Trump Screwed McConnell Out of Power in 2022. Is He Doing It Again?

Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

In 2022, Trump-backed Senate candidates in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona lost, and badly. They weren’t the candidates that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wanted to run. These three were Trump picks, and they sank along with many other Trump-endorsed candidates.

It’s the reason McConnell holds the title of minority leader instead of majority. “Candidate quality” was the way he put the issue back then, but what he really meant was “damaged, Trump-backed goods.”

As the 2024 election season gets underway, McConnell may be experiencing a bit of déjà vu. Could Trump’s presence on the national stage tank his ambitions to flip the Senate? Let’s do the math and take a look at some of the headaches the former guy is already causing for McConnell.

The map and the math frankly suck for Democrats

Currently the Democrats hold 51 seats and can only afford to lose one, if we assume for our purposes today that Joe Biden remains president after 2024. The bad news is, Democrats have a nasty Senate map with very difficult math.

Democrats are defending a number of Senate seats in states that Trump easily carried in 2020, namely Jon Tester’s in Montana, Joe Manchin’s in West Virginia, and Sherrod Brown’s in Ohio. Both Tester and Brown have announced they are running, but Manchin has not as of yet.

Democrats also need to defend seats in states narrowly won by Biden. In Arizona, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema caucuses with the Democrats on many issues but has declared herself an independent and has not announced whether she will run in 2024. In Pennsylvania, Sen. Bob Casey is up for reelection, and the GOP spies a pick-up opportunity. In Wisconsin, Sen. Tammy Baldwin needs to keep her seat in a state where elections are often decided by a single percentage point. In Nevada, Sen. Jacky Rosen is up for reelection but looks vulnerable, with her colleague Sen. Cathrine Cortez-Masto having only narrowly defeated her Republican opponent recently in the state. 

McConnell should be looking at this map with anticipation. Democrats would have to hold six out of seven of these vulnerable seats, or a perfect six out of six should Manchin decline to run. And the best pick-up opportunity for Democrats? A long-shot campaign by Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX) to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas. 

Those are some steep odds stacked against the Democrats.

But then, there’s the former guy

In order to defeat established Democratic candidates, such as Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, the GOP will need to recruit contenders who can appeal to middle-of-the-road voters. According to reporting by Politico, in Pennsylvania the GOP has its eye on David McCormick, the wealthy CEO who lost the 2022 GOP primary to Dr. Oz by a nose. McCormick is a business executive and a combat veteran, the kind of guy who could appeal to critical suburban voters and wouldn’t have to spend much time fundraising.

But McCormick hasn’t signed on quite yet, and for one reason only: Trump. The idea of being on the same ticket as Donald Trump in 2024 is giving his team pause. “That’s about the only thing that they’re talking about,” said a Republican close to McCormick, adding that Trump looking like the likely GOP presidential primary winner is the only thing that “may make him a little more wary. Can he carry Pennsylvania?”

If McCormick were on the same ballot with Trump in 2024, they might have to mend some badly busted fences. During the 2022 primary, Trump bashed McCormick as a “liberal Wall Street Republican.” And McCormick revealed in his book that Trump had insisted that, in order for McCormick to win, he had to promote the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. McCormick declined. 

And there is a wild card. Doug Mastriano, who ran a failed campaign to defeat Democrat Josh Shapiro for the Pennsylvania governorship, is considering a senate run. Mastriano is a hard-right, election-denying, full-throated MAGA candidate. He’s so toxic, even Trump has said he might be a drag on his own chances to win Pennsylvania. But MAGA voters comprise the bulk of the primary voters, and should Mastriano seek the senate nomination, this loyal Trump acolyte could prevail over McCormick—then get creamed (again) in the general.

Similar scenarios could play out in other swing states. There is talk, for example, of Kari Lake running to claim Sinema’s seat in Arizona, assuming she isn’t Trump’s VP pick. Lake recently met with six GOP senators, including Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) who heads the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, indicating that she might jump into the Arizona senate race soon. Some in the GOP welcome her candidacy, noting she only narrowly lost the governor’s race to Katie Hobbs in 2022. 

But 2024 may be a different beast, more similar to 2020 should Trump himself be on the ticket. Lake is known as a staunch election denier and conspiracy theorist, and she rather incredibly is still challenging the results of the 2022 Arizona governor’s race. That may further sour her image with independent voters and drive them to support other candidates. Should that happen, it may be enough to allow a Democratic challenger like Rep. Rubén Gallego to prevail in a three-way race that includes Lake and Sinema.

The same story goes in other swing states. To pick off Democrats Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin or Jacky Rosen in Nevada, the GOP understands that it will be best served by running more moderate challengers. But Trump’s likely presence at the top of the ticket could dissuade potential GOP moderates from entering the race, precisely because they fear his name on the ballot will rally the Democratic base and swamp any chance of a Republican winning the seat. 

Imagine the GOP primaries in these states: The moderates would either have to avoid questions about Trump (his indictments, sexual abuse verdict, support for Russia, election denialism, destruction of Roe v. Wade) or somehow distance themselves from him. If they were openly critical of the ex-president, they could enrage the MAGA base or even earn the ire of Trump himself, who is famous for attacking any members of his party who won’t fall in line.

Where this leaves McConnell

If the swing states get pulled into the Trump vortex, the landscape changes. Democratic holds in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona would mean the battle for control comes down to Montana, Ohio and West Virginia, all rather improbably currently held by Democratic senators. 

Trump’s coattails could actually help out in those states, but in West Virginia the landscape remains murky. Manchin’s name lately is coming up in discussions around a possible candidate for the “No Labels” movement—a spoiler third party effort that seeks to be a home for self-described centrists. But assuming he eschews a national run, Manchin could face a difficult fight if he seeks to remain in the Senate, with former Governor Jim Justice having recently announced his intention to enter the GOP primary for the seat. To get to the general election, Justice will first need to defeat a Trump-aligned extremist, Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV). Whether Trump will endorse and lift Mooney to a victory, and thereby makes things a bit easier for Manchin in 2024, remains unclear.

And there’s one more wildcard: abortion.

Efforts are underway in Montana to put an abortion rights measure on the ballot in 2024. The presence of such a question, should it qualify for the ballot, could be a strong motivator for turnout among women and young voters, as we saw in Michigan in 2022 and the Wisconsin state Supreme Court race in 2023. That could help Sen. Jon Tester out of the deep odds he faces.

And in Ohio, a six-week abortion ban went into effect in June of 2022, but it is on hold pending a legal challenge. Gov. DeWine is hoping to temper that law with new legislation in advance of a ballot initiative to restore abortion rights, which voters will consider this November. If the state of abortion rights remains in doubt or flux into 2024, this may help Sen. Sherrod Brown keep his seat in Ohio.

In 2024, expect that Democratic ads will focus on Trump’s role in ending the constitutional right to abortion, or as he bluntly put it, “I was able to kill Roe v. Wade.” Assuming Trump is the GOP nominee and his name is at the top of the ticket, the down-ballot effect of that could prove decisive in close races.

McConnell had his chance in 2020 to convince nine more GOP colleagues to convict Trump for inciting the Capitol insurrection. Per the Constitution, that could have ended Trump’s right to run for federal office ever again. If Mitch McConnell fails to regain the Senate majority in 2024, he will have Trump squarely to blame—meaning he really, once again, will have done this to himself.