In every election cycle in the 21st
century there are certain states for either party where the organization is so overwhelmingly
in favor of one party or the other that the official party apparatus has no
doubt given up on years ago. The GOP has
made a fair amount of effort in the last decade to on their side to compete in
states they couldn't before and certainly in this cycle the DNC is making an
effort in a way it hasn't since Howard Dean was forced out of the chairmanship
in 2008.
But it doesn't change the fact that for
both parties there are many states that neither parties are making an effort
in. The GOP is essentially abandoning states like New Jersey, Massachusetts and
Delaware to Cory Booker, Ed Markey and Chris Coons respectively. Likewise the
Democrats are essentially yielding Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia to Tom
Cotton, Bill Hagerty and Shelly Moore Capito. This is understandable on both
sides: there's only so much money to go around and both sides are trying to put
their resources to where it will do good. The Republicans this cycle have to
play defense and have few, if any real opportunities to make gains and while
the Democrats have been expanding the map immensely this cycle as Trump's
approval ratings have tanked there is only so far they are willing to go. Much as they loathe Mitch McConnell, they
have no intention of spending their time to get Charles Booker to become a new
Democrat.
Now as I've mentioned a few times before
the map for 2026 overwhelming favors the Democrats. The Republicans are
defending 24 seats this cycle, the Democrats only ten. Despite their doubts at
the end of 2025 the math was always in their favor going into this November and
it is increasingly looking like they will take the Senate majority back,
perhaps with an even bigger number then they expected. But to do so that meant
that by necessity there were several states where the Democratic Party hasn't
done well in decades, much less this century.
That being said there are still five
states this cycle which are overwhelmingly and deservingly safe for the GOP
that the observer will have to watch. I'm not saying that an upset will happen
or even if it many cases the race will even be close. In all of the states I'm
about to list the Democratic Party at a state level has atrophied to a point
that in two of the states I'm about to list whatever chance they have won't
have to do with a Democratic candidate at all. For the reason, with two
exceptions, little attention will be paid by the media in the next couple of
months and certainly not on election night.
All of the candidates face climbs so
uphill that they might as well be mountains. Regardless of what polling
information we might get all of the states are ranked as Safe Republican or
Likely Republican – and in the two that aren't, I think the pollsters are being
ridiculously generous. These states are not Iowa or Alaska; there's no history
of Democrats doing well for me to hang my hand on. In all of them the
challenger's have two chances: slim and none and honestly they barely even have
slim.
But one of the hallmarks of a healthy
democracy – and I'm under no illusions about how battered America's is right
now – is that there has to be competitiveness across all of America. That
includes states that one side has abandoned to the other years if not decades
ago. (Because I actually am fair and balanced I intend to deal with an
article that deals with where the GOP needs to do better going forward. The
leftists on this site should consider themselves duly warned.)
So I'm going to deal with five states
that are all almost certainly going to go Republican on election night and why
we need to look at them anyway. In a
couple of cases the Democrats might have a chance to win but that is more due
to circumstances then anything else. I'm going to go in order of likelihood of
something surprising happening on election night – or from one-in-a-million to
snowball's chance in hell, if you prefer.
South Carolina
If you've read my article this cycle you
know that I had overwhelming doubts that Annie Andrews, the great white hope of
progressives in South Carolina had a snowball's chance in hell of winning
against Lindsay Graham this cycle. I'd been down this road six years ago with
Jaime Harrison who the Party was picking to go after Graham in great detail as
the man who would absolute do it – and he lost by 10 points. Why we then named
Harrison the chair of the DNC is just another sign of how clueless we are.
The big difference now of course is that
Andrews isn't running against Lindsay Graham.
It's been a long time since a candidate
running for reelection passed away while running for reelection. The last time
it happened was when Paul Wellstone died while running in Minnesota in 2002.
Wellstone's name was still on the ballot but Walter Mondale agreed to serve if
he was elected. It didn't work out and Norm Colman won instead.
The difference was Graham passed away in
July and South Carolina had different election rules. Darline Graham, Lindsay's
sister, was appointed to serve as an interim Senator and that Trump decided to
endorse her to run in her own right. It has taken both a general primary and a
run-off for Darline Graham to finally win the nomination on August 24th.
