After two years of a unified Republican government that history will remember more for its spectacular, against-all-odds failures—multiple Obamacare repeal attempts, a wildly unpopular tax reform bill, a self-inflicted humanitarian crisis at the border, and so on—than anything else, Democrats at last have the chance to regain control of the legislature in the 2018 midterm elections this November 6th. Doing so would allow them to lobby for progressive policies, filibuster judicial nominees, force the administration to answer for its transgressions, and otherwise try and hold the line until, God willing, the party finds someone who can relieve Donald Trump of his duties in 2020.
In the House, where all 435 seats are up for grabs every election year, earning a majority is a pretty straightforward task, and right now, betting markets slightly favor Democrats to earn the gavel. The Senate will be a more formidable challenge, however, because of math: Only about one-third of its 100 seats turn over at once. And while Democrats need a measly two wins to flip the upper chamber, they must also defend ten seats in states that went for Trump. Republicans, meanwhile, must hold on to only one in a state that went for Hillary Clinton.
It is true that presidents' parties tend to struggle in the midterm elections after their first win. (Ask Barack Obama.) But so-called “waves” are never guaranteed, and this time, the map is doing the underdogs no favors. Since control of Capitol Hill may hinge on how these Senate races finish, let's take a look at all the hardworking public servants, enthusiastic hopefuls, and literal criminals who are vying for the right to represent their states in Washington.
What to know: The Senate's longest-tenured woman has become such a fixture in Washington that her political positions have their own Wikipedia page. Authored the 1994 assault weapons ban, and has been trying mightily to renew it since it expired 14 years (!) ago. Nearly pulled a legendary fast one on Trump in January. (Full disclosure: I interned for her in summer 2010, and found her insistence on business formal attire—regardless of whether she was in the office or the Senate was in session—to be both unreasonable and sticky.)
Challenger(s): Democratic state senator Kevin de León, a single-payer health care and free college proponent who made it here thanks to California's “top-two” jungle primary structure, which prevented Republicans from even making the general election ballot. To some, this seems unfair, but I like to think of it as part of their cosmic punishment for inflicting Ronald Reagan and his bottomless fan club of pseudointellectuals on the rest of us.
Should you pay attention? A little. In a fun quirk, Feinstein lost the endorsement of the state Democratic party, which is backing the more progressive de León instead. She's still the favorite, but at a time when frustrated Democrats have been booting old-line centrists for ambitious up-and-comers, it will be interesting to see how de León's presence affects the race.
What to know: One of the loudest voices in Washington for gun safety legislation, which is what happens when someone in your state murders 20 children and six teachers, and then you watch helplessly as the NRA's money-grubbing zealots work to prevent Congress from doing anything to ensure that this uniquely American tragedy won't happen again, and again, and again, and...
Challenger(s): Matthew Corey, a bar owner and window-washer who lost House races in the last three election years, and figured he might as well lose at something new this time, I guess.
Should you pay attention? No. Wayne LaPierre can go to hell, though.
What to know: While battling kidney cancer, Hirono delivered a fiery speech on the Senate floor as Republicans prepared to vote on Obamacare repeal, imploring them to show the same compassion for the American people that they had shown to her after learning of her diagnosis. Perhaps John McCain—also suffering from cancer—listened.
Because of her leadership in the fight for affordable health care, Mazie Hirono has absolutely no time for Jeff Sessions' dog-whistle bullshit.
Challenger(s): The last time a Republican won a Senate seat in Hawaii, Richard Nixon was president.
Should you pay attention? No. You should visit, though.
What to know: Roger Wicker has been in office since 2008, when Trent Lott quit to pursue a lucrative career in telling Sacha Baron Cohen that preschools should arm “talented children.”
Challenger(s): Nobody of note. Wicker is an old white male Republican who represents Mississippi.
Should you pay attention? No.
What to know: Smith is the former lieutenant to governor Mark Dayton, who didn't need to look beyond the office next door when appointing Al Franken's replacement. Smith hopes to finish out Franken's term, which ends in 2021.
