HUGH HEWITT: The hidden advantage that could turn Senate toss-ups into GOP wins
Which candidates for Senate are in a better position to help their state and, by extension, their citizens in the six years ahead?
This is the question voters in every state with a contested Senate seat should ask themselves before they vote between now and the close of voting Tuesday.
Example number one is Maine, where Senator Susan Collins is matched against Troy Jackson. Jackson is the man picked by Maine’s Democratic Party — not the voters — after Graham Platner crashed, burned and withdrew from the race on July 10. The party’s state committee picked Jackson even though he had finished third in the Democratic governor’s primary the same day Platner won his primary. Polls rate the Maine race as a toss-up, but polls at the close in 2020 had Collins behind by at least four percentage points, and she in fact won by more than 8%.
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Maine voters are unlikely to surrender the seniority Collins holds — she is chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee — for a rookie who would rank tied for last in the currency that matters the most in the Senate: the incumbent’s years served in the body. Add to that reality the fact that every Mainer seems to know the senator at least in passing and that communities across the state have benefited from the influence she has accumulated over more than 10,000 consecutive roll call votes, and Collins is poised to win. Again.
In South Carolina, Sen. Darline Graham has been serving since her brother Lindsey died. That gives her a leg up on new senators elected this year, and in a state that went for Donald Trump by 18% in 2024, it’s very likely Graham will return for a full six-year term.
Ohio’s incumbent Sen. Jon Husted has been in the Senate since January 2025. As a member of the majority, he’s in a position to deliver more for the Buckeye State than the recycled Democrat Sherrod Brown, who was ousted by Ohio voters two years ago after collecting government paychecks for almost 50 years. Brown’s very liberal career lost touch with an Ohio electorate that went for Trump in 2024 by more than 11 points. Husted is the best candidate to deliver for Ohio.
In Michigan, either Republican Mike Rogers or Democrat Abdul El-Sayed would be a freshman senator, but El-Sayed’s white-hot radicalism will put him in a corner of the Senate that is empty except for Bernie Sanders. Rogers, by contrast, is a mainstream, moderate Republican with 14 years of experience in the House. Expect Rogers to receive a warm welcome from the Senate GOP, which is eyeing Michigan as a battleground state in the 2028 presidential election.
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There’s a reason why most contenders for the GOP nomination have been to Michigan to lend Rogers a hand. Pennsylvania’s Senator Dave McCormick was in the Wolverine State this week, and not surprisingly, McCormick’s name is in the mix for 2028.
That's also true for Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who seems to have been everywhere this election cycle helping everyone (as a prospective candidate for the presidency does). Cruz was in Alaska on October 17 to give an assist to Sen. Dan Sullivan, who is a two-term incumbent with enormous ability to deliver for Alaskans. Democratic nominee Mary Peltola, by contrast, would be a freshman in the minority party if, as I expect, the GOP retains the majority. That’s a terrible trade and one that it is doubtful most Alaskans want to make.
President Trump’s campaign trip to Alaska — rare for a sitting president — was intended to juice turnout there and to focus attention on the dirty tricks at work up north. A second "decoy" Dan Sullivan was planted on the four-choice ballot in the hopes of draining even a few votes from the real Sen. Dan Sullivan in Alaska’s weird ranked-choice voting scheme.
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The real Dan Sullivan, the retired Marine Corps colonel on the Armed Services Committee with great seniority, is asking all voters, "Don’t rank Mary," to counteract the trickery. The electorate’s about a quarter of a million people. It’s a savvy bunch because the federal government matters so much in our 49th state. Expect the real Sen. Dan Sullivan to pull through.
President Trump won Alaska by more than 13% in 2024. He also won Texas and Iowa by more than 13%, which tells us that while Sen. Sullivan’s seniority will help him, even first-time candidates Ken Paxton in Texas and Ashley Hinson in Iowa should prevail against Democratic first-time nominees in both states, even in the "tough environment" of a president’s sixth year in office. President Trump has been to both states this week to energize the base. Whatever the polls say — and polls say both races are toss-ups — Paxton and Hinson appear to be in good shape and rising in the polls, and both would be joining a majority in the Senate, not the minority with vastly diminished powers.
Kansas went for Donald Trump by more than 16% two years ago. Its farmers have been hit hard by the high cost of diesel, but they know Sen. Roger Marshall has the seniority to help on the "Ag Bill" and deliver relief for the state. The nice pastor running against the nice Dr. Marshall doesn’t. The same is true for Sen. Pete Ricketts in Nebraska.
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Which brings us finally to Minnesota, which is a deep blue state but one that nominated a far-far-to-the-left Democratic candidate in Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, whose eight years in that state job coincided with the massive fraud scandals in Minnesota and soaring violence among gangs of Somali-American youths. The Democratic Farmer-Labor Party decided to go way left even as the GOP nominated the sparkling political "Rookie of the Year" in Michele Tafoya.
Michigan might have the most-watched race because there’s never been an extremist like El-Sayed so close to winning a Senate race before, but the biggest upset could come in Minnesota, with Gopher State voters returning to the tradition of sending their occasional Republican to the Senate.
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American polling is as broken as Israeli polling, which just face-planted in Israel’s elections Tuesday. (Prime Minister Netanyahu emerged with the largest party and the largest coalition, which very few, if any, major polls saw coming.) Trusting polls to place bets on the prediction markets for American Senate races is as foolish as using the Farmers’ Almanac to plan your vacation in an El Niño year.
The enormous advantage of seniority plus the record amount and pace of campaigning by President Trump don’t combine to leave the GOP anxiety-free. But Republicans surely don’t take their cues from legacy media and pollsters, which are, again, almost all openly tilted toward Democrats. The vote will be intensely interesting, but if "toss-ups" turn out to be blowouts in red states, don’t be surprised.