The 2024 Election: December

This month I will continue to update my coverage of the 2024 elections for the Presidency, Senate and House. I will do my best to maintain an impartial manner, and only attempt to educate, rather than persuade.

Race to the White House:

With just a few weeks left until the Iowa caucuses, how do things stand with the presidential race? Is Trump still leading the polls? Have there been any major unexpected changes in the primaries? Does Wyoming still exist? All of these questions and more will be answered here.

Let’s start with the Democratic primary this time. Incumbent President Joe Biden is only facing two contenders, neither of whom have made much of an impact in the polls thus far. Author and spiritual leader Marianne Williamson, who also ran in 2020, and Minnesota Representative Dean Phillips have both been hitting the campaign trail, but to little effect. Phillips has centered his campaign around Biden’s unpopularity, citing the need for a different candidate, not one with vastly different policies. Williamson’s campaign is to the left of Biden and feels more akin to a Bernie Sanders style of policy, with importance placed on meeting the needs of every American. Despite his excellent numbers in the polls with regards to his party’s primary, Biden’s approval rating and general election polling have many Democrats worried. As December comes to a close, Biden’s approval rating stands at an undesirable 39%. Much of the recent polling has him trailing Trump in the battleground states such as Michigan and Nevada, and more than 3/4 voters think he’s too old to hold the office. But how are things looking on the Republican side of things?

As the year ends, the once crowded Republican field has narrowed to just seven candidates: Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, Asa Hutchinson, Ryan Binkley, and Vivek Ramaswamy. Trump still holds a commanding lead in the polling, and time seems to be running out for any one of his challengers to successfully make their case and beat him in any of the primary states. Nikki Haley in recent weeks has been putting everything she has into the New Hampshire primary in an effort to solidify her second-place standing nationwide, with the hope that a strong showing in the Granite State or even a victory could cause her fellow Republican presidential hopefuls to line up behind her. Ron DeSantis has seen little movement in the past several months, and his campaign wavers between second and third place.

The biggest wildcard facing the Presidential election at the moment still remains Donald Trump and the United States judicial system. Two states, Colorado and Maine, have ruled that Trump engaged in insurrection and is thereby disqualified from their primary ballots, though Colorado’s court ruling is in the appeals process as of this writing. His legal schedule for 2024 is packed, with trials set for January, March, May and August. The outcomes of these trials could potentially impact how future states decide to handle Trump’s presence on the primary ballots. For example, if Trump is found guilty in his D.C. trial, we could see a cascade of states rule that he engaged in an insurrection and therefore remove him from the ballot.

Senate Standstill?

When it comes to the senate, it would appear that few things have changed since I first updated this blog. Only one senator announced their retirement, few new candidates jumped into competitive races, and the primaries haven’t started yet. But these small happenings will have a large impact on the senate elections next year.

The biggest piece of news is the retirement of West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, the last statewide elected democrat in the second most Republican state in the country. His decision not to seek re-election all but guarantees Republicans will gain the senate seat in West Virginia, which would, assuming they hold onto all of their current seats, bring them to fifty seats. Manchin, who was already seen as the heavy underdog in his possible re-election bid, hinted at a possible third party presidential run in 2024 in his retirement announcement. However, for Democrats, his decision backs them into a most unenviable corner: they now must run a perfect election in 2024 or the senate will flip into GOP hands. This is no easy feat however, as all seven of the most competitive races in next years’ elections are in seats Democrats currently hold, including two in states Biden lost by upwards of 8 points, and five in states he won by less than 3 points.

The clock is also ticking in several states where wildcard candidates could either upend or solidify one party’s odds in the race. In Montana, Representative Matt Rosendale (R) has still not announced whether or not he will jump into the race, though he’s been hinting at it since May. Rosendale was the Republican nominee for this seat in 2018, losing to incumbent Jon Tester (D) by roughly 3 points. NRSC chair Steve Daines (R), the other senator of Montana, has done everything he can to keep Rosendale out of the race, as many see him as the weakest candidate to unseat Tester. Daines recruited Tim Sheehy, a veteran and successful businessman in Montana to run for the seat, and his efforts seem to have paid off quite well. Rosendale does have time to think some more, however, as the filing deadline for the state’s primaries isn’t until the summertime.

On the flip side for the GOP, the candidate senate Republican leadership is trying to recruit, wealthy businessman Eric Hovde who ran for the senate in 2012, has not yet announced a senate run. He is widely seen as the best candidate Republicans could run, due in large part to his more moderate lean and his ability to self fund a campaign, much like Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania. Republicans in Wisconsin have seen a run of bad luck this year, with many of their ideal candidates deciding to forgo a run, Representatives Mike Gallagher and Tom Tiffany chief among them.

