by Frank Holmes, reporter
While Americans are riveted to the 2024 presidential election, another electoral earthquake might rock the other end of the Capitol Mall this November.
Three elections have Senator Chuck Schumer shaking in his boots that Democratic control of the Senate might be coming to an end.
Schumer controls the world’s greatest deliberative body by only a two-vote majority, 51 to 49. He needs to keep every seat in Democrats’ hands… and voters are prying his fingers apart.
Schumer is so desperate that he’s begged one senator to reconsider his plans to retire—and the senator laughed in his face.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., told CNN he has refused a strange proposal from Chuck Schumer: Get back into the race for his own Senate seat, not as a Democrat, but as an independent.
Schumer knows West Virginia—where Donald Trump carried every county—will not elect a Democrat to statewide office… especially not a Democrat running for U.S. Senate against the immensely popular Gov. Jim Justice.
But he thought Manchin might carry the day by pretending to be an independent and then — after the election — voting for Schumer to keep his spot as Senate Majority Leader.
Unfortunately for Schumer, Manchin isn’t buying.
“I think that’s a long, long, long-shot scenario,” Manchin told Manu Raju. “So I don’t anticipate that happening. I don’t anticipate running.”
Of course, Schumer and Manchin haven’t always been close friends, especially as Manchin tried to position himself as conservative enough to keep representing West Virginia. Two years ago, Axios took readers “Inside Schumer’s frayed relationship with Manchin.”
Manchin isn’t itching to do Schumer any favors.
To make things worse for Schumer, a second election might bring his term as Senate Majority Leader crashing to an end, and it isn’t even located in a Republican or swing state. It’s in one of the bluest states in America.
Remember New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez? The three-term senator and loyal Democrat has announced he won’t run for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate this year.
Menendez faces charges of accepting gold bars as bribes for pressuring government decisions in Egypt.
Democrats are insisting he step down—but Menendez says he may instead run as an independent.
That doesn’t immediately threaten the Democrats’ majority, because if he is elected, Menendez would caucus with the Democrats, as “independents” Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Angus King of Maine, and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona already do.
The problem is, Menendez’s familiar name on the ballot could assure no Democrat gets elected. He’ll split the Democratic vote, clearing a path for the GOP to achieve an unlikely victory.
New Jersey has not elected a Republican senator since 1972, more than 50 years ago. (Two Republicans served in the Senate after Clifford Case’s 1972 victory, but they were appointed by the governor.)
But Menendez could turn the Garden State red.
The governor’s wife, Tammy Murphy, just pulled out of the Senate race—perhaps out of the fear that no Democrat will be elected in 2024.
That leaves saving the Democrats’ Senate majority up to Sen. Sherrod Brown from Ohio.
Brown has been the Democrats’ last man standing in Ohio. First elected in 2006, Brown been able to cling to power as the only Democrat to hold statewide office for the last 14 years.
Former Gov. Ted Strickland, the last statewide Democrat before Brown, won the 2006 election after a huge scandal in the GOP, when the former Gov. Bob Taft pleaded guilty to an ethics violation. The scandal dinged Republicans in the state, at least for one election cycle.
Just like Bob Menendez might ding the Democrats in New Jersey this year.
That prospect has Chuck Schumer sweating. Like most politicians, Schumer is obsessed with clinging to money and power.
Losing his job as the top senator has been on his mind for years.
But with a one-vote majority, and three incumbents about to go down in flames, Schumer might join Nancy Pelosi as a run-of-the-mill member of Congress in the not-too-distant future.
Senate Majority Leader Schumer caught on hot mic fretting to Biden that Democrats are "in danger" of losing Senate majority, expressing disbelief that Democrats are "going downhill" in Georgia & giving a rosy spin on Fetterman turbulent debate performance "didnt hurt us too much" pic.twitter.com/X0wWUZcmlO
— Mona Salama (@ByMonaSalama) October 27, 2022
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”