Challenger(s): Michele Bachmann did the thing where she hinted that she might run just to see if it generated any “Whoa, here comes Michele Bachmann!” articles, but it didn't, so she's back to telling enraptured Elks lodges about the Ames Straw Poll she won seven years ago. In her stead is state senator Karin Housley, who wrote a shit book once upon a time.
Should you pay attention? No. People like Smith. She'll be fine.
What to know: No sitting senator looks more like their name than “Angus King,” who caucuses with the Democrats—and continued to do so even after they lost the Senate in 2014—but steadfastly declines to identify as one. Whatever makes you happy, man.
Challenger(s): Eric Brakey, a Republican, who last purchased a suit in 1994; Zak Ringelstein, a Democrat, who was performing country music as “Zak Mountain” two years ago.
Should you pay attention? No. Zak Mountain kind of slaps, though.
What to know: Cardin, 74, has held elected office for over five decades. This math sounds impossible until you learn that he began serving in the Maryland House of Delegates while still in law school, which says a lot about both Cardin's commitment to public service and also the scam that is the second and third years of law school.
Challenger(s): Someone named Tony Campbell, whose web site could… use some work.
Should you pay attention? No.
What to know: Whenever conventional wisdom dictates that Senate Democrats need a Republican woman to cross the aisle, the pressure always ends up Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, and people like Deb Fischer get the freest of passes. Then again, Collins and Murkowski have demonstrated an occasional interest in thinking for themselves, while Fischer—a cookie-cutter Republican who called for Trump to bow out one month before the 2016 contest and is now a cheerful rubber stamp for his agenda—has not.
Challenger(s): Lincoln City Council member Jane Raybould, a Democrat who can do nothing about the fact that Trump won her state by 25 points in 2016.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Should you pay attention? You should not.
What to know: In 2014, Heinrich and Jeff Flake traveled to a remote Pacific island to film a Bear Grylls-style TV show called Rival Survival, which attempted to prove that Democrats and Republicans can set aside their differences if they're really, really hungry.
Challenger(s): The Republican is Mick Rich, who drives a truck named The Beast and looks like a mash-up of Walter White and Hank Schrader. Former governor and noted geography whiz Gary Johnson, who apparently needs a single-digit election finish every few years in order to stay alive, will represent the Libertarian Party.
Should you pay attention? No, but take a moment to re-watch the moment that prompted a humiliated Johnson to end his ill-fated presidential bid.
Haha, just kidding, this grifting dope stayed in the race and ended up getting nearly five million votes. Five million. God, 2016 was a nightmare.
What to know: Since his federal criminal trial for bribery, fraud, and conspiracy ended in a mistrial in November, there is nothing to prevent Bob Menendez from focusing his attention on a bid for another six years in the upper chamber of the United States Congress!
Challenger(s): Chris Christie is basically in witness protection right now, so the GOP scrounged up retired pharmaceutical executive Bob Hugin, whose efforts to paint himself as a woke conservative have been undermined by the revelation that he referred to women who sought admission to a men-only college social club as perpetrators of “politically correct fascism.”
Should you pay attention? As with most things related to New Jersey, no.
What to know: Last year, the Salt Lake City Tribune designated Orrin Hatch, who has served in the Senate since the Carter administration, as its “Utahan of the Year.” Unfortunately for Hatch, it did so to highlight what it called an “utter lack of integrity that rises from his unquenchable thirst for power,” and to call for his retirement. He forgot to read past the headline.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Candidates: MITT! Two years after his humiliating pursuit of the White House job that everyone but him knew was never on the table, Mr. Forty-Seven Percent has a new new plan to head to Washington. If he beats Salt Lake City councilwoman Jenny Wilson, he'll become the GOP's latest once-proud principled hero to trade somber statements of concern for feckless, passive-aggressive Bible verse tweets.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Should you pay attention? Yes, because watching Mitt Romney transform into Old Mormon Marco Rubio is going to be so, so much fun.
What to know: In 2006, the former state attorney general beat then-Republican then-senator Lincoln Chafee, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and spent every debate to which he was invited looking like an usher who accidentally wandered onstage. Whitehouse hasn't faced a serious opponent since. He has also never launched a presidential bid, which seems like a tremendous waste of a good last name.
