POLITICO NIGHTLY: The Senate map comes into sharper focus

 

View in browser   BY CHARLIE MAHTESIAN Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) will face another well-funded challenger in 2024. | Alex Wong/Getty Images TEXAS TWIST — The launch of President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign and Donald Trump’s slow-bleed takedown of GOP rival Ron DeSantis has so far drowned out discussion about the other high-stakes political pursuit of 2024: the battle for the Senate. In short, Democrats are facing a brutal slog across the national map to hold their slim majority. The party is forced to defend 22 Senate seats (including the two independents who caucus with Democrats), while Republicans must defend just 11. And those Democratic-held seats aren’t exactly in optimal locations. Three are in red states that Trump won in 2020. Five more are in highly competitive swing states. No Republican incumbents are running in states that Biden won. Together, it explains why conventional wisdom holds that the GOP will recapture the Senate. But a lot has happened in recent weeks — and much of it is good news for Democrats. A handful of Democratic incumbents viewed as potential retirees in tough states have announced their intention to run for reelection. The prospect of messy Republican primaries — some featuring polarizing candidates who are likely to be weak general election nominees — has once again reared its head. Now comes the latest development: Colin Allred, a Dallas-area Democratic congressman, announced Wednesday his intention to challenge Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz. In 2018, Cruz was nearly upset in a nationally watched campaign by then-Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who raised more than $80 million off the deep loathing state and national Democrats have for Cruz. Allred, a Black lawyer who has already proved to be a capable fundraiser in his short tenure in Congress, seems likely to be similarly well-funded. A former NFL player in a football-mad state — he was a star at Baylor University in Waco — Allred also worked for former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro at the Department of Housing and Urban Development when Castro served there as secretary. As the incumbent in a red state, Cruz starts out as the clear favorite. One reason: Democrats have been predicting that the state’s rapidly changing demographics would transition Texas from red to blue for at least 20 years now, but they don’t have much to show for it. As far back as 2009, in his farewell speech as Democratic National Committee chair, Howard Dean said he could “guarantee” that Texas would vote for Barack Obama in 2012. It didn’t, and it wasn’t even close. In 2022, four years after O’Rourke’s narrow loss to Cruz renewed talk about Texas becoming more competitive, GOP Gov. Greg Abbott won reelection by a wide margin — against O’Rourke himself. Allred spoke directly to that point in his announcement video. “Some people say a Democrat can’t win in Texas. Well, someone like me was never supposed to get this far,” he said, referring to his background as the son of a hardworking single mother who never knew his father. “I’ve taken on a lot tougher guys than Ted Cruz.” Whether or not Allred can pull off the upset, his candidacy is a promising sign for Democrats. If nothing else, it expands the Senate map and raises the prospect that Republicans might need to divert money to Cruz’s defense — money that would otherwise be used against Democratic incumbents. The next states to watch will be West Virginia and Arizona. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin hasn’t yet indicated whether he will run for reelection. In a state where Donald Trump is exceptionally popular, he’s probably the only Democrat who can hold that seat in a presidential year. And his task got that much harder recently when popular GOP Gov. Jim Justice announced his candidacy — a big Republican recruitment win. Arizona is a more complicated situation. Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema has scrambled the political equation; she hasn’t yet said whether she’ll run for reelection. A prospective three-way race gives Republicans a solid chance to pick up the seat. Yet with several failed candidates from 2022 considering jumping in, there are already fears within the party that the GOP will blow its opportunity by nominating an unelectable candidate. With the Senate margin so thin, Democrats have little room for error next year — the GOP needs a net gain of just two seats to win the Senate majority. And if Republicans knock off Biden, a gain of just one seat would give them control of the Senate since the new vice president would cast the tie-breaking vote in a 50-50 Senate. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at cmahtesian@politico.com or on Twitter at @PoliticoCharlie .   WHAT'D I MISS? — Proud Boys leader found guilty of seditious conspiracy for driving Jan. 6 attack: A jury today convicted Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, and three allies of a seditious conspiracy to derail the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, a historic verdict following the most significant trial to emerge from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Jurors also convicted the four men — who also include Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl — of conspiring to obstruct Congress’ proceedings on Jan. 6 and destroying government property. The jury deadlocked on seditious conspiracy against a fifth defendant, Dominic Pezzola, but convicted him of obstructing Congress’ Jan. 6 proceedings as well as several other felony charges. — Kremlin ‘lying’ about U.S. involvement in Moscow drone strikes, Kirby says: Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was “just lying” when he accused Washington of coordinating drone attacks on Moscow , National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said today. “I can assure you that there was no involvement by the United States. Whatever it was, it didn’t involve us,” Kirby said on MSNBC when asked about Peskov’s comments. “We had nothing to do with it. Peskov is just lying there, pure and simple.” — Sinema and Tillis pitch two-year border patch as Trump-era policy expires: Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) are working on legislation that would grant a temporary two-year authority to expel migrants from the United States similar to what is currently allowed under Title 42, a law that permits the U.S. to deny asylum and migration claims for public health reasons, a Sinema aide told POLITICO. Title 42 is set to expire next week.   