Congress

How the GOP took back the Senate — even while continuing to struggle in swing states

Published

2 years ago

November 12, 2024

Republicans celebrated as they took a decisive Senate majority last week: They’d finally figured out how to get past the candidate quality issues that had tanked them for two cycles.

But they still have a purple-state problem.

Even as President-elect Donald Trump swept every swing state, four of those battlegrounds are sending Democrats to the Senate. That’s the highest number of Senate-presidential ticket splits in 12 years, and a warning sign for Republicans as they try to protect and grow their ranks in 2026.

That 53-seat majority will be a boon to the GOP agenda next year. But three of Republicans’ wins were in solidly red seats in West Virginia, Ohio and Montana. They flipped a true swing state in Pennsylvania but suffered losses in Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona. That means they’ll fall well short of the 57 seats they might have had, thanks to undervoting, smaller Trump coattails and well-funded and disciplined Democratic opponents.

This was the fourth straight cycle in the Trump era that Senate Republicans struggled to win purple states. In theory, Trump could have pulled some of their top recruits over the finish line — he outperformed Senate GOP candidates in every single battleground state.

“Going into this there was a whole lot made out of the fact that Republican Senate candidates were running behind Trump,” said Steven Law, president of the GOP super PAC aligned with Senate leadership. “The easiest and clearest and most accurate explanation of that was that they were running against name brands who had huge advantages of incumbents.”

Both parties will heavily scrutinize the campaigns and their results — including Republicans’ ouster of incumbent Democratic Sen. Bob Casey in Pennsylvania — as they try to figure out how to compete during a second Trump administration. The good news, said Jason Thielman, executive director of the Senate GOP campaign arm, is Republicans will be better able to fully turn their attention to swing states now.

“Fast forward into future cycles, instead of having to spend so much money trying to unseat these Democrats in red states,” he said, “we’re now going to be able to focus all of our energy and resources on these purple, swing states.”

The midterms are historically difficult for the party of a sitting president. Controlling for candidate quality likely won Republicans the Senate this time, but it wasn’t enough to run the table. Heading into 2026, they will have to replicate their primary intervention strategy while also figuring out how to propel those candidates to victory in swingy states.

And Republicans had to scheme intensely against members of their own party to ensure victory in states that Trump won handily, underscoring the precarious position in which they find themselves. If left unchecked, their base will often elevate controversial candidates, like Kari Lake, who lost a second consecutive statewide run in Arizona.

Montana Sen. Steve Daines, who became chair of the Senate GOP campaign arm in 2022, decided to tackle that issue head-on.

“He focused on getting quality candidates, making sure they actually got the nomination, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday. “And as I said, to some criticism, candidate quality is absolutely essential.”

Avoiding messy primaries

Daines gathered his top aides in December 2022 for an hours-long strategy session on a crucial question: How could they avoid botching a third attempt in a row to capture the majority?

The past two cycles haunted them. In 2020, the GOP lost its majority. Two years later, tarnished Republican nominees flubbed winnable races from Arizona to Georgia to Pennsylvania. This year, they needed to net only two seats to guarantee the majority, and they had a clear path.

Huddled in the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s Capitol Hill headquarters, Daines’ team landed on a plan. They would aggressively intervene in primaries, recruiting strong contenders and clearing the field for them as much as possible.

Daines publicly spoke out against problematic candidates who were considering runs, such as Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke. And national Republicans moved to block others, including the 2018 candidates who lost to Sens. Joe Manchin in West Virginia and Jon Tester in Montana.

McConnell personally visited West Virginia to court Gov. Jim Justice, a popular Democrat-turned-Republican who the GOP believed would spook Manchin out of the race. And in the strategy session at the NRSC, Daines came up with a recruiting suggestion for his home state of Montana: former Navy Seal Tim Sheehy.

Daines also curried favor with Trump, becoming the first member of Senate GOP leadership to endorse his 2024 run. He lobbied Trump to back his preferred Senate picks, including Justice and Sheehy, giving them priceless currency in their primaries. Trump was crucial in clearing what could have been messy fields, including in Michigan, where a GOP primary candidate dropped out on stage at a Trump rally and endorsed the party pick.

The NRSC also needed to contend with other party groups — especially the anti-tax Club for Growth, a conservative organization known for antagonizing the party establishment in key primaries. Reps. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.) and Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) were two of their favorites and both were considering Senate runs.

The NRSC endeared itself to the Club when it intervened to reduce primary competition for GOP Rep. Jim Banks, whom the Club backed for an open Senate seat in deep-red Indiana.

Daines met with former Gov. Mitch Daniels, a centrist considering a run, and told him he would not endorse him in the primary, according to a person familiar with the meeting. Daniels decided to sit out the race.

“That probably was the early indication to us that we could work closely with him,” Club for Growth President David McIntosh said of Daines.

The group ultimately did not seem eager to oppose Daines’ picks. It committed $10 million to help Mooney in West Virginia but spent just a small portion of that. McIntosh said donors had second thoughts after it became clear that Mooney could not beat Justice.

In Montana, Rosendale spent months talking about running for Senate, worrying national Republicans who saw him flop in 2018.

McIntosh urged him to stay in the House. Daines had also tried to keep Rosendale at bay, and he sought Trump’s endorsement for Sheehy — which landed just hours after Rosendale launched his bid. Days later, Rosendale dropped out.

The result: no internecine brawls in either state, both of which they handily picked up last week.

Other pickups came in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Republican Dave McCormick, who had lost a Pennsylvania Senate primary in 2022, had no primary competition this time. Last week, he scored a shocking upset against Casey, who the Associated Press said was ousted by just a fraction of a percentage point.

A continued struggle in the battlegrounds

But McCormick’s battleground win was an anomaly.

Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) and Reps. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) won even as Trump swept their states.

Two major reasons: Trump voters splitting their tickets for Democratic Senate candidates or skipping the Senate races entirely.

In Arizona, Ruben Gallego campaigned at rodeos, barbeques and boxing gyms to pull in Latino voters who were supporting Trump.

Polls had shown for months that ticket-splitting could aid Democrats in tough races, and many of them ran campaigns to win over Trump voters. Democratic Senate candidates ended up running at least a bit ahead of Harris, while Republicans fell behind Trump.

“Rather than defining the terms of the race or our opponents around partisanship or anything related to the top of the ticket, we built a case against each Republican that was unique to them,” said Christie Roberts, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

In Arizona, Gallego campaigned at rodeos, barbeques and boxing gyms to pull in Latino voters who were supporting Trump.

In Michigan, Slotkin, a Jewish ex-CIA analyst, won the heavily Arab-American cities of Dearborn and Dearborn Heights even as Harris lost them amid complaints over the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza. She also did better in the white working class areas.

“The Democrats were fractured, which is why Harris lost — between the Gaza issue and the UAW lack of full support for Harris,” former Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said, referring to the powerful United Auto Workers union. “Those were traditionally pretty hardcore Democrats and they voted for Trump, and then went back to their base and voted Democrat the rest of the way.”

The results also reveal another problem for Senate Republicans: Tens of thousands of Trump supporters across key states appeared to skip the Senate ballot.

It’s normal for Senate races to see fewer votes cast than at the presidential level, but Trump-won counties had larger gaps than counties won by Harris, a Blue Light News analysis found, suggesting it was Trump voters in Republican areas in particular who left the Senate contests blank.

“There’s something to be said for the uniqueness of Trump and his ability to bring people out that are truly loyal to him and only vote for him,” Scott Jennings, a longtime GOP strategist said. “You wish it had trickled down a little more.”

McCormick’s team conducted survey research on those voters in Pennsylvania and struggled to do so during the summer. They poured money into advertising during football games in the fall to court Trump-only voters.

“Getting to them was our No. 1 media-buying effort,” said Mark Harris, a top strategist for McCormick’s campaign. “Our ability to do well in ‘26 will somewhat be contingent on reaching these exact people and pulling them out to vote.”

Can Republicans replicate the results in Pennsylvania?

The six presidential swing states Trump flipped this year have seen 19 Senate races since his first election. Republicans won just two of them: Sen. Ron Johnson’s 2022 reelection in Wisconsin and, now, McCormick.

One big reason for McCormick’s swing-state success: money.

He is the former CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund, boasting both deep personal wealth and a network of connected donors. McCormick’s allies formed a super PAC that spent over $50 million on his behalf. National Republicans spent even more. The race received more GOP spending than any Senate race beyond Ohio.

Other Republicans did not have that advantage. In Nevada and Wisconsin, the GOP was outspent in advertising by $20 to 25 million, according to the tracking firm AdImpact. In Arizona, it was $66 million.

Republicans put out a warning at the end of the summer that their candidates’ money disparity would cost them winnable seats if not quickly reversed.

To make up the gap, the NRSC exploited a loophole in campaign finance law, running ads through a joint fundraising committee to get the cheaper rate offered to candidates. Once the FEC declined to stop them, Republicans began using the strategy in earnest.

It made a massive difference. In Michigan, between Labor Day and Oct. 11, Democrats were collectively reaching a 33 percent larger broadcast audience than Republicans. But once Republicans took full advantage of their loophole, they took the lead from Oct. 11 to Election Day, reaching a roughly 10 percent bigger audience than Democrats, according to AdImpact.

Still, it came late in the cycle.

“The fact our candidates were so overwhelmed in September made these close races and knocking off incumbents just a little too steep of a hill,” Thielman said.

Republicans’ ability to crack the code to winning battlegrounds will determine the durability of their majority. The red-state Democrats and blue-state Republicans are largely extinct. With perhaps the exception of Republican Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, no party will have the kind of targets in 2026 like the GOP had in West Virginia, Montana and Ohio this year.

“Those are states that should have been gone in 2018 under better circumstances. This is just the end of the latest realignment. We’ve officially realigned,” said Jesse Hunt, a Republican operative who worked at the NRSC in the 2020 cycle. “Now we’re fighting over battlegrounds and Maine.”

Anthony Andragna and Jessica Piper contributed.

Congress

Mamdani boosts congressional slate ahead of primary election

Published

14 hours ago

June 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

NEW YORK — With just five days to go until the primary election in New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a stark warning to members of Congress who believe “incumbency is a substitute for action”: Watch out.

“People often ask me what I think of the state of the Democratic Party,” Mamdani said to the crowd at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn as he boosted his endorsed congressional candidates. “This slate here today is our answer. The Democratic Party must change.”

The democratic socialist framed Tuesday’s election as much more than what that means for New York, though. In recounting how people also ask him about the 2028 presidential election, he put it bluntly: “It starts now. It starts on Tuesday.”

“For far too long, our party has seen its job as managing decline instead of delivering material change for working people,” Mamdani said. “That old way of thinking will lose on Tuesday. And frankly, it will lose in South Carolina and New Hampshire. It will fall short of 270 electoral votes, because the party of the past will not be what leads us into the future.”

Mamdani, joined by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, urged his supporters to show up for his endorsed candidates “the way you showed up for me.” They include former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who’s challenging two-term Rep. Dan Goldman; state Assemblymember Claire Valdez, who’s vying for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat; and community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier, who’s trying to unseat five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Mamdani’s endorsed slate of legislative candidates were at the rally, too.

The rally featured standard stump speeches from the candidates, highlighting the need to support working class New Yorkers and immigrants. Speakers called out the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel group that has loomed over many of these primaries — despite no evident spending from its independent expenditure arm. Sanders also emphasized his call to ban super PACs, which have reshaped primaries across the city.

Taking place just hours after the massive ticker-tape parade celebrating the Knicks’ historic championship, there were also Knicks references galore.

“I hate to break it to you, but OG Anunoby is not here to save the day,” said Mamdani, who was wearing a Knicks jersey under his suit. “The only hands we can count on are ours.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks during a get out the vote rally ahead of New York's primary election on June 18, 2026, in Brooklyn.

Sanders, who is wildly popular in New York, previously endorsed Valdez and Lander. Both Valdez and Avila Chevalier are members of the Democratic Socialists of America and are backed by the city chapter in their bids. Sanders had not officially endorsed Avila Chevalier prior to the rally.

“Why are progressives and socialist candidates winning elections all across this country?” Sanders asked. “The answer in my view is not complicated. The working class of America understands that our current economic system is rigged, that it is designed to benefit the wealthy and the powerful.”

Polling has shown Lander with a lead over Goldman, and a tight race for Velázquez’s seat. Public polling is scarce in the Espaillat race, but recent internal surveys suggest Avila Chevalier is posing a real challenge to the incumbent. Mamdani endorsed her just weeks ago, much later than Lander and Valdez, but his engagement in the race has significantly elevated its profile.

“Six months ago, they told us this race was over before it started,” Avila Chevalier said at the rally. “They told us Adriano was untouchable, that he was an institution, that you don’t run against someone like him and win. That this district was his, and that we should wait our turn. And they said it with such confidence, like the outcome had already been written. Look around. Look at what we’ve built.”

Mamdani’s decision to get involved in congressional races is stress-testing how the new mayor navigates relations with powerful, well-respected party figures — many of whom he’s on the opposite side of.

Mamdani’s endorsement is expected to be a significant asset for his picks; he had dominant performances across these districts in last year’s mayoral primary. And that shine doesn’t seem to have dulled. Recent polling has shown that Mamdani has high approval ratings.

Goldman did not support Mamdani during last year’s mayoral primary or the general election, as Lander has often pointed out. Espaillat backed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the primary, but supported Mamdani in the general election. Valdez’s opponents, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and city Council Member Julie Won, both supported Mamdani in the primary.

The mayor has been active on the trail for his congressional candidates of choice in the closing stretch of the campaign. And he touted them all in an advertisement that ran during the first game of the Knicks’ finals run.

Still, Lander has tried to keep some distance. When asked at a recent press conference why he would appear in that ad with Avila Chevalier, who attended a pro-Palestinian rally the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in 2023 — the same rally Lander said he left the DSA over — he said it was an “opportunity to show New Yorkers that politics can be a team sport.” He also clarified that he has not endorsed candidates in any other congressional primaries.

Avila Chevalier told reporters that she went to that rally to “stand against” Israel engaging in “a response that is often disproportionate and creates a greater loss of life.” She added that she has “condemned Hamas” and does “not believe that celebrating the loss of anybody’s life is OK.”

Kings Theatre isn’t located in any of the districts these congressional hopefuls are trying to represent — though it neighbors the seats that Lander and Valdez have their eyes on.

It’s especially far from Espaillat’s district, which includes parts of upper Manhattan and the Bronx.

While handing out campaign literature to people walking out of the subway in Hamilton Heights, Blue Light News asked Espaillat if he had thoughts about Avila Chevalier appearing at the rally.

“I’m rallying right here in my district with my constituents — not in Brooklyn,” he replied.

Jason Beeferman contributed to this report.

Congress

Meta faces calls for Congress to probe scam ads targeting seniors

Published

18 hours ago

June 18, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Retirement groups are calling on Congress to investigate Meta over a wave of social media scams targeting older Americans.

In a letter sent Thursday to House Homeland Security Committee Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) and ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the groups alleged Meta has been slow to take down fraudulent ads, leaving seniors vulnerable to financial loss. The letter, shared exclusively with POLITICO, was signed by the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Postal Workers Union Retirees and the American Federation of Teachers, among others.

“Fraudulent Medicare ads have proliferated on Meta platforms and too many seniors are getting scammed while Meta profits,” said Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans. “We are calling on Congress to investigate how these scams are allowed to spread, what Meta knew about them, and why stronger protections are not in place. Seniors should not be left vulnerable while scammers and tech companies cash in.”

The letter’s demands follow a report published last month by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit advocacy group, which alleged that Meta has profited by leaving up fraudulent ads, many of which target Medicare recipients.

“Scammers are determined criminals who use increasingly sophisticated tactics to defraud people and evade detection,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “We aggressively fight scams on and off our platforms because they’re not good for us or the people and businesses that rely on our services and for years we’ve been one of law enforcement’s strongest partners in the fight against this type of online crime — identifying criminals, disrupting their crimes and helping bring them to justice.”

Stone pointed to several examples of Meta’s efforts to combat scams on its platform, including a recent collaboration with U.S. and Thai law enforcement to disrupt online scams.

It’s not the first time Meta has faced scrutiny over the scams: Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) urged the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities Exchange Commission to open an investigation into the company in November after Reuters reported that Meta in internal documents projected 10 percent of its 2024 revenue would come from fraudulent ads. And in February, a group of bipartisan lawmakers pressed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over its plans to prevent and combat fraud on its platforms.

Reps. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) and Lou Correa (D-Calif.) also introduced bipartisan legislation earlier this year to combat predatory scam ads.

Congress

Congress lays out path for final passage of housing bill

Published

18 hours ago

June 18, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Congress is expected to send a landmark, bipartisan housing affordability bill to President Donald Trump’s desk by the end of next week as the Senate and House schedule action on the legislation in the coming days.

The Senate has teed up the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act for final passage on Monday, after completing all its necessary procedural votes this week.

The legislation will then move on to the House where GOP leadership plans to open debate on Wednesday, with a vote expected as early as the same day, according to six people familiar with the vote granted anonymity to discuss plans.

House leadership plans to suspend the rules, requiring a two-thirds majority vote, to speed up the bill’s path to Trump’s desk. Final passage could be pushed to Thursday depending on timing, the people said.

The housing bill aims to tackle housing affordability and boost homeownership and supply ahead of a midterm election dominated by cost-of-living concerns.

The four lawmakers leading the negotiations over the legislation — Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.), ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) and ranking member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) — came to an agreement Tuesday afternoon after months of back and forth on the bill’s contents.

The housing affordability legislation, which the White House supports, contains a provision limiting the role of large institutional investors in the single-family housing market, which was a key condition for Trump to sign the bill.