McConnell sees incumbency as obstacle to GOP takeover of Senate

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) views incumbency as a significant advantage for Democrats in the battle for the Senate, an acknowledgement that the quality of the veteran incumbents running for reelection is a problem for his party.

Former President Trump is leading President Biden in several battleground states, yet Senate GOP candidates are trailing Senate incumbents in some of the same states, including Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.).

Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) face much tougher climates in states that Trump is expected to win easily, but they are hanging tough and have won out over tough odds in the past.

McConnell says the power of incumbency explains the divergence between Trump and Senate GOP candidates in battleground polls. He also argued it was a lesson Republicans already learned painfully in the midterm elections two years ago, when they failed to take back the Senate.

“I think incumbency, as we learned in ’22, is an advantage. Not a single incumbent lost in ’22. Sen. Daines and I have never said we thought this was going to be easy,” McConnell told reporters during a recent press conference with National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) Chair Steve Daines (Mont.).

“We’ve got to beat an incumbent in Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and anywhere else we can, but we never said it was going to be a piece of cake,” McConnell said.

McConnell’s respect for the power of incumbency five months out from Election Day is notable, given that competitive Senate races overwhelmingly broke the same way as the presidential race in 2016 and 2020.

But this is an unusual election in that both Biden and Trump are well known to voters and are weighed down with an array of political problems tied to how voters view them personally.

Democratic senators say voters in focus groups and during constituent meetings repeatedly raise concerns about Biden’s age, while Trump is facing 91 felony charges and just sat through weeks of embarrassing testimony related to hush money payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels.

Steve Jarding, a Democratic strategist and former adviser to the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, said that while Senate races are getting more nationalized, a significant number of Trump voters may want to split their ticket to put a check on the new president, if he is indeed elected.

“Biden’s doing a horrible job of telling America what he did and the good things he’s done,” he added. “That’s a problem. It’s a huge problem.”

He said while many voters may want to move on from the Biden administration, they don’t want to give Trump and Republicans unified control of government.

“I think what’s happening is Americans are saying they want to hedge their bet against Trump. That’s why Democrats are doing well in polls in Senate and House races. It’s sad, but Americans don’t trust Biden,” he said.

The biggest question in the battle for control of the Senate is whether the personal brands of incumbents such as Tester, Brown and Rosen are strong enough to outperform Biden’s.

Of 69 Senate races in 2016 and 2020, only one Senate incumbent won in a state that their party’s presidential candidate lost — Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who won reelection in 2020, even though Biden won her home state with 53 percent of the vote.

Mike Berg, communications director for the NRSC, said the trend of recent elections shows Senate Democrats are inextricably linked to Biden.

“The fact of the matter is there is less ticket splitting today than at any other time in American history. These Democrats are going to win or lose with Biden regardless of their eleventh-hour attempts to create distance from him after backing every single one of his disastrous policies,” he said.

Yet recent polls show Senate Democratic candidates defying gravity by running well ahead of Biden, something Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) recently attributed to the quality of his incumbents.

“All the four battlegrounds they tested, every one of our Democrats was ahead, and that’s because our Democrats are great candidates. Every week they are going implementing the great work we did in 2022, 2021, 2023,” he told reporters in reaction to polling across several states.  

A New York Times/Siena College poll conducted in battleground states earlier this month showed Trump leading Biden in five of six battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania — and the two presidential candidates tied in Wisconsin.

Yet the same poll, conducted from April 28 to May 9, showed Rosen leading Republican candidate Sam Brown 40 percent to 38 percent in Nevada, and Pennsylvania’s Casey leading Republican David McCormick 46 percent to 41 percent.

It also showed Baldwin leading Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde 49 percent to 41 percent, and Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who is running to succeed retiring Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), ahead of GOP candidate Kari Lake 45 percent to 41 percent.

An internal Republican poll conducted in late May showed Tester trailing Republican candidate Tim Sheehy by only 4 points in deep-red Montana, roughly the same margin that a J.L. Partners survey of 503 likely voters showed in late March, which was 3 points.

Tester won reelection in 2012 when Mitt Romney, the GOP nominee for president that year, carried Montana with 55 percent of the vote, beating President Obama by 13.5 points.

An Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey published in mid-March showed Brown leading Senate Republican nominee Bernie Moreno, 39 percent to 34 percent.

Ohio Sen. JD Vance (R) expressed concern that Trump is expected to beat Biden so soundly in the Buckeye State that some Republican voters might not be motivated to show up to vote in the Senate race.

“I actually worry that Biden is doing so poorly in Ohio, which obviously [is] good on the presidential side. But I want people in Ohio to actually turn out, and if the perception — rightfully — is that Biden is getting his rear end kicked in Ohio, you worry about turnout among voters. If the turnout among our voters is lower, Trump will still win, but it might affect some of the down-ballot races,” Vance told The Hill.

“We have a job in the Ohio Republican Party to keep people engaged. Because, yes, Trump is going to win, and I think he’s going to win big, but there are a lot of other races on the ballot that matter,” he added.

The strength of the Senate Democratic incumbents and candidates is notable given Biden’s low approval ratings in those same battleground states and voters’ generally sour view of the economy and inflation.

Tester, Brown and Rosen have tried to distance themselves on various hot-button issues, such as border security and support for the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

Tester recently confronted senior administration officials over the situation at the border, while Brown urged Biden to be more aggressive in protecting American workers from Chinese imports. Rosen broke with the president over withholding bombs from Israel.

More than 6 out of 10 voters in Senate battleground states disapprove of Biden’s job performance, while only 21 percent rate the economy as excellent or good, and 51 percent rate it as poor.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) is touting candidate quality as one of the top reasons its strategists believe Democrats will hold onto their Senate majority.

DSCC communications director David Bergstein circulated a memo Tuesday arguing that Senate Republicans have a “candidate quality” problem with their recruits.

The memo cited a spate of negative articles published in recent weeks about GOP candidates in Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada and Michigan by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, CNN, The Los Angeles Times and The Detroit News, among others.

“It’s only May, and it’s already clear Senate Republicans recruited inferior candidates they failed to vet. Their lies and liabilities pose major vulnerabilities and will form an important part of the case Democrats will utilize to disqualify GOP Senate candidates with voters in each race,” Bergstein wrote in conclusion.

Republicans, however, argue that pumping opposition research against candidates through the media is nothing new and will be offset by the votes Democrats have taken in support of Biden’s agenda and against Republican proposals to crack down on illegal immigration and crime.

Berg, the spokesman for the NRSC, said the polling numbers in battleground states will change as Senate GOP candidates get more media coverage and help from political advertising closer to Election Day.

“Our challengers are still building name ID, which is the reason they are lagging the presidential ballot at this point. Expect the horse race numbers to tighten significantly as Republican candidates begin advertising,” he said.

“The more important number to look at right now is the Democrat incumbents’ ballot share – all of which are consistently below 50. Democratic incumbents are maxing out their vote share right now while our candidates still have significant room to grow,” he said.