Comment Democrats are expected to retain control of the Senate on Saturday, amassing a narrow majority as they showed strength in battleground races in a bruising midterm year that gave President Biden a major victory as he looks ahead to his next two years in office. The latest blow to Republican hopes of retaking the chamber came in Nevada, where on Saturday Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) was expected to win re-election, beating Adam Laxalt (R), the state’s former attorney general. Cortez Masto’s projected victory secures the Democrats the 50th seat, with a runoff election to follow in Georgia on Dec. 6 that could add to their slim majority. With 97% of the vote, Cortez Masto led by half a percentage point. Control of the House was still up in the air Saturday as vote counting continued days after an election that began with Democrats expected to suffer heavy losses as midterm elections have historically favored the party out of power. But Democrats held their ground and even made some gains in several key contests, leaving many Republicans uneasy. By regaining control of the Senate, they dashed GOP hopes for a complete takeover of the Capitol. That’s welcome news for Biden, who has been mulling the possibility of humiliating defeats as the election nears. Now, the Senate, which oversees the confirmation of executive branch staff and federal judges, will remain in his party’s corner. The Senate majority would also give the president and his party more say over legislative debates on domestic and foreign spending and other important issues. “I feel good and I’m looking forward to the next two years,” Biden told reporters. He called Cortez Masto and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (DN.Y.) to congratulate them from Cambodia, where he is attending a summit of Asian nations, according to the White House. Schumer called the results “vindication” of Democrats and their agenda and said Republicans had turned off voters with extremism and “negatism,” including some candidates’ false insistence that the 2020 election was stolen. “America showed we believed in our democracy,” he told reporters in New York, while praising the quality of Democratic incumbents. Most Republicans nationally have remained silent on the projected outcome as of Saturday night, and the Laxalt campaign has yet to publicly acknowledge Cortez Masto’s projected victory. However, a few Republicans began to voice their displeasure as they faced at least two more years in the minority. “The old party is dead. Time to bury it. Make something new,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) tweeted shortly after the race was announced. Shiree Verdone, a Republican fundraiser, said Saturday night that GOP donors and activists are upset with the outcome of the election. “We have to look at what went wrong. There needs to be some kind of study of what happened in this election.” said Verdone, who held a fundraiser for Laxalt and acknowledged that Democrats know how to get out the vote in Nevada with the “Reid machine,” named for the late Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who as the GOP Senate campaign chairman in October predicted his party would hold 53 to 55 seats, had not yet made a statement as of late Saturday night. Cortez Masto announced that she will give her victory speech on Sunday. Democrat Cisco Aguilar was also projected to win Nevada’s secretary of state race, beating a Republican candidate, Jim Marchant, who sought to oversee Nevada’s elections while unsubstantiatedly denying results from 2020. Former President Donald Trump endorsed Marchant in the race. Democrats are also expected to pick up a Washington state House seat held by Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who was ousted in the Republican primary after voting to impeach Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a pro- The Trump mob. In Nevada’s Senate race, Cortez Masto’s victory was part of a perfect record so far by incumbents seeking re-election in the midterms, as voters leaned heavily against upending the established order in the chamber. It was part of a strong showing by Democrats in battleground states where Republicans retreated after highlighting rising prices and concerns about crime during an era of one-party control in Washington. Republicans began the election demanding that they win one seat to take control of the Senate. Democrats won a seat in Pennsylvania and held on to several other states seen as vulnerable, running as abortion rights defenders after the end of Roe v. Wade and labeling GOP opponents as extremists. One such state was Arizona, where Sen. Mark Kelly (D) was projected to beat Republican challenger Blake Masters on Friday night. In Nevada, Laxalt sought to link Cortez Masto to Biden while blaming Democratic policies for inflation and crime, pointing to a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill that Cortez Masto helped pass during the height of the pandemic . Republicans predicted their economic message would resonate especially well in a working-class state with the highest inflation in the country. But both sides always expected the race to be decided by a narrow margin, and Cortez Masto sought a second term in a state the GOP has long seen as a prime pickup opportunity. Cortez Masto, who is the first Latina elected to the Senate, has made abortion access a focus of her campaign, warning that her opponent could help pass a federal abortion ban even as Nevada has guaranteed access to the process by popular vote. He also talked about Democrats’ efforts to lower costs, including the price of prescription drugs. Laxalt said he would not support a national abortion ban, although he supports a statewide referendum to ban abortions after 13 weeks. During the general election, he said little about his role in supporting former President Donald Trump’s false allegations of voter fraud as Democrats attacked him on the issue. During a press conference earlier Saturday, Clark County Clerk Joe Gloria was asked if any campaigns had raised concerns about the counting process. “I have nothing to report there,” he said. Gloria later added that he has heard “nothing from any campaign” about allegations of fraud. The Senate has been evenly split between the two parties during the Biden presidency, with Vice President Harris having the power to break ties. The race for the majority has been the focus of the midterm campaign, with huge amounts of cash pouring into key states. The inexperienced candidates Trump has fielded have eased the way for Democrats in some key races, sometimes stumbling and giving Democrats more room to go on the offensive. In Pennsylvania, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) defeated celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, a first-time Republican candidate endorsed by the former president. Oz faced scrutiny for his popular TV show, which promoted dubious products. his longtime residence in New Jersey. and instances of Democrats christening him as an unknown candidate, including his reference to raw vegetables as “raw.” The Arizona race also featured a Trump-backed Masters newcomer whom Democrats have labeled an extremist. They understood the comments he made about privatizing Social Security and his support for abortion restrictions, including a national 15-week ban. Democrats fended off other challenges, blocking Republican efforts to advance in Colorado, Washington state and New Hampshire. Republicans fielded more moderate candidates in the first two states, but in New Hampshire, the GOP candidate was Don Bolduc, a far-right candidate who adopted much of Trump’s platform and had falsely claimed that Trump had won the 2020 election. Republicans retained control of open seats in North Carolina and Ohio and will send two new senators to the upper chamber from those states: Rep. Ted Budd and author JD Vance, respectively. In Wisconsin, Sen. Ron Johnson (R) narrowly won re-election in a competitive contest. In Georgia, Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D) ran narrowly ahead of Republican candidate Herschel Walker, a former football player. But none of the candidates achieved the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff. The two will meet again in a second round next month. Both sides have been prepared in the purple state. In Alaska, vote counting continues with a new ranking system. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Trump target, and Kelly Tshibaka, a challenger backed by the former president, were competitive in that race. Overall, Democrats held the Senate in 14 states this midterm year — all of which Biden won in 2020. Republicans held defense in 21 states, including two where Biden won. One was Pennsylvania, so far the only flipped seat. Schumer praised the quality of Democratic incumbents and said they won in part because Republicans nominated “flawed” candidates. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the Democratic Senate campaign chairman, said in a statement that the victories represented a “resounding endorsement of the Senate Democratic majority” and “a rejection of GOP-sponsored extremism . » The losses have fueled resentment among Senate Republicans, with at least six of them pushing to delay next week’s leadership election as a challenge to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s leadership. The Senate Leadership Fund, an outside group closely tied to McConnell (R-Ky.), spent more than $230 million this cycle supporting Republicans in races across the country. Without directly criticizing Trump, McConnell lamented before the election that “quality of nominees” issues made it more difficult for Republicans to flip the Senate than the House. As several Trump-backed Senate candidates lost, Trump and his allies tried to pin the blame on McConnell, criticizing him for not spending more in Arizona to…