On the Democratic side, primaries in safe blue states are shaping up in full force as primary elections begin in just a few months. In California, three Democratic Representatives (Lee, Porter and Schiff) are all fighting to be one of the two candidates to make it through the state’s jungle primary (top two vote getters in the primary move onto the general, regardless of party). Their only noteworthy Republican challenger is Steve Garvey, former pro MLB player for the San Diego Padres in the 1980’s.  In Maryland, the race to succeed Democrat Ben Cardin has narrowed down to two candidates: Representative David Trone and Prince George County executive Angela Alsobrooks. Trone, whose district covers the entire western panhandle of the state and stretches to the suburbs of D.C. is a wealthy businessman (CEO of a wine company) who is well known for using his personal fortune to finance his congressional campaigns. Alsobrooks is the executive of Maryland’s second most populous county, which makes up the eastern half of Maryland’s D.C. suburbs, and would be the first black senator to represent Maryland, and would be the only woman in the state’s ten-person congressional delegation if elected. But perhaps the most interesting senate primary to watch is in the Garden State.

Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) is the senior senator of New Jersey, serving in the office since 2006. In September, he, his wife and two other businessmen were indicted on a number of felonies pertaining to his interactions with members of the Egyptian government, and bribes he took as an elected official. Menendez has denied any wrongdoing and plead not-guilty to all charges, but has not yet said whether or not he will try to run for re-election. Two prominent Democrats have already announced runs for his seat: Representative Andy Kim, who was first elected to Congress in 2018 and whose district spans much of Southern and Central New Jersey, and Tammy Murphy, the wife of current New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy (D). If she were elected Tammy Murphy would be the state’s first female senator, and if he were elected Andy Kim would be the state’s first Asian senator. Murphy’s campaign brings up more than a few big questions, perhaps chief among them being “what would her policies be in the senate?” Murphy was a registered Republican as recently has the mid-2010’s, even while her husband ran one of the biggest Democrat fundraising machines in the country. She will need to prove to voters that her campaign isn’t a display of nepotism in a state which is infamous for it; a quarter of the state’s representatives are the children of powerful New Jersey politicians. Andy Kim on the other hand will have to prove to voters that he is the best candidate in the primary, and he’s already trying to prove that by showing his willingness to be a bipartisan problem solver in congress. On the GOP side, no high-profile candidates have emerged, and Representative Jeff Van Drew (R) declined to jump into the race.

House Expulsion:

Since the last update, the House has seen even more chaos. On December 1st, the house voted 311-114 to expel freshman representative George Santos, the criminally indicted Republican from New York’s 3rd district. The third such expulsion vote was successful following the release of a scathing report by the House ethics committee, which gave many members the proof they needed to vote to expel. Santos’ removal tightened what was already a razor-thin majority for Speaker Johnson, and it also tees up a special election for his seat on February 13th which will be highly competitive. The seat, based in Northwest Long Island and a sliver of Queens, voted for Santos by 8 points in 2022 just two years after voting for Biden by roughly 8 points in 2020. Both parties have announced their nominees for the seat, chosen by the state parties of Nassau and Queens counties. The Democrat nominee is Thomas Suozzi, the previous holder of this seat who retired in 2022 to launch an ultimately unsuccessful long-shot bid for governor of New York. The Republicans chose relative newcomer to politics Mazi Melesa Pilip, a Nassau county legislator who was born in Ethiopia and moved to Israel as a child, later serving in the Israeli Defense Forces. If Suozzi is elected, he will narrow the GOP majority to a never-before-seen margin, and if Pilip is elected, she will be the only female black Republican in Congress, and the first since 2019.

In other House news, a slew of retirements capped off November and filled out the month of December. Among the retirements are two democrats in North Carolina who both cited the GOP-drawn maps as making their re-election bids impossible, and Wiley Nickel (D) in particular teased a possible 2026 senate run in the state. Dan Kildee’s (D) retirement opens up a second highly competitive seat in Michigan, following Elissa Slotkin’s (D) senate ambitions earlier this year. Patrick McHenry (R) of North Carolina who briefly served as interim speaker during October’s chaos announced his retirement, the end to a congressional career that began in 2004. Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R) announced that he would be resigning from Congress at the end of the year, bringing his tumultuous time in congress from its peak to a political abyss in less than a year, and bringing the GOP majority to an even slimmer lead. Current retirement total: 32 representatives; 22 Democrats and 10 Republicans.

Another state joined the growing list of states who will head into 2024 with a new congressional map. On October 26th, a judge ruled that Georgia’s 2022 congressional map violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the power of black voters in the state and ruled that the state legislature needed to draw a new map. Georgia’s republican legislature drew a new map which upheld the 9-5 R-D delegation, but drew a district in the eastern Atlanta metro area which has a majority black voting population, but at the expense of Lucy McBath’s (D) seat in the northeastern Atlanta suburbs. The judge ruled that the new map followed his ruling and on December 28th the map went into effect. Lucy McBath announced that day that she would be running in the newly drawn 6th district in east Atlanta instead of challenging Rich McCormick (R) in the 7th district she currently represents.

Several states currently have litigation pending regarding new maps, New York most prominent among them. Following a ruling on December 12th, the New York Independent Commission began work on a new map to be used for the 2024 elections. However, it is likely that we will see a repeat of 2022’s redistricting process, in which the commission draws a map which is then struck down by the NY legislature which can then draw their own map. Many political prognosticators are expecting at least four seats currently held by Republicans, and as many as seven such seats to be drawn to be more Democrat leaning in such a scenario. Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin also have litigation pending regarding new maps.