The battle for Congress
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Exactly two weeks from today, Americans will decide not just who wins the presidency, but the makeup of our Congress. At the moment, Democrats control the Senate and Republicans control the House. And that is why nothing ever gets done. JK, JK, JK. But control of both houses and the presidency means that a party, in theory, could get a lot done.

And so Democrats and Republicans are scrapping to the finish in a handful of critical, crucial key races. And what are those? Those are coming up on Today Explained.

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2024 Explained. Matt Friedman is with me. Matt covers New Jersey for Politico and has been reporting on one of the dozen or so key races that's going to decide which party controls the House in January. That is New Jersey's 7th District. Well, this is one of those prototypical districts that is really heavily suburban and sort of upscale rural.

It is the type of district that used to be solidly Republican. You could have counted on it being Republican. But in the Trump era, when the demographics kind of shifted in terms of the party's supporters and the more highly educated people,

suburban, well-off voters started shifting to Democrats. This district is a competitive district in today's world. In the 2022 midterms, you may recall, analysts predicted a red wave, that the Republicans would trounce the Democrats nationwide. Now, that did not happen. Something subtler did. Some of those long Republican districts that turned blue as a reaction to Trump turned back to red. And one of those was New Jersey's 7th.

The seat is held by a freshman Republican, Tom Kaine Jr. He has the name Tom Kaine, which is a very popular name in New Jersey even today. His father, Tom Kaine Sr., was the governor from 1981 to 1989. We feared a host of problems led by the worst economic times to face this nation since the Great Depression. The most popular governor of modern history in New Jersey. Now, in this, my second report on the state of the state.

I can tell you that we have not only weathered the storm, but we have emerged with a fresh breeze in our sails. A moderate Republican, and that's the image his son has tried to project. But his son is not as gifted rhetorically and in a lot of political instincts as his father was. Thank you. And it's great to be with you this evening. He's really not a good public speaker. I ran for public office and for Congress because I want to be able to help people.

And he's not good at taking questions off the cuff. Never has been. He used to, though, be in a relatively safe legislative district. He didn't really have to worry as much about a gaffe throwing his whole election off. Now he has to worry about that. So he's been even more careful when talking to reporters. And he's, I should say, careful. He's been

hesitant, rarely. He does occasionally talk to a reporter, but rarely will take off-the-cuff questions. He does not hold town hall events. There's a viral video clip of one of our New Jersey reporters based in Washington, caught him in an elevator and they're riding the elevator together and he's just asking him question after question. You're in favor of mass deportations in New Jersey? What about Ukraine? Do you think Trump will do enough to support Ukraine in the war effort?

And Tom Kane is just staring ahead as if he doesn't hear him. You pick the topic. Love to talk to you about literally anything. It's extremely awkward and it's about something like 90 seconds of this, maybe more. Which is funny because Tom Kane has a history of avoiding questions or trying to avoid questions by ducking into an elevator. Way back in 2006, he was running for U.S. Senate against Bob Menendez.

You plan on changing your campaign tactics?

Not much answering. And Kay said, OK, bye, got to go now. And he left the elevator. And then it became apparent the elevator had never left the floor. It had not moved.

He's avoided our, one of my colleagues at Politico has tried to ask him questions. He's ducked into the elevator. So he has, he does have a history with elevators. What kind of Republican is Kaine? Tom Kaine stresses himself as a moderate Republican. And in many ways, he is on the moderate side of today's Republican Party. You could argue that the party has gone so far right in a lot of ways that moderate doesn't mean the same thing as it did 20 years ago.

But he calls himself pro-choice, though he has also expressed support for the Dobbs decision. I have a 21-year record of supporting pro-choice positions, and I would oppose a national abortion ban. He has not really bucked the party on the important votes. One of the key things here is even though he calls himself a moderate and is pro-choice, he did vote for Jim Jordan for speaker during that whole speakership crisis that went on for years.

Days, weeks, months. Kane of New Jersey. Jordan.