Now the reasoning I thought this might
give aide to Annie Andrews was built in the idea of chaos that we saw earlier
this cycle when Graham Platner was forced to step down in June and was replaced
by Troy Jackson. I assumed that this chaos could only help the incumbent Susan
Collins and while the polls do show Jackson leading her the last few months
having been through this with Sara Gideon six years ago I have a healthy
skepticism. One could look at Andrews's chances as the mirror version of this,
particularly as she facing a neophyte candidate who never held elected office
prior to this – and has already made a serious gaffe.
In the Republican debate between her and
Ralph Norman, who finished second to her in the run-off, Darline Graham was
asked a question about Taiwan and China. Graham paused and then responded:
"I'm not that informed on national security." The Republican audience
gasped and booed. While this didn't stop her from winning the runoff, it took a
cash infusion and Trump campaigning for her to lock up the runoff. And Graham's arguing that she is a political
outsider won't be a cudgel she can use as easily against Andrews, who has also
never held elected office in her life and has the benefit of being more then
twenty years younger than Graham.
While I believe Andrews will be able to
use this as a cudgel to make the race against Graham more competitive then it
would have been against her brother, I say any real chance Andrews has of
winning shaky at best. No Democrat has won statewide office in South Carolina
since Fritz Hollings did in 1998 and Hollings was from an entirely different
era of politics than Andrews is. The Democrats will do better in the South this
cycle then they have in nearly 20 years. Andrews is almost certainly not going
to be lifted to victory.
Kansas
As I've written in an earlier article
Kansas hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. The last time a race
for the Senate was even close to competitive in Kansas was in 1974 when Bob
Dole came within 13,500 votes of losing reelection for the first time in the
aftermath of Nixon's resignation.
The last time Kansas was even
competitive it was Pat Roberts ran against Independent Greg Orman, after the
Democratic nominee withdrew. Even then Roberts won reelection by nearly ten
percent. That year Roger Marshall ran for the first time against Barbara
Bollier. Bollier made some progress, winning a few counties that hadn't gone
Democrat in decades – or in the case of Johnson county, forever – but he still
won by nearly 11 percent.
Despite that and the victory and
reelection of Laura Kelly in the past decade few seriously considered Kansas
would be in play. Indeed when Adam Hamilton first announced his intent to
challenge Marshall's in his bid for reelection he actually considered running
as an independent. Instead Hamilton chose to run as a Democrat a role which
might not fit the Democratic model.
Hamilton is the founding pastor of the
United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, the largest UMC church
in the entire country. Hamilton is an author of more than 30 books; he has
preached at the National Prayer service during Obama's second inauguration
festivities and was appointed to Obama's President Advisory Council on
Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnership.
Conservatives have been trying to use
his religious leadership against him, with Marshall arguing he's too woke for
Kansas. It's worth noting Kansas has a fairly sizable bloc of moderate voters
and its constitution protection abortion rights. And he faces attacks from both
the right and the left, who are wary of mixing government with religion. (This
is, for the record, part of the reason Democrats keep losing elections they
could win.) But for those who've argued about the hypocrisy of the religious right
and the contradiction with scripture it is refreshing to see a minister who
says: "When did it become woke to care for your neighbor?"
I truly believe Hamilton would have had
an easier time winning had he ran as an independent. The few polls that we have
in this state show the race close with either candidate within the margin of
error in terms of the lead. I actually think this race will be closer than
South Carolina in large part because Kansas has shown signs of Democratic
strength at a statewide level in recent years that just aren't in South
Carolina. But even that has its limits. In 2022 when Laura Kelly won reelection
Jerry Moran won his third term in a landslide with over 60 percent of the vote.
For Hamilton to beat those odds it would take, well, a miracle.
Mississippi
Last August I wrote how Joe Kennedy III
was doing something that most Democrats and all Progressives would have
considered a fool's errand. He was
spending a lot of time and energy in some of the reddest states in the Deep
South making an effort to rebuild the Democratic Party. I made it clear that I
didn't think whatever efforts he would do would be seen in this election cycle
or for many to come.
