A handful of races featuring some of the most unconventional candidates in recent memory will determine the control of the Senate in four weeks, when voters hit the polls in the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
Little is certain in the election season, fought in the shadow of a possible Donald Trump comeback and a momentous Supreme Court ruling ending the federal right to abortion. Analysts believe the Senate, which Democrats have held by a bare majority since 2021, could go either way.
For Republicans to wrest back control of the chamber, they will need to overcome challenges both structural — they have more seats to defend this year — and self-inflicted. Some of the GOP candidates have displayed dramatic weaknesses.
There is Mehmet Oz, the Pennsylvania nominee and former TV doctor accused of leading experiments that killed hundreds of dogs. There is Sen. Ron Johnson, the race-baiting Wisconsin incumbent whose deep unfavorability ratings have long left him as a sort of marked man, apparently vulnerable to a decent Democratic campaign.
And above all, there is Herschel Walker, the eccentric Georgia nominee whose sensational college football career elevated him to godlike status in his state but whose chaotic personal life has generated scandal after scandal.
Still, Democrats have their own problems. The party controlling the White House typically loses ground at the midterms, and Democratic candidates have their own vulnerabilities.
In Pennsylvania, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman — 6-foot-8-inch and goateed, with a penchant for wearing hoodies and shorts — is recovering from a stroke and is sheepish about debating Oz. In Ohio, Rep. Tim Ryan is fresh off an embarrassing campaign finance news report, albeit one that hit a sturdy campaign. And in Wisconsin, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes appears to have been sent off-course by a wave of GOP spending.
“The Senate is probably pretty close to a coin flip,” said Jacob Rubashkin, an analyst at the nonpartisan newsletter Inside Elections. “Republicans have made life more difficult for themselves with the candidates they have nominated for almost every competitive Senate race on the map.”
“It is striking the level of candidate-specific issues that are plaguing some of these races,” Rubashkin added.
Georgia
No Senate campaign has drawn more attention than the one in Georgia, where Walker is working to unseat Sen. Raphael Warnock, the Atlanta pastor who rode into office in a 2021 special election.
Opinion polls have shown Warnock leading Walker narrowly. The former football star, who won the Heisman Trophy in 1982, faced a bomb of a disclosure Oct. 3 when The Daily Beast reported that the vocally anti-abortion politician once paid for a girlfriend’s abortion. The outlet reported last Wednesday that the woman was the mother of one of his children.
Walker has vehemently disputed the reports, which quoted an unidentified woman, and threatened to sue The Daily Beast. But his son Christian Walker responded to the report by ripping the campaign.
“I know my mom and I would really appreciate if my father Herschel Walker stopped lying and making a mockery of us,” Christian Walker, 23, wrote on Twitter. “You’re not a ‘family man’ when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence.”
Walker, also accused of putting a gun to the head of his ex-wife, Cindy Grossman — Christian’s mother — and of hiding secret children from the public, has said he suffered from mental illness and even played Russian roulette in the past.
Republicans have responded to the remarkable scandals swirling around Walker by closing ranks. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, took to Fox News to describe Walker as the “most important Senate candidate in the country.”
“He’s been through a long, tough period. He had a lot of concussions coming out of football,” Gingrich said. “He’s recovered. He’s committed. He’s a decent human being.”
The race could go to a runoff: Georgia candidates must clear 50% of the vote to win a Senate seat.
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania is looking like a bellwether. If Fetterman, who has led narrowly but consistently in polls, struggles on Election Day, Republicans could be headed for control of the Senate.
Oz has come across as aloof at moments during the campaign and was widely mocked for a video he shared in which he picked up pricey items for a “crudité” at a grocery store, getting the store’s name wrong along the way.
And Oz’s campaign was rocked Oct. 3 by a scandal, dubbed “puppygate,” stemming from a Jezebel report that said his research led to the deaths of more than 300 dogs. Oz’s campaign disputed the report.
Fetterman, whose everyman appeal has boosted him in the campaign, has drawn scrutiny for only agreeing to join a single debate after suffering a stroke in May. Oz asked for five and the release of Fetterman’s medical records.
Ohio
In fundraising, Ryan has dominated his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance, the never-Trumper turned mega-Trumper who wrote “Hillbilly Elegy.” (”J.D. is kissing my ass, he wants my support so bad,” Trump recently told a rally.)
But even as he runs what has been viewed as a strong campaign, Ryan is far from a clear front-runner in a state that went for Trump by 8 percentage points in the 2020 presidential election.
On Oct. 5, The Associated Press reported that Ryan had received campaign donations from drug companies accused of playing roles in the opioid crisis.
Wisconsin
Johnson is a boogeyman to Democrats, known for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and election integrity, and for downplaying the gravity of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. (He said the attack would have concerned him more if the rioters represented Black Lives Matter.)
And Democrats have long seen an opening to dispatch the Republican senator after two terms in a state that Biden won in 2020. Johnson’s favorability rating in the state polls is under 40%, according to Marquette Law School’s surveys.
But Republicans may be having some success tying Barnes, a progressive Black former community organizer, to the "defund the police" movement. He has said he does not support defunding the police.
Nevada
Polls signal a photo finish ahead in Nevada, where Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is in a battle with Adam Laxalt, the state’s former attorney general. Laxalt, endorsed by Trump, is looking to tap into a bloc of swing Latino voters to unseat the incumbent in the race.
Laxalt has struggled to keep up with Cortez Masto in the fundraising battle. But Laxalt has still led the one-term senator in many recent polls, and a COVID-era cocktail of rising rents and high gas prices in the state could play to his advantage.
CNN reported last Thursday that its polling put Biden’s approval rating in Nevada at just 39%.
Rubashkin, the Inside Elections analyst, also said Nevada is perhaps the “most favorable pickup opportunity for the Republican Party” because Laxalt has past experience running statewide.
“Compared to the rest of the candidates that Republicans are running in these most competitive races, he has shown himself to be capable of not getting in his own way,” Rubashkin said.
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