And that's really been something that his Democratic opponent has sought to use against him to prove he's not really a moderate when it counts. You could have been a leader in Congress. You could have been someone who from the get-go stood up to Trumpism. You could have not voted for Jim Jordan. You could have not voted for Mike Johnson. You could have not endorsed Donald Trump. All right, so Tom Kaine, the Republican, holds the seat today. Who is the Democrat that's challenging him this year? Her name is Sue Altman. I

I am Sue. I'm a former professional basketball player turned teacher, turned anti-corruption advocate who fought both parties in Trenton. And I am honored to represent... She is a former executive director of the New Jersey Working Families Alliance, now called New Jersey Working Families Party. That is really how she made her name in New Jersey politics. Now,

We know that Working Families Alliance is sort of like, you know, one of the more farther left organizations that's involved in a lot of mainstream politics. And it was. How she really made her name in New Jersey, though, was not as much as going for the cause. It was still active in a lot of causes that organization supports and criminal justice reform, things like that. But really how she made her name was as an anti-corruption activist organization.

Altman's most famous for her criticism of George Norcross, New Jersey's most powerful Democratic political boss. The aftershocks are still rippling through the state after South Jersey Democratic power broker George Norcross was indicted on 13 counts of racketeering yesterday. During a hearing in the state Senate, which was really a softball hearing designed to look good for Norcross, Altman was among the protesters there. The back of the room!

Someone made some noise. Altman wound up getting singled out and dragged out by state police, as I recall, by her elbows. Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame! And that actually became sort of a defiant look. The way it came across in New Jersey was actually pretty positive for Altman in the coverage. But it's actually been used by Kane in negative advertisements, the image itself, without the surrounding context. ♪

All right. So let's talk about the arguments that each is making. Altman is a progressive. What is her argument to the people of New Jersey? What's got her running so close? Well, Altman is a progressive historically. She's not emphasizing that now, you know, in a sort of moderate district. I would say her number one issue, as in most of these swing districts, is abortion. Junior is nothing like his dad. He has a secret anti-abortion agenda. And I don't like that. She'll use the Jim Jordan vote or some of the other maybe procedural votes, the things that, you know, really

Yeah.

When the chips are down, he has gone with his party. He has not really been one to stand up and actually disrupt his party. And Congressman, you seem like a really nice guy. But right now, what we need is political courage. We need someone who will stand up to Trump. We need someone who will stand for women's rights. Keynes really tried to hit Altman as, you know, tie her to the positions that the Working Families Party took while she headed its New Jersey chapter.

Another big one

was the defund the police saying. She once in 2020 did tweet something in terms of there are a couple of political machine sheriffs there. And she said, hey, if you want to hashtag defund the police, start here with these two sheriffs in New Jersey. That's also been used. That's really one of the King campaign's top hits against her. Radical Sue attacked cops and firefighters, even moderate Democrats, because Sue Altman's no centrist,

She's a radical liberal activist who threatens your future. And she's actually gone to great lengths to try to explain her what she meant by that. And she's actually apologized for using the hashtag because she says it really was a reductive kind of thing and not what she intended to say. But it's definitely a political liability for her. What do you think this race will be decided by?

Well, this is really a test of whether this realignment we've seen with suburban better off voters economically and women, especially former women Republicans, have gone really firmly into the Democratic column or whether Republicans can still make inroads with these groups that they used to be able to count on election after election. If Altman wins the political realignment we've seen with suburban voters

better off voters economically, women voters. We'll see that new coalition has really helped Democrats potentially take control of Congress, and we'll see at the top of the ticket. If not, then Trump still has some sway, even with the traditional Republican voters before 2016, who could have always been counted to vote Republican before the Trump era.

That was Politico's Matt Friedman. Coming up, America has a bicameral Congress. What's going on in the other cameral?

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So much because when you have a new president coming in, the fact that you need Senate control to really feel good about being able to confirm your cabinet nominees, your judges, Supreme Court nominees, you really need a Senate majority and you really need like a little bit of wiggle room on your Senate majority, which, you know, maybe people don't really care about in the stakes of the election, but it's super important in actually getting the government to function. In the first half of the show, we heard about how close

The House races are this year. Could go to either party. What's going on in the Senate? Yeah, the Senate races are different than the House races, just structurally. Only a third of the seats are up every two years because they're six-year terms and they're staggered. And so what that means in a year like this where the House and the presidential race are toss-ups, the Senate races are not quite toss-ups. And the reason why is Democrats only have a 51-49 majority.