Later this year we'll get a chance to
see some of his work and I think the best possibility will be the Mississippi
Senate race. As I wrote more than once a few years back Brandon Presley's
challenge of the incumbent Republican governor Haley Barbour came within a few
points of succeeding and might very well have had Mississippi progressives not
sat out the election altogether.
This year Cindy Hyde-Smith, the state's
junior senator is running for reelection. Running for her first full-term in
2020 against Democrat Mike Espy Hyde- Smith won by nearly ten points but underperformed then President Trump in
that state by nearly six percent. Now
she will be running against Democrat Scott Colom.
Colom has served as a District Attorney
in Mississippi since 2016. Biden nominated him to be a federal district judge
but the nomination stalled in the Senate when Republicans including Hyde-Smit
blocked the appointment.
As with Espy six years ago Colom has
been surprisingly competitive when it comes to fundraising in Mississippi. And
he faces a decidedly uphill battle: even the most generous polls list him at 6
percent behind Hyde-Smith.
Despite the considerable signs of
improvements the Democrats will be making in Dixie this cycle Colom has no
realistic chance of winning. However I think it will be instructive to compare
his run against Jamie Davis in Louisiana. Compared to Colom Davis has been very
prominent about his progressive ties and the party, particularly the left-wing
of it, has been pushing his candidacy far more than they have Colom's in terms
of fundraising. Both Davis and Colom are given less then a five percent chance
of winning their respective states. It will be instructive to see who comes
closer to winning in these border states: the candidate backed by the left-wing
or the one based by the centrist one.
Idaho
I referred to the last two candidates in
a separate article about independents running for office and I think its worth
going into detail on the two are the most interesting here.
In Idaho Republican Jim Risch is running
for reelection for the third time. Running against him is Todd Achilles who has
an interesting history. Achilles was registered as a Republican before February
of 2024 but changed his representation to Democrat so that he would qualify to
replace one for a seat in the Idaho House of Representatives. Six months after
that he changed his representation to unaffiliated, arguing that issues such as
the national debt and foreign policy was a reason he left both parties. He
resigned in July of 2025 to run for the Senate as an independent. In May David
Roth won the Democratic primary and earlier this week, chose to withdraw in
favor of Achilles.
He has criticized Republicans on
supporting the Iran War, has criticized cuts to Medicaid and has been a major
critic of DOGE, particularly in regard to the VA. But he also believes in
reducing the national debt and is opposed to 'corporate socialism' and supports
the administrations' approach on the consolidation of the meat-packing
industry.
Achilles's represent a chance to see how
well a true independent performers in a western state where some have had
success. I'd argue if Achilles comes within ten percent of Risch in the general
election it will be a marker for future independent campaigns going forward.
Montana
In the Montana Senate Race incumbent
Steve Daines chose to retire last earlier this year. U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme
chose to run and won the Republican
nomination. The Democratic primary was more crowded but Alani Bankhead won the
nomination there.
However there's a third candidate on the
ballot Seth Bodnar the former President of the University of Montana who
resigned in January and officially announced he would run as an independent.
During his run Jon Tester a Democrat who was defeated in the 2024 election
revealed a text message in which he made it clear the Democratic party was
'poison' to his campaign.
Bankhead at the moment is refusing to
withdraw from her campaign to clear the field for Bodnar. The few polls that
are available show that Bodnar in a one on one race would have a better chance
than Bankhead. What's not in dispute is that Alme will easily win if both stay
in the race and the deadline is next Monday for one of them too.
Since at this juncture neither Bankhead
nor Bodnar has chosen to withdraw it’s a given Alme will win. The interest in this race is whether Bodnar
manages to poll ahead of Bankhead in the general election. I'm not wild about any
vindication whether a Democratic brand is 'poison' but if it means that the
party learns from it, I think it’s medicine we have to take going forward.
Just to be clear like everyone else who's
watching the returns on election night I will be focusing all my attention on
the races I've highlighted in my previous articles. I'll be looking at these
races in the days immediately afterwards – and I hope the Democrats do as well
for their future.
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