Dem
51
GOP
49
We're still in the window for "team players" to announce their retirements, so that aspiring members of their party have time to build a campaign operation. And we are in primetime for candidates to announce their intent to run. So, for the next several months, there will be a fair bit of news of the sort covered by this item.
First up, the Nevada U.S. Senate race. Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) occupies one of the three or four Democratic seats that are at risk this cycle. She's not as endangered as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) or Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), but she's not 100% safe, particularly if the Republicans come up with a good challenger. And the GOP thinks they've landed one in Sam Brown. Brown is young and charismatic, and is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, where he was badly injured in an explosion. He's going to run a moderate (by the standards of the current GOP) campaign, and he already has the backing of the NRSC and of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
That's the good news for the Republicans. Now the bad news. Brown already ran for the U.S. Senate once before, in 2022, and he was crushed in the primary by Adam Laxalt, 56% to 34%. This time around, Brown's main opponent will be former state representative Jim Marchant, who is as whackadoodle as it gets. We're talking QAnon, "stop the steal," deep state, secret cabals running the world, the works. The Nevada GOP is pretty evenly divided between nutters and sane Republicans, so it's likely to be close, regardless of which candidate eventually advances to face Rosen. And the candidate who wins is not going to be terribly popular with the supporters of the loser.
Moving along, the Democrats just got a very promising candidate for the U.S. Senate race in Texas. It's state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who is well connected to the state's sizable Latino community, and whose primary campaign theme will, in essence, be "Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is an a**hole." That would seem to us to be the correct tack for running against a Ted Cruz or a Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) or a Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).
That's the good news for the Democrats. Now the bad news. The Party already has a promising candidate to face off against Cruz in the person of Rep. Collin Allred (D-TX). Allred is Black, rather than Latino, but he's got wider name recognition and he's a prodigious fundraiser, which is essential for running in a state as big and populous as Texas. It is not likely that Allred vs. Gutierrez will be as divisive as Brown vs. Marchant in Nevada but, all things being equal, the Democratic establishment would have preferred that its candidate face no serious primary challenge so the focus could be on Cruz throughout the campaign.
Those are the two "in" stories of the day, now for the "out" story. Demonstrating that age is just a number, Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-CA) commenced her career in the U.S. House at 60, and is now serving her 13th term. That means she's now 86, which makes her (by a month) the oldest member of the lower chamber. She has decided that she's done her part, and that the time has come to yield the seat to an up-and-comer. Here's hoping her well-earned retirement is long and pleasant.
Napolitano represents CA-31, which is east of East L.A. and includes the cities of El Monte, Baldwin Park and Covina, among others. It therefore figures to remain in Democratic hands. That said, given California's jungle-style primary, the race could come down to a moderate Latino Republican and a very lefty non-Latino Democrat. In a district that is 60% Latino, that could make things interesting. (Z)