Joe Manchin's retiring. That gives Republicans a 50th seat. And so now Democrats really have no room for error unless they can take a surprising pickup opportunity in a red state. Where do the Democrats have hope? Yeah. So the we call these pickup opportunities in the Senate parlance and they are going into Texas today, Texas.

pretty heavily. And they've also made an attempt in Florida. Florida's kind of moving away from them structurally. They haven't won there since 2012. And Texas is moving toward them, but not fast enough. And there's been a million think pieces about how Texas is moving towards the Democrats. And that's true. Ted Cruz is in a close race, but I would still be really surprised if he lost.

Tell us what's going on in Texas, because you're right. Every year for the past several years, the Democrats have said this might be the year that we get Texas and they still haven't. What's the state of play right now? Yeah, I mean, Ted Cruz only won by about three points in 2018. This was an election about hope and about the future. And the people of Texas rendered a verdict that we want a future with more jobs and more security and more freedom.

You know, his presidential run and everything that led up to that made him one of the most conservative senators in the country. We will repeal every word of Obamacare. It also made him pretty polarizing. A lot of Republicans didn't like him because of his tactics and the way he kind of criticized Republican leadership. If you kill Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate and the trial was in the Senate, nobody could convince you. LAUGHTER

And that stuff's not really changed, even though, you know, obviously he's made good with Donald Trump and he's not running for president. So there's just this baked-in sort of vulnerability with swing voters for Ted Cruz. Republican Senator Ted Cruz says members of his own party are voting against him. Look at how he's siding with Trump.

And look at how disrespectful Trump was of his wife and his father. — The question just is, have the demographics moved enough for Democrats? I think one thing that's happened there is some Latino voters have been voting more Republican, which has sort of short-circuited, I guess, a quick flip of the switch in Texas. But I would also say, like,

10 years ago, I never would have told you there'd be two Democrats holding seats in Arizona and Georgia. So these are the kind of things you just got to pay attention to and don't get too fixed in your beliefs of what exactly is going to happen.

Tell us about the man who's running against Ted Cruz, Colin Allred. What's his appeal? Yeah, he's kind of a different candidate than Beto O'Rourke. Beto O'Rourke was this charismatic, stand-on-a-table, unabashedly progressive candidate. Hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We're not going to allow it to be used against our fellow Americans anymore.

Allred is a former football player. I've taken down a lot tougher guys than Ted Cruz. So let's get on the field and find out. He got into the House by winning a battleground seat in a Republican district. So he's running his campaign a little bit more traditionally than Beto O'Rourke. I know what it's like to go through the grocery store line and swipe your debit card and just say a little prayer and hope that this week you can afford it.

That's why I've been so laser focused on lowering folks' costs, on lowering the cost of your prescription drugs, on your health care, on your child care. You know, we won't know until Election Day whether he improves on the margins of Beto O'Rourke or not. But I would say he's raising a ton of money. He's been impressive on fundraising.

All Red's message is Ted Cruz is not looking out for you. If I had to boil it down and watch some of the debate, he talked about his trip to Cancun, which got a ton of press back in the day. He's never there for us when we need him. When the lights went out in the energy capital of the world, he went to Cancun.

Colin Allred's not really running anywhere other than the middle, and he's emphasizing his bipartisanship. I was named by an outside group the most bipartisan Texan in Congress. This is something I've worked at, not just in an election year, like he's trying to change his image in this election year. I've done it over the course of my six years in Congress. Senator Cruz is kind of doing a little bit of an attempted rebrand.

in the sense that he's emphasizing his bipartisan deals, which I would not say is something that he's known for, but that's what happens campaign season. - In my time in the Senate, I have authored and passed 101 different pieces of legislation, two different bills.

to create new interstates. I-14 from West Texas to East Texas, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. That was Raphael Warnock and me, a liberal Democrat, Cruz Warnock. We passed it. That's going to produce thousands of new jobs. All right. So opportunity in Texas for the Democrats. What about in Florida? What's the pickup opportunity there?

