‘It was a hell of a good day’: U.S. Senate GOP takes an election victory lap
Republished from Kentucky Lantern
WASHINGTON — Republicans were moving toward unified control of Congress on Wednesday as more House races were called in their favor and GOP candidates continued flipping Democratic seats in the Senate.
Democratic leaders were still holding out hope that they would secure a narrow majority in the House once there’s a clear outcome in more than 50 uncalled races, though that seemed somewhat unlikely.
GOP leaders in Congress used the opportunity to take a victory lap.
“House Republicans have been successful in securing critical flips in swing states including Pennsylvania and Michigan, while our battle-tested incumbents have secured re-election from coast to coast,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., wrote in a statement released by his campaign.
“The latest data and trends indicate that when all the votes are tabulated, Republicans will have held our majority, even though we faced a map with 18 Biden-won seats,” Johnson added, referring to President Joe Biden.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who will step aside as his party’s leader in the upper chamber next Congress, said during a press conference Wednesday he planned to work to ensure the GOP would be as successful as possible during the next couple of years.
“It was a hell of a good day,” McConnell said, of the election results.
What a GOP trifecta could mean
When combined with Donald Trump winning the presidential race, Republicans appeared close to unlocking a complicated legislative process that could allow the GOP to make sweeping changes to policy as long as it has a significant impact on federal revenue, spending, or the debt.
While there will be many, many hurdles for Republican lawmakers to jump through, assuming they do control the House, that budget reconciliation process would allow the GOP to overhaul the country’s tax code and Obamacare, also called the Affordable Care Act.
It might also provide a way for them to change some aspects of immigration law, though that’s a longer shot than the other two given the process’ strict rules.
Republicans used budget reconciliation in 2017 to implement sweeping changes to tax law after trying unsuccessfully to use it to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Democrats used the process during the first two years of the Biden administration to pass a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill and their sweeping climate change, health care and tax bill, sometimes referred to as the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA.
Big immigration push ahead
Republicans focused much of their campaign for Congress on immigration and border security, likely making it one of the major issues they’ll address in the years ahead.
Trump, who ran on the campaign promise of mass deportations, is unlikely to support any pathways to citizenship, and instead push for lawmakers to approve the spending necessary to carry out his pledge of removing more than 13 million people in the country without authorization.
That type of plan would require Congress to approve funding for additional detention beds, thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and charter flights. It would also strain an already backlogged U.S. immigration court.
The American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration group, estimated the cost of deporting 13 million people would be $968 billion over a decade.
The closest Congress came to immigration reform in decades was earlier in the year, when Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford and Arizona independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema negotiated a bipartisan border security and immigration bill.
The trio of senators spent months working through the particulars of the deal only to have it scuttled after Trump told GOP members he didn’t want the legislation to pass.
Instead, Trump threw his support behind a House GOP bill that reinstated the former president’s immigration policies, including “Remain in Mexico,” which required asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their cases were processed.
The legislation would have also required employers to verify their employees’ immigration status and fast-tracked deportations for unaccompanied minors, among other things.
Last year, the GOP-controlled House passed the bill, but it was never taken up in the Democratic-controlled Senate. California Rep. John S. Duarte and Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie were the only Republicans to vote against the bill. No Democrats voted in favor of passage.
McConnell pledged during his Wednesday press conference at the U.S. Capitol that his party would not change the 60-vote legislative filibuster that requires bipartisan support for the vast majority of bills to move through that chamber.
That likely means any immigration bills the GOP tries to pass through the regular legislative process would need at least some Democratic support to move through the Senate.
“One of the most gratifying results of the Senate becoming Republican — the filibuster will stand, there won’t be any new states admitted that give a partisan advantage to the other side and we’ll quit beating up the Supreme Court every time we don’t like a decision they make,” McConnell said.
He, however, didn’t rule out Republicans using the budget reconciliation process to their advantage should they secure the House majority.
McConnell declined to answer questions about the future of U.S. military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, which several GOP lawmakers, including Trump, have indicated they would end if voters gave them the ability to.
