WASHINGTON — The race for control over Congress is as close as it’s ever been, with barely two dozen seats in the House of Representatives and a handful in the Senate likely to determine the majority this november and whether a single party comes to power and defends the White House.
Lawmakers return to Washington for a three-week legislative sprint away from the campaign trail where races have become “trench warfare” and a seat-by-seat fight. Many of the most high-profile races are being fought in Montana, New York, California and beyond, far from the presidential battleground states that Republicans are fighting over Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris.
The summer reorganization that replaced the president, Joe Biden With Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket, the lower-ballot campaigns enter this fall with a virtual toss-up, an uncertain situation in which every seat won or lost could make the difference in the party’s takeover.
Strategists say it’s not so much the fundamentals of the individual races that have changed, but which side has the energy and enthusiasm to get their voters to actually show up and cast their ballots.
Money, volunteers and the enthusiasm of voters are flowing into the Democratic campaigns since Harris replaced Biden. That’s a challenge for Republicans who entered the election cycle favored to win and buoyed by Trump’s comeback attempt, despite the criminal charges casts a shadow over his possible return to the White House.
Trump and Republicans are working feverishly to regain the momentum they enjoyed from the GOP convention in Milwaukee and the Supreme Court decision that former presidents broad immunity from prosecution, including some acts related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 elections and for the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Trump campaign officials held a private phone call with House Republicans on Friday, according to another Republican who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private call, in which they assured them that the movement is increasingly shifting toward Trump as they plot their future strategies.
“There’s a lot of whining and a lot of concern about where this election is going,” said Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, a Trump ally who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm.
Speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, Daines cast the GOP Senate candidates as warriors and predicted that the enthusiasm of rural residents “crawling over broken glass” to vote for Trump will help Republicans like Sam Brown, who is challenging Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev.
Still, the fundraising gap between Republicans and Democrats is a problem, GOP strategists on both sides of the Capitol say, leaving them without the money to fund advertising and on-the-ground organizing.
“We still have a lot of work to do,” Daines said.
The days of supermajorities in the House and Senate are long gone. In their place has emerged a new era of razor-thin margins, leaving little room for error in political campaigns or actual governing.
Democrats will almost certainly see their slim majority shrink to a 50-50 split with Republicans with the retirement of independent Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. His departure clears the way for Republican Gov. Jim Justice to win that seat easily.
Trump is wildly popular in Montana, where Senate Republicans see their best chance to go on the offensive as a challenge to Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. But Tester is also a popular figure in the Big Sky State, where a whopping $238 million is being spent on advertising.
Senate Republicans had the advantage this cycle, with few incumbents to protect, allowing them to challenge Democrats with hand-picked, often wealthy recruits in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin. Democrats have only recently gone on the offensive in long-shot races against Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida.
But incumbents often bring longevity and name recognition to the race that make them tough to beat, as in Pennsylvania, where Democrat Sen. Bob Casey is facing a challenge from Republican Dave McCormick, and in Ohio, where Sen. Sherrod Brown aired a playful cookie-eating TV ad as he ran against Republican Bernie Moreno.
The open seat in Democratic-leaning Maryland is being contested by the state’s popular former Republican governor, Larry Hoganwho was approached by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to run, faces a tough race against County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, who would make history as one of the few black women elected to the Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has predicted Democrats retain their majority. In the event of a split in the Senate, majority control goes to the party in the White House, because the vice president can cast tie-breaking votes.
“Democrats have never been in a stronger position to defend our Senate majority,” said Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, who heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
In the House of Representatives, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana has toured some two dozen states this summer as what he calls an “ambassador of hope” in his party’s fight to save its tiny majority.
Republicans are trying to protect 18 Republicans in Democratic-majority districts where Biden won, particularly in coastal New York and California. They are also going on the offensive elsewhere to challenge Democrats.
But House Democrats, whose campaign manager, Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington state, was among those who spoke privately with Biden about the potential lower-ballot deficit as he weighed his decision to withdraw, are benefiting from Harris’ momentum.
Democrats are scrambling to protect their own most beleaguered lawmakers in the House, a handful of pragmatic legislators including Ohio’s Marcy Kaptur, Pennsylvania’s Matt Cartwright and a trio of younger lawmakers leading the centrist Blue Dog coalition: Alaska’s Mary Peltola, Washington state’s Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Maine’s Jared Golden.
They are both running against well-known Republicans: Nick Begich, who comes from a political family in Alaska; Joe Kent, who supports Trump in Washington; and former NASCAR driver Austin Theriault from Maine.
Republicans have been scrambling to diversify their own ranks, which just a few years ago was a party of mostly white men and few women. Elections 2018for example, left about a dozen Republican women and no black Republicans in the House.
GOP Rep. Richard Hudson, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said House Republicans are “exactly where we expected to be,” acknowledging it is “trench warfare.”
Because many of the House elections take place far from the presidential battleground, candidates are forced to orchestrate their own actions, along with congressional committees, to swing the vote.
House Democrats are seeing an organic outpouring of mobilized volunteers. In August, they knocked on more than 377,000 doors and made more than 845,000 phone calls, more than in the previous three months combined, according to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
House Republicans have set up dozens of “Battle Stations” to reach voters and get them out to the polls, particularly in areas without Trump’s campaign infrastructure. They also report seeing large crowds of enthusiastic voters at events as Johnson traveled around the country in contested regions.
Fundraising remains uneven, with Democrats outpacing Republicans with Harris leading the way, and Republicans are warning their own donors not to sit on the sidelines.
“We’re on track to flip the Senate,” said Jason Thielman, executive director of the NRSC. But he said the Democrats’ “huge money advantage is a real problem. The biggest problem that’s going to keep Senate Republicans from having a great night in November is the money crunch.”
Both the DSCC and the DSCC saw record online fundraising in the days following Harris’ campaign announcement and her team sent $25 million for lower ballot boxesincluding $10 million each this week to House and Senate committees.
DCCC spokesman Viet Shelton said public enthusiasm for electing a Democratic majority to the House of Representatives “has never been higher.” He said voters want to elect “sitting senators who get things done,” not a “weird bunch” of Republican candidates aligned with Trump.
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Tom Beaumont, Associated Press editor in Las Vegas, contributed to this report.