Candidate Quality Matters— In Nebraska, In Missouri
Louise and Paul are two of the most generous and steady Blue America contributors. They’re very sophisticated and very progressive and have been donating to our candidates since 2010. This morning, Louise sent me a note explaining that they’re both now maxed out to Kamala but that they have $1,000 left that they want to contribute this week. “This late in the cycle,” she asked, “where do you think that would best be spent, keeping in mind that our goal is to help the Democrats hold the Senate.”
The Democrats gave up Manchin’s West Virginia seat when they took his advice and nominated a Republican-lite, completely pointless corporate shill who will be lucky to get 40% of the vote. They can only afford to lose one more seat… and right now the one that seems most endangered is Jon Tester’s in Montana, a state with an R+11 PVI and where Trump beat Biden 56.9% to 40.6%. Montana has 56 counties and Trump won all but 7 of them. Only 4 counties have over 100,000 people and Trump even won 2 of those, Yellowstone (the most populous) and Flathead, both with over 60%.
I’ve known Tester since 2005 when he was first minority leader and then president of the state Senate. That's us in 2006 right after he beat Schumer's money-bags, corporate conservative candidate in the primary. He was the first U.S. Senate candidate that Blue America ever endorsed. And he was a proud populist then, even progressive in some ways, although he tacked right within hours of beating GOP incumbent Conrad Burns in 2006. Since then, he’s never had an easy election and always won by the skin of his teeth.
2006- 199,845 (49.16%) to 196,283 (48.29%)
2012- 236,123 (48.58%) to 218,051 (44.86%)
2018- 253,8766 (50.33) to 235,963 (46.78%)
All of the most recent polling shows him losing to an extremely mediocre and gratuitously racist candidate, Tim Sheehy. Tester has raised $43.8 million to Sheehy’s $13.7 million. At this point in the cycle, Louise and Paul’s thousand dollars is not going to swing the game. The tens of millions of dollars in independent expenditures pummeling the state will likely have some kind of impact.
So where to put the money: not Florida, where Debbie Mucarsel-Powell has raised a pathetic (for a serious campaign in that state) $14.4 million, and probably not Texas, where Colin Allred has raised $38.4 million. I don’t see either state flipping, although Texas may have a 10% chance— to Florida’s 1%. Why is Florida so impossible even though the incumbent, Rick Scott, is so detestable? The worthless Florida Democratic Party is a grifting machine who did nothing to register— and re-register Democratic voters. No voters, no election victories. In 2008, Obama registered almost 700,000 Floridians and won the state— by 236,450 votes. If the grifters there thought there was a real chance to beat Scott, they would be at least attempting to register hundreds of thousands of voters. They know there’s no chance and they haven’t registered squat; they just want you to send money so they can enrich their connected consultants. They suck.
There are two long-shot races though, worth investing in— certainly more so than Florida and probably more so than Texas— Missouri (Lucas Kunce) and Nebraska (Dan Osborn). Both are prohibitively red states.
Nebraska- R+13 (Trump won by 19.0 against Biden)
Missouri- R+10 (Trump won by 15.4 against Biden)
Both races are outside of the realm of Democrat vs Republican. Kunce’s only hope is that voters will see how much of a better option he is than Josh Hawley. It’s a stretch in a state where the Democratic brand is so tarnished. Tight now the polling averages show Hawley ahead by around 10 points. Kunce should have run as an independent. Dan Osborn is running as an independent and the most current polls show him either tied with incumbent Deb Fischer or beating her narrowly.
In some ways, the Nebraska Senate race could be the most consequential of the year other than the presidential election. If Osborn wins and becomes the pivotal vote… he controls the Senate. Anything Schumer or whomever replaces McConnell wants to do will have to be run through the anti-corruption independent who owes neither of them— nor their corporate sponsors— a thing. Nebraskans electing Dan Osborn is a once in a decade opportunity to foster some real change in Washington. It’s worth the gamble and the race is tightening up rapidly. I told Louise that’s where I’m putting my personal money. I’d rather see Osborn as the pivotal vote than see a return to the current status quo with the Democrats theoretically in control… as long as they don’t anger any of the conservative Dems, Manchin and Sinema being the worst, but far from the only ones.
Last night, just as rumors began circulating that a new poll shows Osborn up by 3 points, The Hill reported that “Republicans are looking to avoid a disaster... ‘The U.S. Senate is a country club full of millionaires controlled by billionaires,’ Osborn told The Hill in a statement. ‘Nebraskans know we need change. That’s why I’m not a member of either party and it’s why I’m not taking a dime of corporate PAC money— because I refuse to be controlled by any party boss or special interest. Instead, we’re uniting Democrats, Republicans and Independents to send a working person to Washington who will finally stand up for regular people.’”
You can contribute to Osborn and Kunce here. If either of them wins, MAGA doesn’t get its hands on the Senate... regardless of how badly it might play out in Montana.
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