Challenger(s): Former state supreme court justice Bob Flanders, a multi-sport star at Brown who was drafted by the Detroit Tigers after college. He stands absolutely no chance of becoming a U.S. senator in 2018, so there's no real harm in sharing fun Flanders facts here.
Should you pay attention? No.
What to know: This man was a few thousand votes and/or an ill-advised Jim Comey letter away from becoming vice president two years ago, and he made Barack Obama's short list for the same position in 2008. After 2016, he promised not to accept any hypothetical future nominations to the position, which is probably as much of a self-care strategy as anything else. Kaine is a perfectly acceptable senator for a place like Virginia: white, centrist, old, and boring.
Challenger: Corey Stewart, a Confederate sympathizer and self-described "proud Southerner" who speaks frequently to Virginians of the importance of protecting "our" heritage, which is an unconventional perspective for someone who was born and raised in Duluth, Minnesota.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
It is almost as if the types of people who claim that their undying love for the Confederate flag are motivated by something other than a deep and abiding respect for history.
Should you pay attention? No. A hypothetical moderate Republican might be able to challenge Kaine. The wingnut who pals around with white supremacists is not going to cut it.
What to know: My home state's junior senator is a Macklemore joke-loving dork.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Challenger(s): Former local news anchor and state GOP chair Susan Hutchison, whose admirably brave spin on Trump's Access Hollywood tape—“He was a Democrat at the time”—will be played back 31 million times in campaign ads this fall.
Should you pay attention? No. Despite Cantwell's reluctance to show the same love for Medicare for All as her more progressive Senate colleagues, she should win handily, whereupon I expect her to head downtown for a victory speech in which she promises the state a return to the glorious, good old days.
What to know: I regret to inform you that his last name is pronounced “bar-OSS-oh,” not “bare-ASS-oh.” He's a former rodeo doctor, because Wyoming.
Challenger(s): Former hospital executive Gary Trauner, who will attempt to improve on the 17.6 and 21.6 percent of the vote garnered by his party's last two Senate candidates.
Should you pay attention? No.
What to know: In June, Fox News bogeyman George Soros vowed to withhold his support from Gillibrand because she called for Al Franken's resignation, which Soros judged to be a cynical political stunt. Gillibrand responded as follows: “If standing up for women who have been wronged makes George Soros mad, that's on him.”
Challenger(s): Private equity executive Chele Chiavacci Farley, who is presumably too rich to care all that much about getting shellacked.
Should you pay attention? Yes. Gillibrand tends to be a polarizing figure among progressives, partially because of questions about her bona fides—in the House, she was a conservative Democrat with an A rating from the NRA—and partially because, well, you know why. Whatever you think of her politics, everything she does this fall will be analyzed in light of the White House bid that has not been confirmed, but has not not been confirmed, either.
What to know: This was Elizabeth Warren's verbatim response when she was asked if she plans to run in 2020.
Challenger(s): Her. Against Trump.
Should you pay attention? She's running.
What to know: One of the Senate's most productive members, she is also one of its most popular, winning more than 65 percent of the vote in her last re-election bid. She also pops up in Iowa every now and again. It's so close to Minnesota, you see. Really, it's no trouble at all.
Challenger(s): State legislator Jim Newberger, who is loathe to end a paragraph without tacking on a “MAGA!” at the end.
Should you pay attention? Sure. Klobuchar might not have the name recognition of Warren or Gillibrand or Sanders, but she has the credentials and the policy chops to mount a serious 2020 run. Thrashing Newberger might end up being her opening act.
What to know: Remember that awful Democratic primary that just about tore the party in half and prompted legions of disgruntled Bernie supporters to throw up their hands in disgust and sit out the general election—or, even worse, to back the evil populist because they couldn't back the good one? What if I told you we could start all that again next year?
Challenger(s): None that matter.
Should you pay attention? I don't know if Bernie can ever become a Democratic nominee after everything that happened in 2016, a subject about which liberals will yell on Twitter until their nursing home caregivers pry their iPhone 48s from their gnarled hands and wheel them into the bingo room. That said, if he does still harbor White House aspirations, a cinch reelection bid is a nice excuse for him to deliver some speeches and keep his name in the headlines.
