The urgent push came as Democrats voiced increasing pessimism about retaining control of the House, seeing the Senate as potentially their last stand to salvage some power in Congress next year. Reflecting the high stakes, Senate candidates have embarked on a frenetic pace of campaign events in the final days, as they trade sharpening attacks and enlist boldfaced names to hit the trail with them.
From Nevada, where Republican Adam Laxalt on Friday highlighted high gas prices as he continued a bus tour, to Pennsylvania, where Democrat John Fetterman made a pitch in the vote-rich Philadelphia suburbs, to Wisconsin, where Democrat Mandela Barnes implored supporters to tell their friends to vote, the candidates on the front lines of an expensive and bruising battle ramped up their efforts to persuade undecided voters and energize those in their corner to go to the polls.
“I feel confident we’re going to be able to hold the majority in the Senate, and then I believe we’ll have an opportunity to pick up a seat or two,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a telephone interview.
Democrats said they are cautiously optimistic that their candidates can withstand a challenging political environment in which high inflation, rising crime in some areas and low approval ratings for President Biden have become difficult for them to overcome. They have run heavily on abortion rights and sought to cast Republicans as extremists who would steer the government in a dangerous direction.
Chuck Rocha, a veteran Democrat strategist involved in races around the country, called the Senate “one of our shining lights of hope,” as he pointed to Republicans nominating “Trump acolytes” in some key races where the president’s endorsement helped determine the nominees. Rocha said “the bad news” was that he felt “uneasy about the House,” where races tend to follow the national mood more uniformly.
Republicans are hoping voters’ frustration with the state of the country will enable them to overcome what strategists in both parties have said are weaknesses in some of their Senate candidates. They have focused on the economy, rising crime in some areas and the Biden administration’s struggles to deal with an influx of migrants at the southern border. On Friday, they expressed confidence in that pitch. “I wouldn’t deviate a lick,” said Josh Holmes, a Republican strategist working on the Nevada Senate race.
With a 50-50 Senate where Vice President Harris has the power to cast tiebreaking votes, Republicans need to gain only one seat overall to flip the chamber. The focus of both parties has been heavily on competitive races in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada.
New polling by Marist College released Friday showed how competitive the first three races are, while polls in Nevada have also showed a close race. In Pennsylvania, which Democrats see as their best bet for flipping a red Senate seat, Fetterman, the lieutenant governor, held a lead over Republican Mehmet Oz, a celebrity doctor who has gained some momentum in recent weeks.
A day after Fetterman received an endorsement from Oprah Winfrey, who helped launch Oz’s TV career, the Democrat campaigned in a swing area in the collar counties of Philadelphia. He held a conversation with Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) in front of a small audience where he made a closing pitch that touched on abortion access and the economy while also seeking to raise doubts about Oz’s character.
“Dr. Oz is essentially using Pennsylvania, not serving Pennsylvania,” Fetterman said. “And so I think if somebody was looking for the kind of candidate that is to stand up for anyone that ever got knocked down that has to get back up, or any kind of forgotten community, they can really relate to their lives and kind of see the candidate that would fight for the kind of places where you live in, and that’s really what this campaign is absolutely about.”
On Saturday, Biden and former presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama will headline rallies for their parties’ tickets on both ends of the state. Obama will join Fetterman for a rally in Pittsburgh, then the two will link up with Biden and gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro for an event in Philadelphia. That night, Trump will be in Pittsburgh with Mehmet Oz and Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano.
Fetterman is still recovering from a stroke in May that left him with symptoms of an auditory processing disorder, according to the Democrat and his doctor. He has also at times struggled with his speech. Fetterman’s doctors have said he is fit to serve in the Senate.
Oz has sought to cast Fetterman as soft on crime and has distanced himself from Mastriano’s far-right extremism, as he seeks to appeal to more moderate voters. This week, during an event in a deeply conservative part of the state, Oz catered his message to a more centrist audience.
“You got to have less extremism, more balance in Washington,” Oz told supporters at a barn in Lancaster County. “It’s what’s going to allow us to cope with the challenges that this country faces.”
While Oz sought to make inroads with moderates, other Republican candidates wanted to appeal to the conservative base. In Georgia on Friday, former football star Herschel Walker, the GOP nominee, campaigned with former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, who has been campaigning with Republicans and former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi.
On Saturday, Walker will host a game day rally near the University of Georgia — where he won the Heisman Trophy — with the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s chairman, Sen. Rick Scott (Fla.).
“Voters are clearly rejecting Joe Biden and the Democrats’ agenda and embracing the new vision and fresh ideas from our strong Republican candidates,” Scott in a statement said. He predicted “some big wins on Tuesday.”
The Democrat who Walker is trying to unseat, Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (Ga.), did not host any public campaign events on Friday. On Thursday, he made multiple stops on a bus tour with Sen. Jon Ossoff (Ga.) and other state Democratic leaders.
In a rally on Thursday evening in a majority-Black county considered an important Democratic stronghold, just more than 60 supporters came out. They were ushered into a 500-person theater, where a DJ was playing music and a lectern was set up with a “Warnock for Georgia” sign ahead of his arrival. Moments later, supporters were ushered out of the theater to instead gather in the lobby of the center where it felt more crowded.
In his remarks, Warnock sought to make a case that Walker is unfit to be a senator. The Democrat spent much of his campaign largely avoiding talk of his opponent, but in the final days leading up to the election, he has been vocal in railing against Walker.
“This is not just an election between a Democrat and a Republican. This is not even the difference between right and left. This is the difference between right and wrong,” Warnock said as the crowd cheered in agreement.
“If we can’t trust you to tell the truth about your life, why would we put our lives in your hands?” Warnock added.
Walker, who has made numerous misstatements, has faced scandals related to his personal life, including claims by two former girlfriends that he pressured them to have abortions. The Republican, who has run on a strict antiabortion platform, has denied those claims.
In Nevada, where Democrats are trying to defend a seat, Democrats held a slight advantage in ballots returned as early voting came to a close Friday. Their lead was wider at the same point in 2018, when Democrats did well.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) was running neck-and-neck with Laxalt in a race that Republicans have long viewed as their best chance to flip a seat, trying to convince voters that Democrats will bring down costs as well as protect abortion access as Republicans seize on Nevada’s especially high inflation.
Campaigning Friday night with Laxalt, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said he is “hoping for 53 or 54” Republican seats in the chamber next year. Laxalt said early ballot returns in Nevada are looking good for Republicans — since GOP turnout in person could easily erode Democrats’ slim advantage.
Addressing a crowd in a chilly parking lot, Laxalt blamed rising prices on “Joe Biden policies” that Cortez Masto supported.
Cortez Masto spent the last day of early voting with actress Kerry Washington and singer Camila Caballo, talking to young voters, volunteers and other supporters.
In Arizona, the Senate race has tightened in recent polling — boosting GOP hopes to retake a seat considered a long shot earlier this fall as Republican Blake Masters struggled to compete with Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly’s huge cash advantage and double-digit lead with the state’s all-important independent voters.
Masters and GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake have been campaigning in close coordination, holding packed events together and recently appearing for a joint Fox News interview — a united front that Republicans say has helped lift Masters with the base voters he needed to consolidate.
Also joining Masters on Friday: Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who Masters sees as an ideological ally in the Senate. Masters’s campaign, meanwhile, has attacked Kelly over his choice of surrogates in the final stretch, seeking to tie the Democrat to the Biden administration and undermine his pitch as a more moderate Democrat. On social media, Masters shared a website aimed squarely at that message, condemning “Joe Biden & Mark Kelly: Two Years of Failure.”
Kelly will appear Saturday with first lady Jill Biden in Phoenix. The president has avoided Arizona since taking office amid anger over his handling of the border and the state of the economy.
Paul Maslin, a Democratic strategist, said where the races have settled is not surprising given the political makeup of the states in play. Democrats would probably be underwater if Trump wasn’t still so prominently in the news and if the Supreme Court hadn’t struck down Roe v. Wade, he said.
“If there never had been a Dobbs case and no Trump, then the entire campaign would have been a debate about the economy. Do you think for a second we could have won that race?” he said. “We were sadly given a gift by the Supreme Court, and it helped us.”
In Wisconsin on Friday, Barnes, the Democratic Senate nominee and lieutenant governor, stood in the shadow of the state Capitol in Madison and urged a crowd of supporters to get their friends to the polls.
“People like Ron Johnson have had their days. It’s our time now,” Barnes said, referring to the state’s Republican senator and the man he hopes to defeat. Barnes would be the first Black senator from Wisconsin if he wins.
As he has during much of the campaign, Barnes made a populist pitch for his candidacy. “The industries that gave my family a fair shot are in decline,” Barnes said. “This is a fight to make sure the American Dream can be realized.”
On Friday, Johnson continued his “Get Out The Vote” tour of the state in his green bus, which he dubs the “Ronmobile.” He made stops in the eastern portion of the state, including Green Bay and Fond du Lac.
During his tour, he has pitched his candidacy as way of protecting traditional American values, emphasized his support for law enforcement, and criticized Biden and the Democrats for their handling of the economy. He has also delved into race, pointing out his opponent’s concerns about systemic racism and asking why someone with those views would want to represent the state in the Senate.
Responding to Johnson’s criticism during a Madison campaign stop Friday, Barnes called Johnson “the worst senator in Wisconsin since Joe McCarthy” and said Johnson is “doing his best to emulate” McCarthy.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is going on a one-man tour in Wisconsin and Michigan to energize his base to vote, though not appearing with Barnes. Two other former 2020 presidential primary rivals, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) plan to campaign together in New Hampshire on Sunday for Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.).
Hassan is running against Republican Don Bolduc in a race that has also tightened in the final weeks.
Knowles reported from Las Vegas. Linskey reported in Madison, Wis. Rodriguez reported from Atlanta. Dylan Wells in Upper Darby, Pa., and John Wagner contributed to this report.
