2022 SENATE RACES
2022 Senate Election Rundown
Critical Holds:
- Georgia
Reverend Raphael Warnock, fresh off his special election victory in 2020, is un for re-election just two short years later. His victory, alongside fellow Georgian Jon Ossof, is what gave us our razor-thin margin of victory in the Senate. The importance of Georgia cannot be understated. This year he’ll be running alongside Stacy Abrams in her critical Gubernatorial race. With Republican’s determination to tamper with elections across the country, control of the state may very well decide the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election.
- Arizona
In his own special election in 2020, Mark Kelly won Arizona’s Senate seat from Republican Martha McSally. Now, he’s up for a full six-year term. The Republican field is still wide-open, but whoever he faces in the general, he’ll need all the help he can get in keeping this red-trending-purple seat in Democratic hands.
- Nevada
In 2016, after the retirement of Harry Reid, Catherine Cortez Masto ran and won the Senate seat here with only 47% of the vote, beating Joe Heck’s 45%. Nevada has been a state that has long been consistently, barely, blue. It would be a mistake to take this seat for granted. In 2018, we won the Senate seat with 50.4%.
https://catherinecortezmasto.com/
Promising Pickups:
- Pennsylvania
With the retirement of Incumbent Republican Pat Toomey, multiple Democratic candidates have launched bids to flip this purple state blue. In order to expand our Senate majority and sideline the more conservative members of the Democratic slate, we need to pick up seats, and there are no better picks than Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
- Wisconsin
For a time, it appeared as though Wisconsin would be an open race like Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, Republican Ron Johnson announced that he would not, in fact, be retiring. Now, multiple Democratic candidates are running to face him this November, including Lt. Gov Mandela Barnes and Milwaukee Bucks VP Alex Lasry. The Wisconsin Primary is on August 9th.
Tough Pickups:
- North Carolina
The retirement of Republican Senator Richard Burr gives us a rare opportunity in this southern state. While the state is still mostly red, our recent election of Governor Roy Cooper in 2017 shows that statewide victories here are not as far-fetched as one might think. The Democratic primary isn’t until May 17th, but the clear frontrunner is North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley. Justice Beasley won statewide in 2014 with 50.1% of the vote, but unfortunately lost her seat in 2020 by just 412 votes.
- Ohio
Ohio is one of the states that has been sliding further and further into republican hands over time, but our 2018 victory in the Senate here shows that with the right candidate, the state is winnable for a Democrat. And with the retirement of Republican Rob Portman, it is looking even more promising. Last night’s primary shows that while the Republican slate is fractured, the Democratic electorate is very much united behind Congressman Tim Ryan as our candidate here.