“Yeah, look, I’m here this morning to talk about the election and I think I’m going to largely confine it to that,” he said.
McConnell also declined to address a few questions about whether he believes Trump, who he has repeatedly criticized, is up to the task of president, though he did say he will do everything he “can to help the new administration to be successful.”
The GOP Senate
The Associated Press, the news organization that States Newsroom looks to for race calls based on decades of experience, had announced 28 Senate races as of 1 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday.
GOP candidates flipped Montana, Ohio and West Virginia seats occupied by Jon Tester, Sherrod Brown and Joe Manchin III, respectively.
The AP hadn’t projected a win in six Senate campaigns, though Pennsylvania and Nevada were trending toward Republican pickups.
That would give the GOP at least 54 seats in the Senate and would likely erode the negotiating power of moderates like Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins.
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee communications director David Bergstein released a written statement Wednesday that the party expected to win some of the uncalled races.
“The remaining ballots being counted will continue to strengthen Democrats’ standing in our Senate races,” Bergstein wrote. “When this process of counting the votes concludes Democrats will have won races in multiple states carried by Trump and successfully limited the GOP’s potential gains on their historically favorable map.
“These results, which defy historical trends, are a stark demonstration of the strength of our candidates, and the unique support they have earned from voters of every political party in a challenging political atmosphere.”
Arizona was trending toward electing Democrat Ruben Gallego over Republican Kari Lake on Wednesday afternoon, though only 60% of the votes in that state had been counted.
In Michigan, Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin had amassed more votes than former Rep. Mike Rogers with 99% of the votes counted, giving Slotkin 48.6% and Rogers 48.3%.
Wisconsin voters appeared on track to reelect incumbent Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin over Republican Eric Hovde in a neck-and-neck race. With 99% of votes counted, Baldwin held a 49.4% lead over Hovde’s 48.5%.
The race remained extremely close, and the two were separated by fewer than 30,000 votes out of more than 3 million cast.
Maine independent Sen. Angus King, who typically votes with Democrats, had not yet had his race called by the AP on Wednesday afternoon, though he held a 52.2% lead over his Republican challenger’s 33.9%. Another 13.9% of the state’s votes went to other candidates, according to the AP.
While the Senate holds 100 lawmakers, they’re elected to six-year terms, meaning about one-third of the chamber is up for reelection or retirement during a given election year. This year, a total of 34 Senate seats were up.
No majority call in the House yet
The AP had announced 383 House races as of 1 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, but neither party has the 218 votes needed for majority control. Democrats held 182 seats and Republicans had 201 seats with 52 races yet to be called.
Republicans have maintained control of the House since January 2023, but hold a slim majority that Speaker Johnson has had to cautiously navigate.
He repeatedly had to strike a deal with Democrats in order to approve must-pass legislation to avoid a government shutdown while keeping members of his party’s right flank happy with the general direction of the chamber.
Democrats were still hoping to regain the House to block Republicans from having a trifecta. But McConnell said he’s confident in Johnson’s optimism that House Republicans will maintain control of the chamber.
“I hope that’s the case,” McConnell said.
Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Susan Wild conceded her race to Republican challenger Ryan Mackenzie on Wednesday morning in a statement, calling it a “bitterly disappointing outcome.”
“This election may not have gone the way we hoped, but the fight continues on,” Wild said. “Let us dust ourselves off and get right back up.”
Republicans also regained Michigan’s 7th Congressional District after Republican Tom Barrett defeated Democrat Curtis Hertel in the seat left open when Slotkin ran for the state’s Senate seat.
New York Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres wrote on his personal social media account that his party should have been more realistic about this year’s election.
“The signs of a decisive defeat were staring us in the face all along. We were simply in denial about them or willfully blind to them, substituting magical thinking for actual analysis,” Torres wrote. “In recent history, there’s no precedent for an incumbent party winning a presidential election when the percentage of Americans who think the country is on the wrong track or headed in the wrong direction is in the 20s. The structural challenge was simply insurmountable.”
Last updated 12:52 p.m., Nov. 6, 2024
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