Sep.02

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Candidate News: U.S. Senate and House

There's been some pretty big candidate news in the last week, so let's get to it:

• U.S. Senate, Iowa: The largest amount of moving and shaking this week came out of Iowa, where Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) apparently plans to announce she is standing down after 2 terms, creating an(other) open seat for the GOP. This news comes from high-ranking people in the NRSC, so it's likely reliable.
  
  Ernst has been noticeably non-committal about running for another term. We will be interested to learn what caused her to throw in the towel, assuming she eventually decides to share. It could be the generally bad political climate for Republicans. It could be the damage wrought by voting for Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, a decision that upset both women and military hawks, especially since Ernst teased the possibility she might vote "no." It could be the "Well, we all are going to die" blunder. It could be the special election last week, in which yet another Iowa Democrat WAY outperformed 2024. It could be that, at 55 years of age, Ernst feels she's really too young for the Senate. It could be that Ernst has been so busy, she's fallen behind on her hog castrating. It could be all of the above.
  
  There is likely to be a bloody primary now on the Republican side. Already, the very Trumpy Jim Carlin is in the race. The less Trumpy Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) is expected to announce as soon as Ernst makes it official. So, you've got something of a Paxton-Cornyn situation, but one that also opens up a House seat (Hinson's district, IA-02, is R+4, which means it is certainly in play).
  
  And that's not the only good news for the blue team out of the Hawkeye State. On the Democratic side of the Senate contest, there were two very intriguing candidates in state Rep. J.D. Scholten (D), a former baseball player, and state Rep. Josh Turek (D), a medal-winning paralympian. However, Scholten has decided to drop out, and throw his support behind Turek. There are still a few other Democrats who have declared, but it sure looks like support is going to coalesce behind Turek. Add it all up, and there's another juicy new target on the Democrats' Senate map. Iowa will still be a tough hill to climb, but it's not Everest anymore. And if the list of potential flips—Maine, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, North Carolina—gets fairly long, the Democrats' hopes for retaking the Senate improve, especially since the various elections tend to correlate with each other.
  
  
• U.S. House, IA-01: The situation in which Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA) finds herself may help to shed some light on the choice that Joni Ernst is apparently about to make. Miller-Meeks represents the R+4 IA-01 and, as some readers may recall, she won the single-closest race in 2024, outpacing Democrat Christina Bohannan by just 798 votes out of 414,078 cast (a margin of victory of less than 0.2%).
  
  Well, Bohannan is back for another bite at the apple... well, OK, another bite at the cob of corn. Meanwhile, Miller-Meeks has placed herself squarely between a rock and a hard place. See, Iowa gets two-thirds of its electricity from wind power, the very same wind power that the BBB is designed to cripple. The turbines not only keep residents supplied with electricity, they also keep Iowans' power bills among the lowest in the country. They like their wind power.
  
  The Representative behaves as a dutiful Trumper at some times, and like a dutiful Iowan at others. For example, last week, she sat for an interview with a Des Moines media outlet, and decreed "Wind works. Iowa has proved that." And the next morning, she traveled to Ames, IA, and stood immediately to the right of Trump Energy Secretary Chris Wright as he decreed renewable energy to be "nonsensical." Iowans, like voters in most places, are not fans of politicians who are hypocrites, and who appear to be talking out of both sides of their mouths.
  
  There's been one poll of the probable Bohannan/Miller-Meeks matchup so far. It was commissioned by the Democratic Majority PAC, which is obviously partisan. However, the poll may be trustworthy because it was done by a real pollster (PPP), and because the PAC wants accurate data so that it knows how best to invest its resources. Anyhow, it has Bohannan up 4 points, 43% to 39%. Of course, we'll have a much better picture once there are more polls, much closer to Election Day.
  
  
• U.S. Senate, Maine: The DSCC is waiting patiently while Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) decides if she would like to challenge Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). Mills is taking her sweet time, and says she MIGHT make a decision by November.
  
  Mills is the blue team's preferred candidate because she's reasonably popular, and she's twice won election statewide. She's also a woman, and, unlike Collins, did not vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, the key votes that allowed Roe to be struck down. So, Mills would be expected to do particularly well with pro-choice voters. The biggest problem, besides her hesitation, is that Mills would be 79 on taking office in 2027. That's pretty high up there for a rookie senator, and on top of that, the Democrats may be commencing a youth movement (keep reading below).
  
