Republican senators battling to win back the Senate majority say Democratic victories Tuesday in Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia are an early warning and a wake-up call ahead of next year’s elections.
The GOP senators, who are vying to defeat Democratic incumbents in Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other swing states, say Tuesday’s results show that abortion remains a potent issue that will help Democratic candidates next year.
Republican lawmakers also warn their party may have voter turnout problems that could hurt them in competitive Senate battlegrounds.
That problem was on display in Ohio where suburban voters turned out in big numbers to pass a ballot measure to protect the right to abortion from state government restrictions until the point when a fetus can survive on its own, which is roughly 23 weeks.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) called Tuesday’s election results “very disappointing.”
“Part of what we have to do is get the vote out. I don’t know if you all saw the disturbing number[s] [for] turnout. Clearly, these were races that Democrats didn’t win, Republicans lost. We didn’t show up,” he said.
“It’s about execution; it’s about messaging, and we’ve got to do a better job,” he said. “Yesterday, to me, was complete failure.”
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The ballot initiative enshrining abortion rights until the point of fetal viability passed in Ohio with 57 percent of the vote.
“It’s depressing,” Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) said of the election result in his home state. “It suggests that the pro-life movement, we need to figure out how to actually win because clearly there’s something that’s broken down between what we’re saying and what voters actually believe. We’ve got to figure out how to close that gap.”
“For pro lifers, last night was a gut punch. No sugar coating it,” he also wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Vance noted that a lot of people who didn’t like the way the ballot proposition was drafted still voted for it because they really didn’t like the six-week abortion ban that Republican Gov. Mike DeWine (Ohio) signed into law in 2019.
He said “suburban voters really turned out” while “a lot of rural voters, a lot of exurban voters didn’t turn out,” which he said is often true of off-year elections.
“We just lost a lot of self-identified Republicans and that’s a way to lose an election,” he said.
Elsewhere, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear won reelection to a second term in Kentucky with 52.5 percent of the vote, defeating Republican state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who had former President Trump’s endorsement and the backing of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
In Virginia, Democrats won control of the House of Delegates and kept their majority in the state Senate, despite Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s significant investment of time and fundraising to put Republicans in control of the state Legislature.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats won an important state Supreme Court race, giving them a 5-2 majority on the court, which could come into play next year if candidates challenge balloting rules or the outcome of the 2024 general election in the state.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said abortion and Republican candidates’ association with Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was stolen hurt Republicans on Tuesday.
“The more we’re talking about abortion, the worse we’re doing. The more we’re talking about the cost of living under [President] Biden, the better we’ll do,” said Romney, who noted that the political ads from Democrats in Virginia constantly stressed abortion rights.
“If we spend our time looking back to 2020 and the 2020 election, the American people have moved on and they want to talk about their future, not what happened in the past,” he said.
A Senate Republican strategist noted that Cameron embraced some of Trump’s rhetoric in the closing days of the campaign to boost Republican voter turnout in the election.
Cameron launched a television ad in mid-October touting Trump’s endorsement of this campaign and proclaiming Kentucky “Trump country.”
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, said Tuesday that “Cameron made a huge mistake by embracing Donald Trump and selling his soul to him.”
He warned that other Republican candidates need to learn from Cameron’s loss ahead of next year’s elections.
“Trump endorsed candidate Daniel Cameron loses the Governor’s race in DEEP RED Kentucky. Another loss for Trump. The losing will only end for Republicans if we rid ourselves of Donald Trump,” Christie posted on X.
Senate Republican Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) warned that Republican candidates need to be able to appeal to independent and moderate-GOP voters in next year’s general election.
“I think people in individual states have to think about not just a primary electorate, a primary-election electorate but a general-election electorate. A general-election electorate, it’s going to be independent voters, moderate Republicans and some conservative Democrats. You have to plan for that,” Thune said.
“There are a lot of factors that come into it, including who you align yourself with,” he said.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said “the takeaway” for Republicans is “the issue of abortion is an important one to the electorate” and the party should recognize that. She said the results in Ohio “was the most direct example.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said voters showed once again Tuesday that they don’t want the government to interfere in their personal decisions about reproductive health care.
Tillis said some Republican-controlled state legislatures have gone too far in restricting abortion. He said “some states … went further than they should have.”
“We’ve seen that get rejected in Ohio,” he added, arguing that North Carolina passed a law limiting abortion that was more carefully calibrated to the views of the state’s voters.
National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Steve Daines (R-Mont.) said Senate Republican candidates need to frame their positions on abortion in a way that appeals to voters and stay away from endorsing a federal abortion ban.
“It’s important to start saying you don’t support a federal ban on abortions, you need to put reasonable limits and contrasting that with the Democrats’ position,” he said, explaining that reasonable limits would include exceptions in abortion restrictions for cases of rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother.
“Framed that way, it turns into a winning issue,” Daines said of drawing contrast with Democrats’ position on abortion.
He said the political environment will be different next November because the election will largely be a referendum on President Biden’s track record.
“Joe Biden will be on the ballot in 2024, most likely, and the issues will be about inflation, about the border, about what’s going on in the world in terms of geopolitics. I think it will be a different issue set and a very different turnout model, as well,” Daines said.
Speaking of Tuesday’s results, he said the “top-level look at it says we didn’t get the turnout that we should’ve had on the Republican side.”