GET READY FOR GLOBAL TECH DAY: Join POLITICO Live as we launch our first Global Tech Day alongside London Tech Week on Thursday, June 15. Register now for continuing updates and to be a part of this momentous and program-packed day! From the blockchain, to AI, and autonomous vehicles, technology is changing how power is exercised around the world, so who will write the rules? REGSITER HERE .     NIGHTLY ROAD TO 2024 ON VIDEO — Former President Donald Trump has not attended the civil trial in which E. Jean Carroll is accusing him of rape, but jurors watched the former president defend himself today, writes POLITICO’s Erica Orden. In a videotaped deposition played in Manhattan federal court , he justified statements he made in the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, lobbed personal attacks at a lawyer questioning him and described rape as “the worst thing you can do, the worst charge.” The video showed the former president growing agitated, at times crossing his arms over his chest, under questioning by Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Carroll, who says Trump raped her in a dressing room at the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s. Carroll is suing Trump for battery and defamation. He has denied the alleged attack, saying it “never happened.”       AROUND THE WORLD Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faces a tough electoral challenge in local elections around the country today. The Conservative Party is bracing for a "tough night" as polls have closed. | Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo GOING LOCAL — Voters head to the polls today in England to choose “councilors” (essentially city council members) in more than 8,000 seats on 230 councils across England. Local elections, typically, are more likely to be determined by voters’ takes on tarmac, trash, graffiti and street lighting rather than who should lead the country, write Esther Webber and Dan Bloom . Yet after 13 years of Conservative rule at Westminster, and with Keir Starmer’s Labour continuing to outpace Rishi Sunak’s governing party in the national opinion polls, the line between the local and the national is blurring. Labour officials insist 400 gains would be a good night — far fewer than suggested in some quarters — while the Conservative Party top brass has stuck rigidly to a warning by the Oxford academics Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher that 1,000 council seats could be lost. It’s widely acknowledged that the Tories should do somewhat better than the grimmest predictions, however, with Thrasher specifying that limiting the number of seats lost to below 500 will leave Conservatives thinking they’ve actually had a good night. Liberal Democrats — who often go toe-to-toe with the Tories in more affluent areas — appear buoyant. Deputy leader Daisy Cooper confidently predicted on the eve of the election that “senior Conservative MPs are in for a big shock tomorrow.” A senior Conservative advisor, who asked not to be identified as they were not authorized to speak publicly, admitted the ruling party was “feeling the pressure” in both the “red wall” areas the party snatched from Labour in 2019, as well as in the “blue wall” — historically Conservative areas where the Lib Dems are a real threat.   DON’T MISS THE POLITICO ENERGY SUMMIT: A new world energy order is emerging and America’s place in it is at a critical juncture. Join POLITICO on Thursday, May 18 for our first-ever energy summit to explore how the U.S. is positioning itself in a complicated energy future. We’ll explore progress on infrastructure and climate funding dedicated to building a renewable energy economy, Biden’s environmental justice proposals, and so much more. REGISTER HERE .     NIGHTLY NUMBER 70 percent The percentage drop in the amount of time that young people (aged 15-24) spend with each other compared to 2003 , according to a new report on loneliness from the U.S. Surgeon General. Half of the country now says they have three or fewer friends, double the number in 1990. Social isolation can have the same negative health impact as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to the Surgeon General. RADAR SWEEP STORMY SKIES — In 1906, the SS Valencia set sail on a clear morning from San Francisco, bound for Seattle. But as the ship passed Cape Mendocino, about 200 miles north of San Francisco, the weather took a turn, and the crew was forced to rely on dead reckoning, unable to use celestial navigation due to the weather. The ship struck a reef, and chaos ensued . Read the fascinating story of the crew, the wreck and what came next, put back together by Tyler Hooper for The Atavist. PARTING IMAGE On this date in 1970: National Guardsmen fired into a crowd of demonstrators at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four students and injuring nine others. | AP Photo Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here .       Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh Katherine Long @katherinealong   FOLLOW US

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