The Tribune

With CHARLIE HARPER

IN the US, this is the time when punditry takes over a central position in the national political discourse. A potentially consequential non-presidential election is looming in less than four weeks, and the outcome for control of the House of Representatives and the Senate is unclear. Earlier, we took a glance at three key Senate races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In those, for various reasons, one Democratic incumbent and two Democratic challengers seem poised to prevail.

Here are three more races to watch.

FLORIDA

The incumbent Republican senator, Marco Rubio, looks assured of victory in the Sunshine State. Rubio, who was first elected to the Senate in 2010, ran for president six years later while disavowing any intention to try to retain his Senate seat if he didn’t get the Republican nomination. Donald Trump routed the field of his opponents in 2016, not least because he revealed an uncanny ability to disparage them in ways that stuck.

Rubio, who was an early favourite during the early 2016 primaries as a bright, attractive Hispanic Republican with an impressive prior record in the Florida legislature, succumbed under the burden of defending himself against the moniker “Little Marco”.

“Another problem with Marco, he’s a choke artist, he chokes,” said Trump during that 2016 campaign. “He just folds under pressure. I’ve never seen anything like that. I was standing right next to him. I look over (and) I say, ‘are you okay?’ It looked like he just came out of a swimming pool. He was soaking wet, and he kept repeating himself — repeating himself.”

Trump’s daughter Ivanka flirted briefly last year with a challenge to Rubio, but backed off. Rubio has gained stature in the Senate and has so far successfully navigated the treacherous political waters of his home state’s party with sharks like the state’s other ambitious senator Rick Scott and governor Ron DeSantis swimming dangerously nearby. Rubio is a good bet to become a long-time Republican Senate stalwart if he continues to rein in his presidential ambitions.

Currently, according to recent polls, a majority of independents — 55 percent — favour Rubio, while 37 percent indicated they would vote for Val Demings, the black congresswoman and former police chief from Orlando who was an early Democratic presidential contender two years ago. Demings, despite boasting a winning resume, looks like she will lose this race.

Rubio holds a ten-point lead among suburban voters, while Demings leads among urban voters by only 14 points. Democrats usually need to do much better than that in Florida’s cities if they hope to win statewide elections.

OHIO

The Buckeye State has often exercised an outsized influence on national American politics. The state claims the most homegrown US presidents (eight) to earn a tie with Virginia. Presidential candidates who carried Ohio almost always prevailed nationally for many decades. More recently, this one-time bellwether has turned a more reliable shade of red, and Trump is especially popular in Ohio.

Capitalising on this loyalty so far is the GOP candidate to replace retiring Republican Senator Rob Portman, a relative moderate from Cincinnati. JD Vance is a Yale Law School graduate, military veteran and best-selling author (“Hillbilly Elegy”) who has also worked for conservative billionaire Peter Thiel, of PayPal fame. Vance, significantly, won a heated contest for Trump’s endorsement in the state’s May 3 primary election. That propelled him to the nomination.

Vance’s wife, incidentally, is also a lawyer, and clerked under both John Roberts and Brett Cavanagh, respectively the leader and lightning rod of the current, conservative US Supreme Court.

“In a world in which the two candidates were both competent, you would expect the Republican to win fairly easily,” said David Niven, a professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati. “In a world in which (Democratic opponent Tim) Ryan is on point, and Vance has some self-inflicted wounds, you have the formula for a very competitive outcome.”

Ryan is an ambitious Democratic congressman who represents the blue stronghold of Youngstown and the Mahoning River valley in eastern Ohio. While Trump and Ronald Reagan triumphed here, in local elections the reliably heavy trade union support usually delivers wins for Democrats. Ryan has challenged Nancy Pelosi for the House speakership. He has flirted with a presidential campaign.

Ryan has so far run a disciplined campaign, hitting Vance hard on the Supreme Court’s notorious Dobbs decision which withdrew federal protection for a woman’s right to choose to terminate a pregnancy with an abortion. Ryan has also agreed that Joe Biden is too old to run for re-election.

Ryan has described Vance as an extremist who associates with “crazies” from his party. At their first televised campaign debate on Monday, Ryan charged that “you’re running around with Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who wants to ban books. You’re running around with (Sen) Lindsey Graham, who wants a national abortion ban.”

Vance has tried to counter Ryan’s economic message with cultural appeals by accusing Ryan of wanting to defund the police. He’s tarring Ryan with the brush of unpopular Democratic policies, blaming Dems for a flawed China policy and border security failures for fentanyl overdoses. (Opioid addiction has been a particularly pernicious killer in Ohio.) Vance has also harshly attacked the national media, which has often highlighted incautious remarks he has made on the campaign trail.

“This campaign is big, and the national media is obsessed with it,” Vance said to the Los Angeles Times earlier this month. “You might be aware that they don’t always love me, they have some issues with me.”

On Monday, Vance charged that “it’s close to Halloween and Tim Ryan has put on a costume where he pretends to be a reasonable moderate.” Had he been a real moderate focused on economic issues, Vance said, “Youngstown may not have lost 50,000 manufacturing jobs during his 20 years in office in Washington.”

Ohio’s other senator is rumpled populist Sherrod Brown, a true-blue Democrat who was re-elected in 2018. Brown, buoyed as is Ryan by strong trade union support, is a potential Democratic presidential nominee in 2024 if Biden doesn’t seek re-election. Brown’s wife is Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz, and the two are quite the liberal power couple in Washington.

Ohio might be in play this year for someone like Ryan. But don’t bet on it, because that would be a bet against Trump in Ohio.

Reporters recently asked the opinion of a random local citizen. “I don’t know [Vance] that well,” said Benjamin Hubbard, 65, of Middletown, a once-vibrant industrial city southwest of Columbus that has faded and provided the hometown backdrop for Vance’s bestseller. “I know Trump supported him, so he must be pretty good.”

NEVADA

Incumbent Democrat Senator Catherine Cortez Masto should be coasting along to victory. The first American Latina Senator in a state with a large Hispanic population, she is a former state attorney general with a good reputation and a respectable record as a first-term senator in Washington.

But Cortez Masto is not coasting. She’s in a real dog fight with the current state attorney general, Adam Laxalt, who is heir to the political legacy of his long-term senator grandfather Paul Laxalt, once a renowned crony and ally of Ronald Reagan. Intriguingly, Adam Laxalt is also the outside child of another former US senator. Adam Laxalt’s mother is Michelle Laxalt, Paul Laxalt’s daughter and a former Republican staffer and lobbyist. His father is former New Mexico senator Pete Domenici, who was married to someone else when Adam was born. (This fact was kept secret until 2013.) Laxalt was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for governor four years ago.

Reporters have been swarming in Nevada seeking election clues.

“There is a significant amount of nervousness and fear about the economy and especially about the cost of housing. Your gas costs more, your rent costs more,” said Ted Pappageorge, the secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Workers Union, which represents thousands of housekeepers, bartenders and cooks and has played a key role in electing Democrats in Nevada. “Working families are hurting.”

“The path to victory all runs through the Hispanic community,” said Xochitl Hinojosa, a Nevada Democratic consultant. “Democrats are finally realising, we’ve invested in black voters significantly over decades, and we’ve been successful, but we’ve assumed Hispanics will turn out for us, and that’s not always been the case. We must learn.”