Democratic voters looking to hold on to the Senate may have something unusual next year: options.
Unlike recent years, when Washington Democrats anointed favored Senate candidates early and more or less cleared the primary field for them, the party is now facing crowded nominating contests in some of the key states that will determine which party controls the upper chamber.
At least 10 Democrats are vying for a chance to take on vulnerable Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, a state Joe Biden won last year. Four high-profile Democrats are jockeying for the nomination in Pennsylvania, where Republican Sen. Pat Toomey is retiring. And two Democrats have already raised more than $1 million each in North Carolina, with at least four more in the running for an open seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Richard Burr.
The party apparatus in Washington insists it is not — yet — wading in to pick sides.
“While we are keeping all of our options on the table, at this stage, the DSCC is assessing primary fields, maintaining open lines of communication with every candidate and building the campaign infrastructure our eventual nominee will need to win the general election,” said David Bergstein, the communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Republicans are no strangers to raucous primaries, going back at least to the rise of the tea party movement in 2010, and some this year have already turned nasty. National Republicans have generally taken a lighter touch in primaries and said they’ll stay out of intraparty contests this year.
But it’s a new approach for Democrats, who have prided themselves on coalescing behind one candidate early — even when it rankles activists and disfavored candidates — and have often called attention to the chaos on the GOP side.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., now the Senate majority leader, credited his success leading the party’s campaign efforts in 2006, when the Democrats had reclaimed the chamber, to his heavy hand in primaries.
“Of all the things (former Democratic Senate Leader) Harry Reid and I discussed the day I took the DSCC job, I believe that aggressive candidate selection — through both recruitment and intervention in primaries — contributed to winning the Senate majority more than any other (even more than our fundraising advantage, which was significant, to be sure.),” Schumer wrote in a post-election strategy memo.
But since then, Washington power brokers have had a harder time throwing their weight around, since candidates can now build their own fundraising and support networks online.
And, this year, a number of well-qualified Democrats jumped into Senate races especially early — including some who did so in order to try to get ahead of their party’s bigfoots.
In Wisconsin, the field includes Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes — the first African American to hold that post — state Treasurer Sarah Godlewski and Alex Lasry, the 33-year-old son of the billionaire owner of the Milwaukee Bucks and a top executive with the champion NBA team.
In North Carolina, which last year re-elected a Democratic governor as Biden lost the state by slightly more than a percentage point, Democrats are currently split between Cheri Beasley, the former chief justice of the state supreme court, and state senator and former Army Maj. Jeff Jackson.
Beasley, who is Black, has the backing of Emily’s List, the powerful group that supports women candidates, and the Congressional Black Caucus. Jackson, who is white, has been drawing big crowds and raised more than $2 million already, much of it online.
And in Pennsylvania, perhaps Democrats’ best pickup opportunity, there are four officially declared contenders with viable candidacies: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta and Montgomery County Commissioner Dr. Val Arkoosh.
The Republican primary for the open Senate seat has grown acrimonious, though former President Donald Trump endorsed Sean Parnell on Thursday, and some are worried about a similar outcome on the Democratic side.
“At the end of the day, I don’t think it’s wise for our candidate, whoever he or she might be, to be a damaged candidate going into the general election,” Democratic Pennsylvania state Rep. Ryan Bizzarro said last month after endorsing Lamb at an event in Erie. “So I hope that everybody will be mindful of the things that they’re saying and how that will impact a general election.”
Lamb, a former Marine and federal prosecutor, won a high-profile special election in 2017 and entered the Senate race with a splash last month.