  If Mills takes a pass, the blue team does have a very interesting fallback option. His name is Graham Platner, and he's a veteran and a working oysterman who formally jumped into the race last week. Here is his launch video; it's pretty good:
  
  
  
  Instructive quote, if you don't care to watch: "The main difference between Susan Collins and Ted Cruz is at least Ted Cruz is honest about selling us out and not giving a damn."
  
  Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has already bestowed his endorsement on Platner, which gives you a pretty good idea of Platner's platform and politics. We don't know Maine well enough to know if a Platner-type candidate can plausibly win there. However, we do know that Vermont is not too far from Maine, and that Sanders has won there many times. Anyhow, if the Democrats want to make a statement that they want working-class/white noncollege voters back, and maybe that they like economic populism, Platner could help a lot with that. And if he were to somehow become a face of the Party, well, the Fox "News"es of the world seem to be less effective at training their withering fire on folks like Platner than folks like, say, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX). We're not sure why; you'd think we could figure it out, that it would be right there... in Black and white.
  
  
• U.S. House, NY-12: The biggest news of the day yesterday was that, at 78 years of age, and after 17 terms in the House, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) will not run for reelection next year. Nadler is one of the most prominent Democrats in the country, has real power as the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee (and would-be chair, if the Democrats retake the House), and he loves his work. But, he decided to take one for the team, explaining "Watching the Biden thing really said something about the necessity for generational change in the party, and I think I want to respect that." There's a Cincinnatus/George Washington dimension to the decision, then.
  
  Late last night, reader M.G. in Boulder, CO sent us an essay from the Substack Democratic Wins Media, with the headline "The Hottest Quality in Democratic Politics? Knowing When To Retire." We thought this portion was particularly well put:

  Nadler is 78.
  
  He's watched as his colleagues, many in their seventies and eighties, have been forced into conversations about age, stamina, and relevance. Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn—giants of the institution—have all either stepped down from leadership or signaled their exits. Joe Biden's age was the single biggest weight on his political standing. Nadler read the moment. And he chose to respect it.
  
  The paradox is that Democrats are not short on talent or ideas. The party's rising generation—figures like James Talarico, Pete Buttigieg, Mallory McMorrow—are fluent in the politics of the present, not the politics of the past.
  
  They understand how to build coalitions that are multi-racial, multi-class, and digitally native. What they lack is space to grow. Safe seats, particularly in places like Manhattan, are held for decades. Incumbency in the House is an institution unto itself: re-election rates hover near 95 percent. Nadler's retirement is less about one man's career and more about the opening it creates for the politics of tomorrow to take shape today.
  
  It's worth pausing on Nadler himself, though, because he embodies why this is so hard. He was not a backbencher. He helped codify same-sex marriage into federal law, protected voting rights, and fought for the victims of 9/11. He carried a constitutionalist's zeal into every battle with Trump.
  
  He was reliable, principled, and trusted by his district. When he showed up at impeachment hearings with a bag containing, as he quipped, "a babka and the Constitution," he became both meme and mascot.
  
  Who wouldn't want more of that?
  
  But politics is about timing. And it is not just about being right; it's about ensuring there is someone to be right after you. Nadler could have run again and probably won.
  
  But what would that prove? At a moment when Democrats need to project vitality and renewal, the symbolism of Nadler's exit is as important as the policy legacy of his tenure.
  
  This is the politics of exit as strategy. Mitch McConnell clung to leadership for years even amid visible health crises. Chuck Grassley is still cruising along in the Senate at 91. Dianne Feinstein's decline became a national drama precisely because she wouldn't go.
  
  Democrats, for all their flaws, are beginning to recognize that stepping down can itself be an act of leadership. It tells voters: we hear you. We know this is a future-facing moment. We're not clinging to our seats at the expense of the movement.

This is an important point. If you believe that Trumpism has badly damaged the country, and that Democrats (and sane Republicans) will have to repair that damage, that is a multi-cycle project (at least). It is a project that wants young and energetic people from the outset, and not people who might not be able to hang on for another 4 or 6 or 8 years. And if there's going to be a changeover, the time to execute that is during an election that has as good a chance as any of being a wave election.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) saw this particular writing on the wall, and now Nadler has, as well. We'll see if some of the other octogenarians we wrote about last week follow suit. If they don't stand down, they run at least some small risk of voters making the retirement decision for them.

There's been some interesting gubernatorial news, as well; we'll try to get to that sometime this week. (Z)