Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell: Seats Dems Target To Flip Senate

ACROSS AMERICA — Sens. Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins are among a group of Senate Republicans facing re-election challenges that polling suggests will be close races.

Their seats in Kentucky, South Carolina and Maine, respectively, are among several Republican seats Democrats hope they can win in Tuesday’s general election to gain a majority in the Senate.

Two of them — McConnell and Graham — face tough competition after showing loyalty to President Donald Trump.

Collins is threatened almost for the opposite reason. She was the only Republican senator to vote against Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s most recent Supreme Court nominee.

Thirty-five Senate seats are in play. Because the vice president is the presiding officer of the Senate and casts tie-breaking votes, Democrats need to pick up three seats to flip the Senate if former Vice President Joe Biden wins and running mate Kamala Harris presides over the chamber. If Trump wins, Democrats need to pick up four additional seats to gain control.

Democrats could gain momentum if their candidate in South Carolina, Jaime Harrison, is able to unseat Graham. Harrison raised $57 million in the final quarter of his campaign, the highest quarterly fundraising total ever for a Senate candidate.

For full coverage of the 2020 presidential campaign and election, subscribe to the White House Patch newsletter.

Graham, who recently presided over the Barrett Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, is considered vulnerable by political analysts. The race is labeled a “toss up” by RealClearPolitics, with the poll average showing Graham with an edge of 49 percent to 46 percent.

McConnell, the Senate majority leader, isn’t considered as vulnerable as Graham but still faces opposition in his quest for a seventh term as senator from Kentucky. Democrat Amy McGrath, his challenger, has raised more than $88 million in her bid to unseat McConnell.

A mid-September Quinnipiac poll had McConnell up by 12 points. A mid-October statewide Kentucky poll showed McGrath closing in, but McConnell still had a 9-point edge.

Collins of Maine is in danger of losing the seat she has held for 24 years, recent polls and analysis suggest.

She is suffering from two recent trends, according to David Byler, a data analyst and political columnist for The Washington Post.

“In the short term, the decline of ticket-splitting has hurt her chances at re-election," Byler wrote. "In the long term, the GOP’s turn from patrician moderation to populism is squeezing Collins — and many others like her — out of the party.”

She has fallen behind Democratic challenger Sara Gideon by 4 percentage points, 47 percent to 43 percent, in the RealClearPolitics polling average.

While polling shows Democrats could gain seats in Maine and South Carolina, it also suggests they could lose one in Alabama.

Incumbent Doug Jones, who defeated Roy Moore in a widely publicized 2017 special election to replace Jeff Sessions, faces Republican Tommy Tuberville. Tuberville is the former head football coach at Auburn University and defeated Sessions in this year’s primary.

In Georgia, polls show Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler trailing Democrat Raphael Warnock by more than 10 percentage points in a three-way special election race that includes Republican Doug Collins. Incumbent Republican David Perdue and Democratic challenger Jon Ossof, in the other Georgia race, are statistically tied, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.

North Carolina has another closely contested race in the South. Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham has resisted calls to drop out of the race against one-term incumbent Republican Thom Tillis after Cunningham admitted to sending sexually suggestive text messages to a woman who is not his wife.

But Cunningham still leads in the polling average by a narrow 2 percentage points.

In Arizona, Republican Martha McSally is at risk of losing the seat she was appointed to in 2018, one that had been red for years with John McCain.

McSally has been outspent by nearly $5 million by Democrat Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and gun control advocate whose wife, former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, survived a 2011 assassination attempt.

Senate races in Iowa, Montana and Colorado could also come down to the wire, all of which could be flipped from red to blue.

Incumbent Sen. Joni Ernst had a lead of 6 percentage points in the Iowa race against Theresa Greenfield heading into Election Day, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. Montana’s race between incumbent Steve Daines and Steve Bullock is labeled a toss-up; and Colorado’s contest between incumbent Cory Gardner and John Hickenlooper is seen as leaning Democratic.

Four Senate seats are open after incumbents decided not to seek re-election. Among them, Pat Roberts of Kansas is not seeking re-election after 24 years in the Senate, and Tom Udall is not in the New Mexico race.

Neither contest is considered close, however, as Kansas is likely to stay in the Republican column and New Mexico will remain Democratic, polls indicate.