Yeah, Rick Scott doesn't have the same national profile as Ted Cruz, but he sort of has, definitely in Washington, has a big profile. He challenged Mitch McConnell for leader. We need to see change. I talked to Trump about this today. He said he's excited I'm getting into the race. Think about it. Debt.

the border, everything. We've been allowing this to happen. I am a change agent. He ran the National Republican Senatorial Committee and got a lot of criticism for the way that he did that in 2022. Hi, Rick Scott here with some breaking news for our Republicans. The Republican Civil War has been canceled.

I would say his opponent, Debbie Mucarcel-Powell, is not quite as polished or successful or well-known as Colin Allred. She's a former House member. She lost her seat, and she's not raising quite as much money. Please rush in $5, $10 right now to help me flip Florida blue and restore reproductive rights nationally.

That's not to say she totally has no chance. I just think if you were doing a hierarchy of which race Democrats feel like could more likely go their way on a surprise in November, it would probably be Texas.

All right. So the Democrats have pickup opportunities in Texas and Florida. They're staying out of the race in Nebraska. The Dems are on the run in Montana. It is not looking good for Jon Tester there. Where else are the Democrats playing defense this year? Yeah, it's a pretty big defensive map. I would kind of rank...

After Montana, Ohio is the other red state where they're playing defense. Right now, the U.S. Senate race in Ohio is in a dead heat, with the latest poll showing that incumbent Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown is statistically tied in the race against Republican challenger Bernie Marino. Sherrod Brown is running for reelection there for a fourth term. Super interesting race. He's running against a guy who made a lot of money,

in car sales and Bernie Moreno, who just is one of these, you know, motor mouth attack machine candidates. -There's a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban women that are like, "Listen, abortion's it. If I can't have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else." Okay, a little crazy, by the way, but especially for women that are, like, past 50, I'm thinking to myself.

Sherrod Brown, for your listeners, is definitely like a pretty pugnacious person himself. Bernie Marino literally stiffed workers out of his own workers out of $400,000 by taking their overtime. He had to pay it back. And Sherrod Brown has not had a challenge like this before because in 2012, when he ran, President Obama won the

state of Ohio, which obviously is not going to happen this time around. So he needs also needs all these Trump voters to come to his side to win reelection. And I wouldn't count them out. I mean, I think, you know, everybody has their little maps about which races are going which way. And I would say that's like the true toss up.

After that, it's really traditional battleground states. And, you know, the blue wall states all have a Senate race there. Bob Casey's running for reelection in Pennsylvania. Tammy Baldwin's running for reelection in Wisconsin. There's an open seat in Michigan with Alyssa Slotkin, a congresswoman, taking on Mike Rogers, a former congressman. And then there's two races out West, which haven't really come online for the Republicans. The Democrats aren't really sweating them in Nevada and Arizona.

If you ask reporters who are covering the presidential campaign who's going to win this year, you will not get a straight answer. It's just too close. Nobody wants to make a prediction. What is your reporting tell you about who's likely to win in the Senate or is it not worth playing that game? No, I mean, it's because of the way that the map is structured. You have to say that Republicans are favored to win the Senate. It doesn't mean they're definitely going to win the Senate. Yeah.

what it would require for Democrats is either a surprise in one of those offensive states that we had or like a massive polling error in Montana. And it's not unheard of. Susan Collins was left for dead politically in 2020. The polls showed that she had no chance. I will tell anyone this because I think it's important to be honest with yourselves. I'm from Maine and I thought she was going to lose and I got it horribly wrong. But until we see the election results, you know, you can't,

say that's definitely going to happen. It's a rolling battle for the Senate and every seat matters. That was Semaphore's Burgess Everett. Today's episode was produced by Miles Bryan and Peter Balanon-Rosen. It was edited by Amina El-Sadi and fact-checked by Matthew Collette, Amanda Llewellyn and Laura Bullard. Our engineers were Patrick Boyd and Andrea Christen's daughter. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained.