Who will run for Ohio’s Senate seat in 2022?

On Monday, Ohio Senator Rob Portman made the surprise announcement that he will not be running for a third Senate term in 2022. The Republican – at one point considered a possible running mate for Mitt Romney in 2012 – blamed his decision to retire on “partisan gridlock” in Washington preventing legislation from being passed.

Portman is one of the more moderate GOP Senators, and has gained a reputation in Washington for his bipartisan credentials, and has enjoyed a positive relationship with his fellow Ohio Senator, Democrat Sherrod Brown.

The 2022 midterms will be a key test for the Democrats, who currently have control of both the Senate and House of Representatives, but with the slimmest of majorities. The Republicans need to gain just one seat in the Senate – currently tied at 50-50 – and just five seats in the House to wrest control from the Democrats. Because of this, and with Portman’s retirement, Ohio’s Senate race will be far more crucial for both parties.

Ohio’s politics have been trending to the Republicans in recent years, and so this will likely give Portman’s successor an advantage in the race. But success or failure in an election can sometimes come down to the candidate. In this post, let’s consider some candidates from both parties who may look to succeed Portman in the Senate.

First up, for the Republicans:

Jim Jordan

The Representative for Ohio’s 4th District, Jim Jordan is a high-ranking member of the House Republican Party. He previously served as chair of the House Freedom Caucus, and as Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee and House Judiciary Committee. Jordan was also a close ally of former President Donald Trump – having been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Trump at the end of his term – and so Jordan’s candidacy would give more strength to the pro-Trump wing of the Ohio Republican Party. There had been some talk of Jordan running for Ohio Governor in 2022, mounting a primary challenge to Mike DeWine; however, a vacant seat in the Senate would be an easier target. Jordan has not yet commented on whether or not he will run.

Bill Johnson

Johnson, the Representative for Ohio’s 6th District, has expressed interest in running for Senate. A former US Air Force veteran, Johnson occupies a district which covers a swathe of Appalachian Ohio running the length of the Ohio-West Virginia border. This area was once heavily Democratic, sending former Ohio governor Ted Strickland to Congress for several years. While not as vocal in his support for Trump as Jordan was, Johnson still voted with Trump 100% of the time during the 117th Congress from 2019-2021, and holds a fairly consistent set of conservative viewpoints. However, Johnson also represents a heavily blue-collar district, and so he could be a good candidate to appeal to different sections of the party.

Jim Renacci

The former Representative for Ohio’s 16th District could try and make another run for the Senate, having run unsuccessfully against Sherrod Brown in 2018, losing out by seven points. However, Renacci did not mount a particularly strong challenge to Brown in a state with a noticeable Republican trend, and so there may be other candidates in a better position to take up Portman’s vacant seat. Furthermore, Renacci has been critical of Republican Governor Mike DeWine, and – like Jim Jordan – has hinted that he could launch a primary challenge against DeWine for the Ohio Gubernatorial election, which will also be held in 2022.

Jon Husted

Ohio’s Lieutenant Governor has risen through the ranks of Ohio state politics; he was first elected to the Ohio House of Representatives in 2000, becoming House Speaker five years later. After a stint in the State Senate, Husted became Secretary of State, finally being elected Lieutenant Governor on Mike DeWine’s ticket in 2018. Husted, a family man and former University of Dayton football player, has expressed interest in even higher office than where he currently is, although he might not be keen to bail on DeWine ahead of his gubernatorial re-election campaign. His reputation as a fiscal conservative might help, but he has drawn the ire of the right wing of the party due to DeWine’s approach to the Coronavirus pandemic.

Frank LaRose

Ohio’s Secretary of State, who has been in the role since 2019, could also be destined for higher office. One of the more difficult jobs LaRose has had as Secretary of State has been overseeing Ohio’s voting system, and he has been critical of suggestions of electoral fraud connected to the 2020 Presidential Election. Long considered a rising star of the Ohio Republican Party, LaRose has been highly rated by conservative organisations such as the American Conservative Union. However, LaRose – along with Husted – may be seen as a candidate from the Ohio Republican establishment; the pro-Trump wing of the Republican Party has almost been at war with Governor DeWine over his Coronavirus pandemic strategy, and DeWine’s opponents will likely push to keep establishment candidates out.

So while a number of potential Republican candidates have been suggested, the Ohio Democratic party does not have the same plethora of names available to them these days. However, here are some of the more likely candidates whom the Democrats might turn to:

Tim Ryan

Tim Ryan has been the Representative in Northeast Ohio since 2003, representing the 13th District since 2013. Ryan’s district covers the cities of Youngstown and Warren, as well as eastern parts of Akron. The 47-year-old, who briefly ran for the Democratic nomination for President in 2020, seems like the obvious choice for the Democrats; Mahoning County, which flipped to Donald Trump in 2020, is partly in Ryan’s district, and if Ryan can win the Senate seat then it will show that Democrats can still win with voters who may have drifted towards Trump in a state which is moving away from the Democrats. Ryan has said he is “looking seriously at” the idea of running, and could be a safe and sane choice for the party.

Nan Whaley

The Mayor of Dayton first rose to national prominence following the 2019 shooting at Ned Pepper’s Bar in downtown Dayton, for which she led mourning and called for greater gun control. Whaley previously ran for the Democratic nomination for Governor in 2018, but withdrew and endorsed eventual nominee Richard Cordray. Whaley, who campaigned for Pete Buttigeig in 2019 and 2020, has said that she is mulling a run for Senate; she wouldn’t be the first Democratic mayor of a medium-sized city to enter the national political stage.

David Pepper

The outgoing chair of the Ohio Democratic Party has also been named as a possible candidate for Senate. However, he is one of the less likely candidates. Pepper served brief stints on Cincinnati City Council and the Hamilton County Board of Commissioners in the early 2000s, and also run unsuccessfully for a number of offices. He leaves the chair of the Ohio Democratic Party at a difficult time, with the party having been on the backslide in Ohio during his time in the chair.

While Ohio as a state has been trending towards the Republicans in recent years, that is not to say that they will have an easy year in 2022, with not only a Senate primary but potentially a gubernatorial primary to fight through. The elections in 2022 will show which faction of the Republican Party – the Trump-ist right or the more moderate establishment consensus-builders – will become the dominant force in Ohio in the post-Trump era. For the Democrats, at this point it is too early to say how they will fare in the 2022 midterm elections. However, the Democrats will have an uphill battle if they want to claim Ohio’s other seat in the Senate; while it is often the case that seats left vacant by the incumbent are more vulnerable in elections, the trend towards the Republicans in Ohio cannot be understated. Donald Trump won the state in 2020, beating Joe Biden by eight points and ending the state’s 56-year streak of voting for the President.

If the Democrats can choose a good candidate with a broad appeal, and if they are able to run an active and engaging campaign, then they have a chance to make the race competitive. However, at this point in time, I agree with Center for Politics’s Larry Sabato; Ohio’s 2022 Senate race is still Likely Republican.

What to watch out for in the Georgia Senate runoffs

Tuesday, January 5 will see the final election of the 2020 election season take place: the runoff votes for the United States Senate elections in Georgia. The state of Georgia saw elections take place in both of its US Senate seats: the regular cycle election for the Class II seat currently held by David Perdue, and a special election for the Class III seat currently held by Kelly Loeffler.

Georgia operates a runoff system in its elections: if no candidate receives 50% of the vote in an election, then the top two candidates will advance to a runoff election, as was the case in both Senate races. In addition, Georgia state law dictates that special elections are conducted as non-partisan blanket primaries, meaning that multiple candidates from the same party compete against each other to advance to the runoff.

In Tuesday’s special election, Loeffler, the Republican incumbent who was appointed by Governor Brian Kemp on January 6, 2020 following Senator Johnny Isaakson’s resignation, saw off a strong challenge from Congressman Doug Collins for a spot in the runoff. Loeffler will face Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock in Tuesday’s runoff; Warnock topped the blanket poll in November with 32.9% of the vote to Loeffler’s 25.9% and Collins’s 20.0%.

Perdue, meanwhile, will face Democrat Jon Ossoff in the regular cycle election, both candidates having been denied a majority of votes by the Libertarian candidate. Perdue is seeking a second term in the Senate, whereas this is the second special election in the state of Georgia that Ossoff is contesting: he was the Democratic candidate in the 2017 special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, losing the runoff to Republican Karen Handel.

Georgia’s role in the 2020 Presidential Election has been both noteworthy and notorious: Joe Biden’s victory here in November’s Presidential Election – the first for a Democrat since 1992 – by just 12,000 votes helped secure him enough Electoral College votes to deny Donald Trump a second term. However, it has also been home to electoral controversy never before seen as part of the President’s campaign against the election results, most recently when President Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” additional votes for him.

With Joe Biden’s victory in the Presidential Election, the Georgia Senate runoff elections are crucial for both parties: following November’s elections, the Senate Republicans lost two seats (Arizona and Colorado) and gained another (Alabama), giving the party 50 seats in the Senate at this time. If the Democrats can win both of these Senate seats, then the Senate will be tied (two Independent Senators caucus with the Democrats). In the event of a tied Senate vote, it falls to the Vice President to cast the deciding vote; on January 20th, the Vice President will be Kamala Harris. So while Mitch McConnell will remain the Senate Majority Leader, a loss of the two Senate seats in Georgia could effectively mean loss of control of the Senate for the Republicans. Even if the Republicans can hold just one of the Senate seats in Georgia, then holding 51 seats in the Senate may just be enough to provide McConnell with some breathing space.

So what are the polls saying? According to FiveThirtyEight’s running tally of polls from a variety of providers – some more reliable than others – gives Ossoff an average lead of 1.4 points and Warnock an average lead of 2.0 points as of January 4. This means that both races are effectively too close to call. However, the Democrats cannot afford to be complacent; there is usually some pro-incumbent unwind in particularly close elections, and the Democrats are still recovering from other Senate losses in races which they were thought to have locked in, including in Maine and North Carolina.

However, with Biden’s victory here in the Presidential Election, and significant attention being paid to Georgia’s possible new-found status as a purple state, if nothing else it would be a significant achievement for the Democrats to flip the state from a Republican trifecta with two Republican Senators and a six-Presidential Election victory streak to a Democrat state with two Democrat senators. That would be significant in itself, and may signal Georgia as a beacon in a new generation of swing states.

However, it will remain to be seen how the unique and controversial characteristics of this particular election cycle will impact the runoff votes. Are the attacks on the election results by the President and his closest supporters going to turn more reasonably-minded Republicans away from these elections, or is it going to shore up Perdue and Loeffler’s support even more? And with the Democrats back in control of the White House, will every Democrat who voted in November feel the need to turn out for Tuesday’s elections? More than three million early votes have already been cast in the runoffs, although – as with the increased turnout in November’s elections – this may not be as much assistance to the Democrats as previously thought.

Tuesday’s Senate runoffs in Georgia will draw a close to one of the most controversial and divisive election cycles of our time. On January 6, Congress will validate November’s Electoral College vote, although this has also seen a challenge from Trump’s supporters. The results of the runoff may provide short-term relief for the winning party, but with a tight Senate margin, a contested Presidential Election, and the Democrats barely maintaining control of the House of Representatives – along with reflection by both parties on where they go from here – the first two years of Biden’s presidency may well be a difficult time for both parties.

My immediate reaction to the 2020 Presidential Election

Last night, the 2020 Presidential Election finally came around. It was an exciting, unpredictable night – and it isn’t even over yet.

It has been an extremely close race – unsettlingly so – with Donald Trump and Joe Biden swapping leads in various states, and many news network being reluctant to make calls on certain races too soon. As it stands currently, Trump has secured wins in Florida, Ohio and Iowa, while Biden held on to Minnesota and New Hampshire (although Trump was leading in Virginia for some time). Joe Biden has also claimed victory in Wisconsin while I was writing this post.

However, results continue to trickle in a day later. At the time of writing, the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada still have not been called for either Trump or Biden. Until earlier on Wednesday, Trump had been leading handily in the three so-called “Blue Wall” states which he won in 2016 – Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania – but votes still being counted have put Biden ahead in Michigan for the time being, with votes still to be counted (Trump still has a sizeable lead in Pennsylvania). At the time of writing, Biden has 237 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 214.

Despite so far having flipped Wisconsin (and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District) from Trump so far, Tuesday’s election is hardly a success story for the Democrats: while I had largely expected polls to narrow by the election, once again there was a marked difference between the polls and the results which have been emerging. In Michigan, for example, Joe Biden currently has a 40,000 vote lead over Donald Trump out of more that 5 million votes cast (Biden has 49.6% to Trump’s 48.8%). Yet, polls ahead of the election in Michigan gave Biden an average lead of 5.5 points.

To illustrate further just how close this election is, if we assume that Biden will ultimately carry the states he is currently leading in – Nevada, Arizona and Michigan – then that will give Biden exactly 270 votes in the Electoral College: exactly the number needed to win the Presidential Election. Trump will win 268 Electoral College votes if he holds onto Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia. A result like that could potentially make this the most controversial Presidential Election since 1876, when Rutherford B Hayes was awarded the victory by the House of Representatives.

A major source of the controversy would be Donald Trump himself. I have to make mention of this: Trump gave a shocking press conference in the early hours of Wednesday morning which he declared victory in states he had not won, alleged “a major fraud in our nation”, and threatened to take legal action all the way to the Supreme Court to stop legitimately-cast votes from being counted. Anchors on major news networks reacted in horror, and many of Trump’s notable supporters, including Vice President Mike Pence, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and former Pennsylvania Senator and CNN panellist Rick Santorum sought to disavow Trump’s aims. If Trump ultimately emerges victorious from this election, there will likely be consequences for what he said.

However, if Biden does manage to pull off a victory in the final counting of the Presidential Election, it will certainly not be a cause célèbre for the Democrats. They underestimated the extra number of votes Trump would receive under the increased turnout, and woefully underperformed with Hispanics, as was demonstrated in Biden’s loss of Florida. The Democrats also lost seats in the House of Representatives, and failed to succeed in key Senate races, including in Maine and North Carolina. Furthermore, if Biden does win with 270 Electoral College votes, it will mean he only barely scraped home despite everything they had against Trump in the last four years: his handling of the Coronavirus pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, and his general rhetoric and treatment of the office of President. That is nothing to be proud of: while it is to say nothing of how he might serve as President, Joe Biden was an adequate presidential candidate at best. There will need to be much reckoning and soul-searching within the Democratic Party after today, and they will need to ask themselves how, where and why they have still failed to connect with some of their key constituencies.

I will have more to say once all the votes are counted, and I am looking forward to dissecting the results and looking at what they all mean. There will also be more to discuss on the dynamics of Washington from January – potentially with a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and Executive and a Republican Senate. However – and whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden is the eventual winner – this has been the most unpredictable, controversial, surprising and exciting Presidential Election of my life so far.

Edit: Michigan was called for Joe Biden at around 4:15pm ET on Wednesday November 4th after this article was finished.

My projections for the Senate and House of Representatives

It’s important to remember that, whomever is elected President on November 3rd, they will still have to contend with the Senate and House of Representatives, and the party and leaders who control them. A Senate and House under the control of the opposing party can make a President’s job more difficult – although there is no guarantee that it would be any easier if they were the same party – and Presidents have to be able to reach across the aisle and work with both parties to pass legislation.

Elections to the House of Representatives and to one third of the seats in the Senate are also taking place on November 3rd alongside the Presidential Election. Today I am going to give my final thoughts as to the way I think these elections might go.

Let’s look at the Senate first. The Senate has been under Republican control since 2015, after Mitch McConnell’s party gained control from the Democrats after a series of decisive victories in the 2014 midterm elections. This time around, however, the Senate Republicans are on the defensive, and in a precarious position.

The Republicans currently hold 53 out of 100 seats in the Senate, so a loss of three seats would lead to a tied Senate, while a loss of four seats would lead to loss of control of the Senate. Unfortunately for the Republicans, the Democrats are leading in a number of key Senate races. In Arizona’s special election, former astronaut Mark Kelly has been enjoying consistent poll leads over Republican Martha McSally for some time, while in Colorado, a state which has been trending more Democratic, Cory Gardener’s loss to former Governor John Hickenlooper seems like another likely Democrat pickup.

However, the Democrats also have a good chance to expand their Senate territory elsewhere in the country: in North Carolina, Cal Cunningham is hoping to unseat Thom Tillis, whilst attempting to keep his campaign afloat following recent revelations regarding his personal life; Cunningham currently has an average 1.6-point poll lead according to RealClearPolitics – way down from leads of between 6 and 10 points he had previously been enjoying. Meanwhile, in Maine, Sara Gideon could be set to deny Susan Collins a fifth Senate term; Collins has not led in a major poll so far this year.

So there are four potential seats for the Democrats to pick up in order to flip the Senate. However, a good night for them could leave the door open for further pickups: in Iowa, Theresa Greenfield has been leading incumbent Republican Joni Ernst in a number of major polls. However, Greenfield has no previous elected experience, and if Donald Trump is able to hold onto the state at the Presidential level, this may count against her. Elsewhere, popular Montana Governor Steve Bullock is another hopeful for a Democrat gain, and the runoff system in Georgia’s Senate elections could give the Democrats a chance to sneak in.

However, I am going to keep my estimates for the Senate elections more conservative. If the Democrats pick up four seats – Arizona, Colorado, Maine and North Carolina – while losing the seat in Alabama lent to Doug Jones in 2017 to keep Roy Moore out, that would give the Democrats 48 seats in the Senate to 50 for the Republicans. Along with the two independent Senators who caucus with the Democrats, that would leave the Senate with a 50-50 split, meaning that the Vice President – be that Kamala Harris or Mike Pence – would be more likely to have to step in to break tied votes.

Now for the House of Representatives. The House has been under Democratic control since January 2019, when the party regained control of the House in the November 2018 elections after 8 years as the minority party. This time around, I don’t actually expect much change either way, the Democrats and Republicans may trade a couple of seats here and there: the GOP might pick up a couple of rural districts in Republican-trending areas, such as Minnesota’s 7th District, where Collin Peterson is running for a 15th term, or perhaps one of the Democrats’ districts in Iowa. Meanwhile, the Democrats could set their sights on a couple of suburban seats where the incumbent Republicans are not running for re-election, such as Texas’s 22nd and 24th districts.

However, I am not expecting a lot of movement in the makeup of the House of Representatives after Tuesday’s election, save to say that the Democrats will retain control. As a ball park figure, I would suggest that the Democrats will win around 238 seats in the House, with the Republicans winning 197. Nancy Pelosi would then serve another term as House Speaker, barring any challenges.

^{A map showing a possible makeup of a D238 – R197 House of Representatives}

We have just days now to go until the elections on November 3rd, and there is still everything to play for. Aside from the Presidential Election which is far from certain, the makeup and control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives hang on some very close races. These maps serve as a reminder of how much is at stake in Tuesday’s elections.

What is court packing, and why is it controversial?

Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation vote is due to take place in the Senate on October 22nd. The hearing – whilst having run smoothly and uneventfully when compared to the nomination process for Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 – has not been without its controversy due to the rushing of the process before November’s presidential election. But today I want to talk about something that is even more controversial: court packing.

Court-packing is an informal term given to the idea that additional justices can be added to the Supreme Court beyond the nine justices who sit on the bench. The idea is invariably floated in order to address any imbalances the court is perceived to have; indeed, the issue of court packing has received an increased amount of discussion in recent years as a possible counter-measure by Democrats in response to the Senate Republicans’ blocking of Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination hearing following his nomination by President Barack Obama in the months leading up to the 2016 Presidential Election.

Some Democrats – including Joe Kennedy III, grandson of Robert Kennedy and great-nephew of president John F Kennedy – have openly advocated packing the Supreme Court should Joe Biden and the Democrats win November’s presidential and Senate elections. However, both Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, have both been vague as to where they stand on the issue. However, the issue of court-packing is widely seen as a slippery slope, and one which would set a dangerous precedent, as I will look to discuss in this post.

The establishment of the Supreme Court is enshrined in Article III of the United States Constitution. The Constitution does not state the number of justices who should sit on the Supreme Court, although the Judiciary Act of 1869 has enshrined that there are nine justices on the Supreme Court: one Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices. Between the establishment of the Supreme Court in 1789 and the Act’s passage in 1869, there had been as few as six justices and as many as ten at various points. However, it wasn’t until the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt which court-packing became the issue that it is today.

Throughout his first term as President, Roosevelt had attempted to pass a number of New Deal measures which the Supreme Court, under the Chief Justiceship of Charles Evans Hughes, had struck down as unconstitutional, including the National Industrial Recovery Act – largely seen as the cornerstone of New Deal legislation, and which established the National Recovery Administration – as well as the Railroad Retirement Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act. Reasons for the Court’s opinion included that the unconstitutional acts represented an over-regulation of inter-state commerce by the federal government, and over-delegation of Congressional power.

Roosevelt, however, was enraged by the constant striking-down of his New Deal legislation. At the beginning of his second term in 1937, following his landslide Presidential election win against Alf Landon in 1936, Roosevelt crafted a plan to reform the Supreme Court; this plan became the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937. The plan would have permitted Roosevelt to add an additional Associate Justice to the Supreme Court for each Justice over the age of 70, unless the justice agreed to retire. At the time, six justices – including Chief Justice Hughes – were over 70, meaning Roosevelt would have been able to nominate six new justices to the court. It was this plan that became known as the court-packing plan.

Roosevelt’s argument was that the Supreme Court was overworked, and that the elderly bench was struggling with its heavy workload. Therefore, additional justices would help the Supreme Court with its casework. However, Chief Justice Hughes assured the Senate Judiciary Committee: “The Supreme Court is fully abreast of its work…there is no congestion on our calendar”.[1] In fact, the “reforms” that Roosevelt was proposing were not reforms designed to help the Court function; they were an attempt by the President to fill the court with justices who would support his New Deal legislation, and would therefore overrule the other justices by voting in favour of the President’s legislation.

_{“…To Furnish The Supreme Court Practical Assistance…” ~Elderman cartoon from The Washington Post, February 6, 1937. Franklin D Roosevelt is depicted attempting to persuade Congress that his Judicial Procedures Reform Bill will provide additional justices to help the Supreme Court – seated at the bench – with their workload, whereas the six new justices – all Roosevelts – are there to give the President a greater influence over the Supreme Court.}

Roosevelt’s Judicial Procedures Reform Bill ultimately failed, after Henry F. Ashurst, the Democratic chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee who had disavowed the bill, helped to stall it in the Senate. Roosevelt ultimately reneged on his court-packing plan later in 1937 when Associate Justice Owen Roberts helped to sway the Court’s decision in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, which upheld Roosevelt’s minimum wage legislation. Roosevelt would ultimately appoint five new Supreme Court justices during his second term to fill vacancies which arose normally.

Roosevelt’s attempt to pack the court led to a discussion how mow much influence a President should be able to have over the Supreme Court. Ideally, the Supreme Court should form part of the checks-and-balances system of American government, rather than reflecting a sitting President’s own legacy: it is for this reason that replacing a justice with one of a different ideology (such as the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg with the conservative Barrett) is always going to be problematic, especially if the balance of the court becomes tipped, becoming more conservative or liberal. Which brings us to the issue we face with court packing today.

To re-cap today’s court-packing debate, we must look back to 2016 following the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. In March 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland – who had some liberal leanings – to fill the vacancy left by Scalia. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate Majority Leader, refused to allow a hearing for Garland on the grounds that a Supreme Court nomination should not take place in a Presidential Election year (the Presidential election taking place that November). Garland did not receive a hearing, and in 2017 Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Gorsuch was approved in a Senate vote on April 7th, 2017, with three Democrats – Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Manchin – voting with Republicans to confirm him.

However, following Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death in September this year, McConnell announced that he would press ahead with a hearing or whichever justice President Trump nominated, despite Ginsburg’s death coming just under seven weeks before the Presidential Election (as opposed to just over seven months before the election, as with Garland’s case). Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination – should it go ahead – will give the Supreme Court a 6-3 conservative lead.

Some Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, have accused the Senate Republicans of stealing the Supreme Court seats offered to Gorsuch and Barrett. Indeed, many Democrats see court-packing as a retaliatory measure for the Republicans’ blocking of Garland, and Trump’s Supreme Court nominations. “It’s not just about expansion, it’s about depoliticizing the Supreme Court”, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren told Politico. However, the same revenge tactic was employed during the Supreme Court hearing for Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 (even without the allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh): when asked if the Senate Republicans were making a mistake about proceeding to a markup vote for Kavanaugh, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy responded that the Republicans “made a mistake to block [Garland] for over a year“.

Some proponents of court-packing will often point to the fact that the United States Constitution does not specify that the Supreme Court must have nine justices, and thus there is nothing unconstitutional about adding additional justices to the Supreme Court bench. However, adding justices sets a dangerous precedent: any President who feels that the Court’s balance is too liberal or too conservative, or (as in FDR’s case) who feels that the Supreme Court is not friendly enough to their legislation, could simply add a new justice to the bench to create a more favourable Court. Furthermore, if a President added new justices to the Supreme Court to address any imbalance, there would be nothing to stop their eventual successor as President from adding yet another justice to undo the previous President’s changes, or even from removing justices at whim to try and shape the Court.[2] While this kind of war of attrition over the Supreme Court may be a little far-fetched, my concern – and the concern of many – is that court-packing can easily become a slippery slope which could erode its independence as one of the three branches of American government, and leave it vulnerable to presidential influence.

Adding additional Supreme Court Justices after 2021 would not be a quick fix for the Democrats; it would require a change in the law to overturn or amend the 1869 Judiciary Act in the first instance, and then a full hearing process for each potential new Justice, and there is no guarantee for the Democrats that there wouldn’t be any dissent from within the party. However, there are growing calls from some Democrats for Supreme Court reform, and with Joe Biden saying he will announce his position on the matter at some point before election day, the tug-of-war over the Supreme Court looks set to continue beyond 2021.

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_{[1]Simon, James F, “FDR and Chief Justice Hughes: the President, the Supreme Court, and the epic battle for the New Deal”, 2012, New York: Simon and Schuster, p323}

_{[2]While there is debate over whether or not justices can constitutionally be removed from office (Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution states that justices “shall hold their offices during good Behaviour”; this is largely taken to mean that they hold the seat for life and cannot be removed at the whim of a sitting President), it is not too difficult to imagine a President attempting to circumvent the argument by saying that it is the seat on the bench which is being removed, rather than the Justice themselves.}

Electoral College projection with three weeks to go: Biden 306, Trump 232

It has not been a good couple of weeks for Donald Trump. His diagnosis of Covid-19, and subsequent hospitalisation, has raised concerns with some of his critics about not only his handling of the US’s response to the pandemic, but also his fitness to hold the office of President. Trump had a notable cavalier attitude towards the spread of the virus, and has spoken since leaving hospital that he is now “immune” to Coronavirus, even though a previous sufferer’s resilience to future infections is not yet understood.

Owed perhaps in no small part to this, there is increasing opinion that Democrat Joe Biden could be on course to defeat Trump in a landslide (a recent Metronews poll of West Virginia put Trump on just 53% to 39% for Biden). However, with my latest projection, I am still taking a more conservative approach. I still do not think there will be a landslide in the Electoral College, as many key states will likely narrow in the final three weeks of the campaign. I currently have Biden on 306 and Trump on 232 – a reverse of Trump’s 2016 Electoral College victory.

Comparing this map to my previous projection, there are only minute changes: I have moved the 2nd Electoral Districts in Nebraska and Maine over to Biden from Trump. This changed is mostly based on Maine’s polling for other races: in the Senate, four-term Republican Senator Susan Collins has been running behind Democrat Sara Gideon for some time now, while incumbent Democratic Congressman for the 2nd District Jared Golden has been enjoying significant polling leads and good approval ratings since he was first elected in 2018. Maine’s 2nd Congressional District is not somewhere I can expect voters to split the ticket too much, so I think Biden could be favoured here. Less polling exists for Nebraska’s 2nd District, although I imagine the district will largely follow suit in November.

And now for the rest of the battlegrounds. For a similar reason to my decision to move Maine’s 2nd Congressional District to Biden, I am keeping North Carolina in Biden’s column for now largely based on the other races in the state. In the Senate race, Democrat Cal Cunningham has been maintaining a largely consistent lead over incumbent Tom Tillis, although this by no means certain since revelations of Cunningham’s affair with a political consultant from California had threatened to torpedo his campaign. More positively for the Democrats, their position in Arizona does not appear to be weakening, either at the Presidential or Senate level.

However, despite a selection of polls giving Biden a small lead, I am still keeping Ohio in the President’s column: Trump’s presence in Ohio has been huge since his initial campaign for President four years ago; for much of Trump’s term, the Democrats did not even bank on Ohio being a battleground until recently. Biden has only seriously targeted Ohio in the last few weeks due to the positive polls; however, I still don’t think a few weeks of work will be enough to overturn four years of Trump ground game. Trump is campaigning and holding rallies in Ohio, Iowa and Florida – his home state – this week, so this gives us the impression that he is now more focussed on cutting his losses in key Republican states than trying to claw back states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. Elsewhere, states like Georgia and South Carolina may have more competitive Senate races, but this is unlikely to translate to votes for the President.

Of course, this projection could all be wrong. There are still three weeks yet until the election, and a lot can change in the meantime. Will the cancellation of the second Presidential Debate, for example affect Trump positively or negatively? I don’t know; but I will look to do a final projection before November 3, and we can see how much things change between now and then.

McConnell is wrong – and hypocritical – to seek a Supreme Court hearing before the election

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, died on Friday at the age of 87. The Justice, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by Bill Clinton in 1993, was a noted fighter for liberal positions on the court on matters such as abortion and Affirmative Action, and she was respected even by those who did not necessarily share her views.

While the main priority is that Ginsburg’s family and supporters should be allowed time to grieve for her passing, the fact remains that, barely six weeks before the Presidential Election, her death will put the issue of the Supreme Court back at the front and centre of the election. However, finding a suitable replacement for Justice Ginsburg needs to be one of the President’s priorities for the start of the next Presidential term in January – whomever the President may be. It would be a disrespect to Ginsburg’s memory as well as an insult to American democracy to attempt to do so in the last few weeks before a Presidential Election. With that said, it is profoundly disappointing to hear Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announce that he will seek to get a hearing on the Senate floor for President Donald Trump’s replacement for Justice Ginsburg before November’s election.

Back in 2016, during the closing months of Barack Obama’s presidency, Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court as a successor to conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died on February 13th of that year. At the time, McConnell said that “the nomination should be made by the president the people elect in the election”. I actually agree with this position, as I did at the time: the Supreme Court forms part of the checks-and-balances system of American government, and should not reflect a president’s – least of all, an outgoing or potentially outgoing president’s – legacy. When a Supreme Court vacancy arises in a Presidential Election year, the American people should vote in that election in the full knowledge that the winning candidate will fill the vacancy.

However, McConnell has gone back on all of that with his statement on Ginsburg’s passing. This, despite saying himself back in 2017 that “if the shoe had been on the other foot [with the nomination of Garland], [the Democrats] wouldn’t have filled a Republican president’s vacancy…in the middle of a presidential election”, as well as despite the fact Garland’s nomination came nearly eight months before the election, as opposed to six weeks in this case. You couldn’t make it up.

I previously criticized Senate Democrats for opposing Trump’s Supreme Court nominations of both Scalia’s eventual replacement Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh purely out of spite for the Senate Republicans’ refusal to hold a hearing on Garland in a Presidential Election year. And while completely I stand by that criticism, there is no defence for McConnell’s rank hypocrisy over Ginsburg’s replacement. If a hearing is ultimately held before this Presidential term is over, the Democrats would be justified in blocking the nomination purely based on McConnell’s willingness to break his own standard. After all, as McConnell himself said, “it’s about the principle, not the person”.

It is time for McConnell to stick to his own rule: there must be no talk of a replacement Justice for Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat until after the election. As I said earlier, voters can go the the polls in November’s Presidential Election knowing that the winning candidate will fill the Supreme Court vacancy, and cast their vote according to whom they would like to fill the seat. Furthermore, if President Trump wins re-election, he also has a golden opportunity to show America that he cares about the Supreme Court’s integrity and balance by nominating a liberal or liberal-leaning Justice; that would be the right thing to do in order to maintain the balance of the court. Then a proper hearing can take place without the looming threat of an election, and the Senate can vote on the candidate as they should: based on their ability and qualification, rather than by ideology and partisan spite.

Opposition to the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh arguably ended the careers of a handful of Democratic senators in 2018. With the Republicans currently trailing the Democrats in some key Senate races this year, it might be in Mitch McConnell’s interest to consider his position of Senate Majority Leader above rushing to fill a Supreme Court vacancy.

Who might Biden pick as his running mate? A look at some possible candidates

Senator Kamala Harris hugs Joe Biden at a Michigan campaign event in March

It was reported this week that Democratic nominee for President, former Vice President Joe Biden, will announce his nominee for Vice President to take on Donald Trump in November’s Presidential Election. Biden has pledged that he will choose a woman as his running mate, and the eventual candidate will become the fourth woman to appear on a major party Presidential ticket (after Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, Sarah Palin in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016).

While Biden and his team have their own vetting list, several potential candidates’ names have been touted by media and commentators as possible picks, so here I’m going to take a look at some of the possible candidates, and how they might help (or hinder) Joe Biden’s chances of becoming the 46th President.

 

Kamala Harris

The 55-year-old California Senator and former California Attorney General is one of the most likely picks for Biden’s running mate; Harris herself ran for the Democratic Nomination for President, dropping out before the primaries due to low polling figures. However, Harris is energetic with a good support base, and while she has only been a Senator since 2017, she has a wealth of experience from her home state and has been a champion of progressive liberal issues. Her appeal to independent and swing voters may more limited in purple states though.

However, a number of Democrats and Biden allies have concerns about Harris being on the ticket: with Biden likely being a one-term President at most (if he is elected at all), wary Democrats feel that Harris could simply see the Vice President slot as a route to shoehorning herself into the Oval Office, and that her place on the ticket could be more about her ambition than serving the country.

 

Tammy Duckworth

Like Harris, Duckworth has only served in the Senate since 2017, having previously represented Illinois in the US House of Representatives. However, the 52-year-old has credentials as a veteran and war hero: Duckworth was a former helicopter pilot in the US Army who lost both her legs in 2004 when her helicopter was shot down in Iraq.

Whilst Illinois – like California – is a solidly blue state, Duckworth’s veteran credentials could appeal to more conservative-leaning independents, and would likely be a reassurance to wavering voters who may be concerned that the Democratic ticket – and party as a whole – might be too progressive. Duckworth also has good bipartisan credentials, having served on President Donald Trump’s task force on re-opening the US economy beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Val Demings

While Demings may not be a household name, she could be a strategic pick for the Democrats: the 63-year-old Representative from Florida’s 10th Congressional District may have only been serving since 2017, but before entering Congress, she capped a 27-year law enforcement career by serving as the Chief of the Orlando Police Department.

As an African-American, Demings would give Biden the opportunity to pick a woman of colour as his running mate; something he has been encouraged to do in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. As a former police officer, Demings could also use her experience to bridge the divide between the fight for civil rights and the need for law and order, the latter being a message President Trump is pushing hard. Furthermore, with Trump now claiming Florida as his home state, Demings could help to claim some more local support for Biden.

 

Gretchen Whitmer

Despite only having been in office since 2019, the 48-year-old Michigan governor has already made a name for herself. When she took office, Whitmer was quick to snipe the issue of infrastructure – something that Donald Trump looked to champion in his 2016 election campaign – pledging to fix and invest in roads. A year later, Whitmer was selected to give the Democratic response to President Trump’s State Of The Union Address in February 2020, and since then she has led the response to the growing Covid-19 pandemic in her state.

Despite Whitmer’s relative lack of experience in office (despite having previously been the Michigan Senate Minority Leader) Michigan is obviously a key swing state in 2020, and with Whitmer on the ticket the Democrats would have some home advantage in the Midwest. However, with Biden already building a lead in Michigan, and Trump pulling some campaign funds from the state, this may not be necessary – although we should have learned by now that we cannot always rely on polls.

 

Keisha Lance Bottoms

Before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, very few people had heard of Keisha Lance Bottoms. However, the 50-year-old mayor of Atlanta has served the city for ten years, first as a member of the City Council for 8 years, before becoming Mayor in 2018. Her name has gained more recognition, firstly as the pandemic took hold in the US, particularly in the South (Bottoms herself later contracted the virus), and secondly during the Black Lives Matter protests, during which she pledged police reforms after the shooting of Atlanta resident Rayshard Brooks.

Bottoms’s home state of Georgia is very much in play in 2020, and so by placing her on the ticket, Biden could be in with a chance to tip the state over to the Democratic column again for the first time since 1992 and could help the Democrats to re-explore their ancestral roots in the Deep South. Besides this, Biden would also have the opportunity to put a woman of colour on the ticket. With her experience serving a major city, Bottoms still has a lot she can give in her career.

 

Karen Bass

Another candidate many outside California may not know, however Karen Bass is well-known and well-respected in her home state. The 66-year-old Representative from California’s 37th District (which she won with 89% of the vote in 2018) previously served as Speaker of the California State Assembly and helped steer the state through the 2008 Financial Crisis.

Bass holds a slew of very liberal positions on both social and economic policies, which are not out-of-place among California Democrats. On the one hand, Bass would satisfy the left wing of the Democratic Party as she would drag the ticket away from the centre. However, her nomination might not go down as well with independent voters and the party in the rest of the US who may feel that the party is too California-centric or progressive. Despite her popularity in California, she may not have the same appeal that other African-American candidates such as Val Demings or Keisha Lance Bottoms might have.

So these are some of the more likely candidates. And now for a couple of others…

 

Stacey Abrams (extremely unlikely)

The former Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives was certainly ambitious when she ran for Governor of Georgia in 2018, and the race attracted a lot of attention due to its perceived closeness. Ultimately, the race was indeed close, with Republican Brian Kemp winning by just 55,000 votes, and avoiding a run-off by barely tipping himself over the 50% mark. However, Abrams refused to concede the election, regarding that the election was a failure of democracy (there had been some concerns about vote-rigging and impropriety), although the totals were later reported by every county and an investigation found no evidence of impropriety. To this day, Abrams has still not conceded the election.

In April this year, however, Abrams attempted to step back into the political spotlight, suggesting herself as Biden’s running mate in an interview with Elle Magazine. While Abrams may think of herself as the best choice for Biden’s running mate, her personal ambition to reach high office will likely be more of a liability than an aid, and her appointment would likely be an effective way for Biden to scuttle his own campaign.

 

Michelle Obama (next-to no chance)

If any running mate would take Trump’s opponents back in time four years, it would be Michelle Obama. After 8 years in the White House as First Lady, Michelle has gone on to produce a best-selling book, speaking tour and Netflix series. As a first lady, Michelle Obama was popular, and a much-loved figure like her on the ticket could provide some emotional stability after the turmoil the world has faced in 2020 from the COVID-19 pandemic and other issues.

However, there is one problem: Michelle does not want to be President or Vice President, and reportedly hates politics. While many Democrats might hope Michelle Obama could undo four years of Donald Trump, it might be better to simply try and move on.

Once the nominee is chosen, Joe Biden and his running mate will have three months to win the election and deny Donald Trump a second term. While the race is still very much a toss-up, Biden is enjoying some positive polling at the moment, but each of these candidates could pull his campaign in different directions, and could draw appeal from different demographics and areas of the country over others. In those three months, Biden could still slip in the polls, and it will take more than a good running mate to help win a campaign.

Super Tuesday: How Biden managed to win what was Sanders’s to lose

Super Tuesday turned out to be a great night for Joe Biden. Having had a difficult campaign up until last Saturday’s South Carolina Primary, Biden managed to come from behind to steal several victories from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in states where Sanders has been favoured. Of the 14 states holding Super Tuesday Primaries, Biden won in ten of them, with the remaining four being won by Sanders.

Biden’s sweep of victories included big wins in the South such as North Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee and Alabama (the latter of which he won with 63% of the vote), as well as some states which Sanders was favoured in, including Minnesota, Maine and Massachusetts, and his biggest prize of the night: the former Vice President won Texas, taking 34.5% of the vote to Sanders’s 29.9%.

For Bernie Sanders, Super Tuesday brought a slew of disappointing results. The Vermont Senator claimed victory in four states – Colorado, Utah, his home state of Vermont, and California, his biggest prize – but lost out in many places where he had been expected to do better. In some states which he had carried back in 2016 – namely Minnesota, Maine and Oklahoma – Sanders failed to repeat his victory as he finished behind Biden in each case.

Further behind both Biden and Sanders, however, came Elizabeth Warren, who failed to win a single Super Tuesday state, and indeed failed to place in the top two in any contest; Warren finished third in her home state of Massachusetts, and in some states even finished fourth behind Michael Bloomberg (Bloomberg also managed to win the Primary in American Samoa with 50% of the vote).

A further outcome of Super Tuesday’s result was the further narrowing of the Democratic field: billionaire Michael Bloomberg exited the race, saying that he would be endorsing Biden so as to help defeat Donald Trump. On Thursday, Warren also suspended her campaign, having failed to win a single contest thus far. Only Biden, Sanders, and Hawaii’s Tulsi Gabbard now remain in the race.

So how did Biden manage to do so well? One suggestion would simply be that he is seen as a viable candidate once again. Having won the South Carolina Primary in style, he continued his return from the political dead by picking up wins in states where Sanders had been predicted to win. A second advantage that Biden likely had was in the thinning of the number of candidates immediately prior to Super Tuesday: both Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar – two moderates – both withdrew from the race and gave their endorsements to Biden. Meanwhile, Sanders had to fight for the support of more left-minded voters with Warren and – to a lesser extent – Gabbard.

However, it’s not whether or not a candidate wins a state, or how many states they win, that matters; what counts is the number of delegates that each candidate is awarded from each state. And indeed, Sanders had his successes on this front, particularly in California, the largest state in the union and holder of the biggest count of delegates. According to the Associated Press, at the time of writing Sanders had been awarded 186 of California’s 415 available delegates compared to Biden’s 148. This is a huge haul in itself; overall, Sanders pulled in more than 550 delegates across the Super Tuesday states. However, Biden’s total of over 620 delegates awarded was enough to push him into first in the nationwide rankings.

So what does this mean for the rest of the contest? With Super Tuesday out of the way, it looks as if Biden has reclaimed  the status as frontrunner. It looks as if Sanders may have peaked; however, there is one thing that could potentially help re-energise his campaign: an endorsement from Elizabeth Warren. Warren has not at the time of writing endorsed either Biden or Sanders, but having pulled in appeal from many progressive Democrat voters, her potential support for Sanders if she so chose cold help to consolidate those voters in Sander’s camp for the remainder of the campaign. With a second Super Tuesday coming up on March 10th, with six states – Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Washington – voting, there is potential for Sanders to re-gain some of the ground he lost to Biden, particularly in Washington, which is likely to be high on Sanders’s target list, and Michigan, a state he unexpectedly won in 2016 against Hillary Clinton.

However, with Super Tuesday out of the way, and the 2020 Democratic primary contest down to essentially a two-horse race between Biden and Sanders, the campaign is more reminiscent of the 2016 Democratic campaign now. With Joe Biden having turned Super Tuesday on its head, it looks now as if the nomination could be Biden’s to lose.

South Carolina Primary: The runaway victory that Joe Biden needed

Joe Biden is back in the race for the 2020 Democratic Presidential nomination, and his supporters can breathe again. The former Vice President, whose campaign was being written off just weeks ago, won the South Carolina Primary in style, topping the poll in every single county in the state.

While Biden was largely expected to win the primary, his share of the vote – 48.66% – was higher than the 39.7% average recorded for him by RealClearPolitics. His closest challenger, frontrunner Bernie Sanders, took 19.76% of the vote. Tom Steyer was third on 11.34% – his strongest performance in the contest (although Steyer withdrew from the race after the Primary). Biden was awarded 39 delegates, more than doubling his nationwide total at the time (taking him to 54), while Sanders received 15.

Biden’s victory can be attributed to his ability to appeal to voters across the board: before the Primary, Biden was the top-polling candidate amongst every race, including African Americans (Biden polled 48% amongst African Americans in the primary), who make up 27% of the state’s population. The Old South, of which South Carolina is part, is historically staunchly Democrat territory and is still home to a lot of ancestral Democrats; this would not normally be considered fertile territory for Sanders.

For Biden, this is the solid victory that he desperately needed, injecting energy and optimism into what had previously been an ageing campaign. His victory in South Carolina also led to the suspension of both Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar’s campaigns – and Biden also won the endorsements of both former candidates, as well as former Texas Congressman and Senate and Presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke.

Biden’s win sets up the remainder of the Primary contest to be a largely two-way fight between him and Sanders (Elizabeth Warren is not likely to have a huge impact from here on out), and with Buttigieg and Klobuchar’s withdrawals, Biden is left free to pull together the moderate and establishment wings of the party. Heading in to Super Tuesday, Biden can be confident of further wins in the South, including Alabama and North Carolina, an important swing state in November’s Presidential Election.

However, despite Biden’s success on Saturday night, there is still a long road to the nomination. We have only had four contests so far, and there is still every chance of a contested convention potentially throwing the nomination into chaos. That’s to say nothing of the fact that the contest still stands as Bernie Sanders’s to lose, and he himself can be confident of a big haul of delegates on Tuesday night, especially from states such as California and Texas, where he is expected to top the poll in each. So while this was the victory Biden desperately needed, we could come out of Super Tuesday to find Sanders has widened the gap between himself and Biden considerably.

For now though, as we await the Super Tuesday results, the South Carolina Democratic Primary was Biden’s lifeline, and he grasped it with both hands.