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Three-Way Democratic Primary
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| Welcome back. | ||
| Joining us now to talk all things Senate is Senate and Governor's Editor for Cook Political Report, Jessica Taylor. | ||
| Jessica, thanks so much for being with us this morning. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| All right, let's dive right in. | ||
| Obviously, this is going to be a busy year for the Senate, midterm elections, and the House. | ||
| Remind our audience, though, what control of Senate currently looks like, and how many seats do Democrats need to win to take that control? | ||
| Right now, Democrats, or Republicans rather, have a 52-48 majority, and they need four seats in order to flip that. | ||
| And the number of seats that are up, Republicans have more seats up, but they're in safer seats. | ||
| And so that four is really difficult to do because there's only one Republican-held seat that is up in a state that Kamala Harris won, which is Maine Susan Collins. | ||
| And even though she sits in a blue state, she has won election after election. | ||
| Despite that, the next possible pickup that we rate as a Tosh Up is in North Carolina, where Chuck Schumer successfully recruited former Governor Roy Cooper into the race. | ||
| You have former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Watley running there. | ||
| And then beyond those two, you have to go into double-digit Trump states. | ||
| So they are looking at states like Ohio, where they did get former Senator Sherrod Brown to run, or Alaska, where just last week former Congresswoman Mary Peltola announced. | ||
| But then Democrats also have their own states that they're defending. | ||
| They're defending an open seat in Michigan that has a very crowded and potentially contentious Democratic primary that's not going to be decided until August. | ||
| They're defending Georgia with John Ossoff. | ||
| I was going to ask you about Georgia here, that seat held by Democrat John Osoff. | ||
| Who is challenging him and what are the risks to Ofsoff in that seat? | ||
| Obviously, we know he won it during a special election, I believe, before. | ||
| Talk to it. | ||
| Walk us through that race. | ||
| Yeah, so this is a place where Republicans didn't get their number one recruit that they wanted, who was former or current governor Brian Kemp, who is term limited. | ||
| So there is a three-way primary right now happening between two congressmen, Buddy Carter, who represents the Savannah area, Mike Collins, who represents the Athens area, and then former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley. | ||
| Now Dooley has Kemp's endorsement, but he's a newcomer to politics. | ||
| Carter's put in a lot of his own money. | ||
| Collins has gotten a lot of county chairmen and different things across the state. | ||
| So this is the primary is still pretty up in the air. | ||
| Trump has not weighed in here. | ||
| And as we see in most Republican primaries, that can be really determinative if he decides to. | ||
| Now, how much did Trump win Georgia by? | ||
| And what is the risk to Osoff, no matter who wins the Republican primary on his side? | ||
| Osoff is obviously running in a very trumpy state. | ||
| Yes, he is. | ||
| But I mean, again, you know, Trump lost it in 2020 very narrowly, won it again in 2024. | ||
| But this is in a midterm election like we saw, like we saw with Raphael Warnock that won that seat in 2022. | ||
| It went to a runoff. | ||
| That could happen again. | ||
| They've still got to get to 50% plus one if there's more candidates in that race. | ||
| But Osoff has amassed a massive war chest. | ||
| He's been able to do that because he doesn't have a Democratic primary challenger. | ||
| He's been a prodigious fundraiser. | ||
| So Osoff, I think, is sitting better in this position than we believe that he might have been, say, at the beginning of 2025. | ||
| So this seat, I think, is looking better for Democrats in that regard because Republicans have a messy primary still. | ||
| Ossoff has been able to amass money. | ||
| In midterm years, we do see potentially higher black turnout in the Atlanta area and things to all things. | ||
| And if that Trump base stays home in a midterm election, if they're very frustrated with him, as we see polls indicate, that can certainly help Osoff. | ||
| Now let's turn a little bit further away from Georgia to Michigan. | ||
| The current Democrat in that Senate seat, Gary Peters, is retiring, creating an open seat. | ||
| Who is running to fill it? | ||
| And what is the current poll in that? | ||
| So right now you have really a reverse of what happened in 2024, which was also an open seat when Deputy Stapenow retired. | ||
| And Democrats coalesced behind Alyssa Slotkin versus Republicans had a primary there. | ||
| The opposite is happening right now. | ||
| The 2024 nominee, former Congressman Mike Rogers, is running again. | ||
| Now he narrowly, very narrowly lost that seat, but it was at the same time that Trump, of course, won Michigan. | ||
| So he underperformed Trump. | ||
| So he needs to get back out Trump voters that is typically more difficult in a midterm environment than we have seen in Michigan. | ||
| But he is currently very narrowly leading the Democratic challengers in polls. | ||
| But Democrats have a three-way primary that, again, isn't going to be resolved until August. | ||
| And so you have current Congresswoman Haley Stevens running. | ||
| She's seen as the choice of the Democratic establishment. | ||
| She formerly worked on the auto bailouts and things. | ||
| And then you have State Senator Mallory McMorrow. | ||
| She sort of went viral for a House floor speech. | ||
| So she's sort of running a sort of a new progressive in a way. | ||
| And then further left in the progressive lane, you have former Wayne County Health Chief Abdul Al-Syed. | ||
| He's been endorsed by Bernie Sanders. | ||
| You know, I think that Stevens and probably McMorrow would not endanger this seat, but I think that Al Syed, if he were the nominee, that could really pose a problem for Democrats. | ||
| And I know we talked a little bit about Maine before. | ||
| Obviously, Susan Collins has won statewide time and time again, despite difficult races, despite people really doubting her in some of those races, a moderate there. | ||
| She also is running right now uncontested, though it's said that Trump has advocated for folks to jump in on that race against her. | ||
| But she's facing two Democrats in the race, or there are two Temperats running in the primary over there. | ||
| Can you break down that race for us? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| This is another place where Chuck Schumer got his favorite recruit in the current governor, Janet Mills, who's seen as more of a moderate. | ||
| But Graham Plattner, an oysterman there in Maine, also running Bernie Sanders' endorsement, running as a full-throated progressive, has really sort of captured lightning in a bottle there in Maine. | ||
| Now, there's been a lot of things that have come out against him. | ||
| He had a Nazi-inspired. | ||