Sherrod Brown says he’s “fine” running for reelection with Joe Biden on the ballot in Ohio. Joe Manchin predicts Biden will “get beat so bad” in West Virginia that he’d have to run separately anyway.
And Jon Tester was distinguishing himself from the president even before the Montana Democrat announced Wednesday that he’s seeking a fourth term in his ruby-red state.
“This election is hopefully going to be about me. They’re going to try to make it about somebody else that’s not me,” Tester said in a recent interview as he pointed out his Senate workwear, capped by a clashing Montana tie pin. “It’s hard to make me into a banker or anybody. Even when I look like this — who the fuck puts that kind of a tie tack on their tie?”
Brown, Manchin and Tester all survived their party’s difficult 2018 cycle after then-President Donald Trump pushed their states further rightward. Before that, they won reelection in 2012 while sharing the ballot with then-President Barack Obama. Now, the trio of Democrats is staring down their toughest political challenge yet: pulling a Susan Collins.
The moderate GOP Mainer successfully persuaded her state’s voters to split their tickets in a presidential year; Collins won reelection by 8 points in 2020 even as Biden defeated Trump by 9 points in her state. For Democrats to hang onto their 51-seat majority, they need Collins-style performances from at least two of their three red-state incumbents in an era of declining split-ticket voters.
While Brown and Tester are all in, Manchin hasn’t decided whether to run again, and Biden hasn’t made it official yet either. That makes Tester’s reelection decision all the more critical to the party — he’s probably the only Montana Democrat with a shot. At the moment, Democrats’ hopes of holding the Senate largely ride on Tester and Brown defying their states’ political leanings.
A decade ago, ticket-splitting was a far more common political phenomenon: Democrats won Senate races everywhere from Missouri to Indiana to North Dakota in 2012, even as Obama lost those states. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the party’s campaign chair, acknowledged that in the current environment “it’s a little bit harder to differentiate yourself” but if anyone can do it, it’s his incumbents.
“Just look at how these folks got elected. Jon Tester ran well above the presidential race. Manchin has done that,” Peters said in an interview. “The candidates who are running have already demonstrated that they have a unique plan, a very individualized brand. And that brand will prevail in the end.”
Peters’ GOP counterpart on 2024 campaigns, Montana Sen. Steve Daines, predicted voters would see something simpler from red-state Democrats running alongside Biden: “They run scared. And they run away.” In 2020, Daines trounced a strong Democratic nominee, Steve Bullock, even as the former governor significantly overperformed Biden in Montana.
“In West Virginia, you know, it doesn’t make a difference,” Sen. Joe Manchin says. “Joe Biden’s going to get beat so bad no matter what in my state. It’s just me. I’m not going to be campaigning for or against anybody else.”