What to know: This guy has been an elected official in Delaware since 1977. (In order: as state treasurer, a member of Congress, governor, and now senator.) Otherwise, his commute—he takes the train from Wilmington to Washington every day—is the most interesting thing about him.
Challenger(s): Kerri Harris, a Justice Democrats candidate and Air Force veteran who has the full backing of Team Ocasio-Cortez. There are some Republicans, too, none of whose names you will ever hear again after the primary on September 6.
Should you pay attention? Maybe, but if so, only to the Democrats. Carper is a boring centrist who has been around forever, and for the first time in recent memory, he has an opponent who is earning some traction. Her odds aren't great, but that's what conventional wisdom always says about primary challengers until they prove it wrong.
What to know: The bad news for Stabenow, like many of her colleagues on this list, is that her constituents voted for Donald Trump less than two years ago. The good news for Stabenow is that her constituents kind of hate Donald Trump now, which is something I would have preferred them to realize earlier than this buyer's-remorse stage, but whatever.
Challenger(s): Iraq War veteran and double-first-name-haver John James, who is unfortunately not Kid Rock. That would have been fun, at least until he won, at which point we all move to Nunavut and become ice fisherman.
Should you pay attention?
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
What to know: The governor appointed Hyde-Smith after Thad Cochran resigned due to health issues in April. The winner of this special election gets the balance of Cochran's term.
Challenger(s): Your Democrat is Mike Espy, who served in the Clinton administration before resigning over an ethics investigation that qualified as scandalous in the 1990s but wouldn't merit more than a pair of Axios tweets in 2018. Your far-right challenger is Chris McDaniel, a gross bigot whose 2014 effort to unseat Cochran failed by the narrowest of margins, and who now boasts the support of many-shirted chaos agent Steve Bannon.
Should you pay attention? You should, because the special election has no primaries, and only the top two vote-getters head to a runoff if no one earns a majority on Election Day. Even in Mississippi, against a weaker incumbent like Hyde-Smith—she is a longtime Democrat who switched parties in 2010—Espy could put up a decent showing. If McDaniel manages to edge Hyde-Smith, we could be looking at a Roy Moore situation all over again.
What to know: He imports his own meats to Washington and is missing three fingers due to a childhood mishap involving a meat grinder. Jon Tester is as Montana as a Montana man can be.
Challenger(s): State auditor Matt Rosendale, who is attempting to capitalize on Tester's popularity by sporting the exact same haircut.
Should you pay attention? Probably not. Montana is one of those goofy red states where voters can be persuaded by the right type of gun-totin' regulation-destroyin' Democrat. A man who loves meat this much fits the bill quite nicely.
What to know: One of those white guys who is always floated as a swing state-delivering running mate for Democratic nominees, but who never earns White House buzz of his own. Sometimes I mistake him and Rand Paul for one another, until they start, you know, talking.
Challenger(s): Jim Renacci, whose overtures to working-class voters will be complicated by the fact that he one of wealthiest members of Congress, with a net worth of about $34 million.
Should you pay attention? Yes, especially since it's a gubernatorial election year. Brown is probably more popular than any Democrat has a right to be in Ohio, and if he holds on to the seat, chances are good that Richard Cordray becomes the state's chief executive, too.
What to know: The son of a former governor, Casey has maximized the value of the family name, wrecking bigoted sweater vest Rick Santorum in 2006 and cruising to a second term in 2012.
Challenger(s): Congressman Lou Barletta, who began his career by championing a draconian anti-immigration ordinance as mayor of Hazelton, a town of about 25,000. After an eight-year legal battle with the ACLU, a federal court ordered the town to pay nearly $1.7 million in legal fees, an expense it could only cover by incurring massive debt. “Nearly bankrupting a working-class community to own the libs” is not Barletta's official slogan, but it should be.
Should you pay attention? No. A savvy Republican might have a chance, but a helpful rule of thumb in politics that when party strategists are saying things like “Nobody knows what the fuck he's doing” about a campaign, that person is not a savvy Republican.
What to know: In October 2017, Bob Corker sat for a bonkers interview with the New York Times in which he called the Trump White House an “adult day care center” and suggested that his party's president could start World War III. This might have constituted an act of real moral courage if Corker hadn't announced his retirement a few weeks earlier.
Candidates: The Democrat is former governor Phil Bredesen, an 74-year-old white guy who leans right on just enough issues to appeal to the moderate sectors of the state's electorate. The Republican is congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, who served on Trump's transition team and remains one of his favorite sycophants.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Should you pay attention? Yeah. Tennessee hasn't elected a Democratic senator since Al Gore, but in an election that Republicans knew would be tough, they put up... an honest-to-God climate change denier. If Trump's approval ratings continue to flounder, Bredesen's name recognition might be enough to pull off the upset.
What to know: The first openly gay senator has carved out a niche as a staunch progressive in a state that keeps electing labor-smashing Koch stooge Scott Walker as its governor.
Challenger(s): Walker is running for a third term, and former Milwaukee County sheriff David Clarke, perhaps aware that his record of murdering people might hamper a bid for higher office, elected not to throw his toy cowboy hat in the ring. Republicans are therefore stuck with state senator Leah Vukmir, who thinks Tammy Baldwin did 9/11.
Should you pay attention? Yeah. Wisconsin did give Russia Witch Hunt truther Ron Johnson its other Senate seat just two years. But Democrats loathe Walker and want desperately to beat him, so Baldwin will almost certainly benefit from anti-incumbent sentiments down the ballot. If he loses, she wins; if he wins, it could be close.
What to know: Last October, Jeff Flake took to the Senate floor and delivered a furious screed against the Trumpification of his party, declaring that he would serve out his term “guided only by the dictates of conscience.” (The fact that he was trailing in both primary and general election polls, I am sure, had nothing to do with it.) Since then, Flake has busied himself doing sad tweets and pretending he won't launch a dramatic 2020 challenge to Trump to, like, “restore dignity to conservatism,” which he'll abandon the day after he opens at 1.7 percent.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Jeff Flake is the very worst type of anti-Trump politician: not shameless enough stay quiet about his convictions, but never courageous enough to act on them.
Candidates: The presumptive Democratic nominee is congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema, a political moderate who is young (42), has an inspiring story (she was homeless for several years as a kid, and lived with her family in an abandoned gas station), and is fit as hell (she finished an Ironman triathlon in 2013). Her opponent will be Martha McSally, a fellow congresswoman; Kelli Ward, a state senator who keeps having to clarify her position on chemtrails; or Joe Arpaio, a despicable old racist who should be rotting in jail.
Should you pay attention? Yeah. McSally should win the primary, with Arpaio and Ward splitting the nutjob vote. But Sinema's Blue Dog bona fides make her an ideal candidate for a statewide election, and Arizona's nutjob contingent is a sizeable one. If McSally can't generate enthusiasm among Ward/Arpaio primary voters, she could be in trouble in the general.
What to know: Although he is a dead ringer for post-bender Don Draper, Donnelly won in 2012 thanks largely to the antics of his opponent, Tea Party loon Richard Mourdock, who beat a 36-year Republican incumbent and then opined on live TV that pregnancies caused by rape are “something that God intended.”
Challenger(s): State legislator Mike Braun, who upset a pair of sitting members of Congress in the primary and needs only to keep his misogyny below Mourdockian levels to have a shot.
Should you pay attention? You should. Donnelly—whose colleagues have taken to calling him the “accidental senator”—has been making increasingly explicit overtures to Republican voters, even expressing support for providing more border wall funding than most Democrats would like. Trump took Indiana by nearly 20 points, though. This is going to be tough.
What to know: He's the only Democrat who holds a statewide office in Florida, which is what the political science community likes to call “not a great fucking sign, man.”
Challenger(s): Sitting governor and famed horcrux hider Rick Scott, whose refusal to implement the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion, despite repeated election-year promises that he'd do so, is literally killing his constituents. He wants a promotion anyway, and Florida, a state full of people who love humidity and ruining elections, might give it to him.
Should you pay attention? Yeah. Scott's lead in the polls is well within the margin of error. Watch for the millions to start pouring in after the August 28 primary.
What to know: McCaskill handily won her last reelection bid, but like Donnelly, she had some help from her opponent: world-class shithead Todd Akin, who you may remember as responsible for introducing the phrase “legitimate rape” into the lexicon.
Challenger(s): Josh Hawley, the state's 38-year-old attorney general, who despite graduating from Yale Law School and clerking for the Supreme Court has already learned the value of yelling about “elites.” Also, Russian hackers, who have made McCaskill one of their primary targets.
Should you pay attention? Yep. Hawley is a strong candidate (craven, but strong), and he's running in a state where anti-Republican headwinds won't be as strong as they are elsewhere.
What to know: It's been a miserable two years for Heller, who avoided a primary challenge—he trailed Danny Tarkanian by eight points as recently as October—only after Trump agreed to direct Tarkanian's ambitions elsewhere. Here, watch the president publicly threaten Heller's job as the senator laughs like a frazzled hostage ordered by his captors to provide proof of life:
Challenger(s): One-term congresswoman Jacky Rosen, a former synagogue president who beat Tarkanian in 2016 and is already looking to level up.
Should you pay attention? For sure. Heller is the incumbent with more money, while Rosen has the luxury of running in a blue state that just elected Catherine Cortez Masto, the first Latina in Senate history, in 2016. Fewer than 1200 votes separated the parties in their respective primaries, out of nearly 290,000 votes cast. This is a true toss-up.
What to know: Heitkamp has always been a conservative Democrat, but after Trump won her state by, holy hell, 36 points, she went into political survival mode. It worked: The president pitched her on switching parties and even invited her on stage at a rally, where he praised her as a “good woman” while baffled attendees wondered whether to clap or throw garbage.
Challenger(s): Congressman Kevin Cramer, who can be seen in the clip above straining mightily not to scream as his party's own president embraces his future opponent.
Should you pay attention? Yes. This is basically a close race between two strains of Republican, where one does the socially-liberal-fiscally-conservative thing (Heitkamp) and the other thinks abortions cause mass shootings (Cramer). Also, polling in North Dakota is hard, because no one lives there.
What to know: This guy opposes abortion and the DREAM Act, wants to build the wall, and might endorse Trump in 2020. He held firm during the Obamacare repeal and tax reform debates, though, so we have to spend the next few months pretending we don't hate his guts.
Challenger(s): State attorney general Patrick Morrisey won the GOP primary with 34 percent of the vote. Criminal coal baron Don Blankenship, who describes himself as “Trumpier than Trump” and possesses the charisma of a raw potato, finished with a respectable 20 percent. He tried to mount a third-party challenge as the Constitution Party candidate, but the West Virginia secretary of state rejected his bid, citing the state's "sore loser" law and, presumably, good taste.
Should you pay attention? Yep. No one loves Joe Manchin, but no one in the state feels all that strongly about him, either, which might be enough. Trump could have the chance to call Manchin's bluff after all.
What to know: For most of Ted Cruz's life, everything went according to plan: His career began with a pair of Ivy League degrees, progressed to a successful stint as Texas' solicitor general, and culminated in a long-shot Senate victory in 2012. After that, everything went to shit, as colleagues and voters alike quickly determined that Cruz is less interested in being a politician than he is playing one on television. In four years, this man went from The Future of the Republican Party to just another jelly-limbed pud who couldn't beat Donald Trump, and who must now plead for the president's help to keep the job he never really wanted in the first place.
Challenger(s): Congressman Beto O'Rourke, who is smart, popular, and bafflingly refuses to wear undershirts on the campaign trail. In the summer. In Texas.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Part of O'Rouke's popularity stems from his opponent's unpopularity, but he is also a talented politician who, unlike Cruz, appears to relish going out and interacting with the people whose votes he is courting. He's raised a ton of money, and has been closing in the polls, and his opponent seems genuinely nervous about all of it.
Should you pay attention? Man. MAN. Even for a candidate who generates as much excitement as this one, the GOP's partisan advantage in Texas still might be too much to overcome. (Cruz is on the ballot with a popular Republican governor, which doesn't help.) But for the first time in a generation, there is a path to victory for Democrats in Texas, and watching Cruz mope off to think tank irrelevance would be an utter delight. O'Rourke better stay hydrated.
Want more? We also have a series looking at all the swing districts that will determine control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections. You can read part one of that series here; part two here; and part three here.