CHICAGO – Senate Democrats, told for most of this cycle they will likely be serving in the minority next year, said this week they see similarities between their candidate matchups in November and when they expanded a narrow majority in 2022.
“We have been very fortunate on the Democratic side,” Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, told reporters on Wednesday. “We’ve had great candidates, great incumbents that are running for reelection or are running … and they are running against Republican candidates who are flawed and in some cases extremely flawed.”
He pointed to races last year in Pennsylvania, where then-Lt. Gov. John Fetterman defeated television personality Mehmet Oz for an open seat that had been held by a Republican, and in Georgia, where Sen. Raphael Warnock defeated former football star Herschel Walker. Democrats have argued that like Oz, Republican Senate candidates this year including Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania and Erik Hovde in Wisconsin have loose ties to their states.
