How One Democrat Saved the Senate
On November 4th, 2020, as election results from the previous night were coming in and the fate of the Presidency and Senate were unknown, I received a text message from a close friend with whom I frequently discussed electoral politics. With the Michigan Senate election undecided, we eagerly messaged about the race for a seat that would be instrumental in notching the Democrats a Senate majority. Republican challenger John James had run a strong campaign in the swing state and posed a serious challenge to one-term incumbent senator Gary Peters. Even as it appeared that Peters was on his way to securing a second term, my friend made his thoughts about the reasons for the Democrat’s subpar performance clear: “Peters sucks,” he wrote in one message: in another, “literally there is not one positive quality about him.”
Two years into Gary Peters’ second term as senator, the 63-year-old former naval commander remains out of the national spotlight. But in early 2021, Peters acquired an important role to the Democratic cause, succeeding Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. While running the DSCC, Peters has certainly demonstrated several positive qualities – he’s been an effective fundraiser, embraced shrewd strategy, and shown a willingness to play political hardball that many in his party have shied away from.
In the lead-up to the midterms, Peters and the DSCC established a three-pronged strategy to keep control of the senate: streamlining campaign dollars to select states with vulnerable incumbents, influencing popular Republicans to forgo Senate runs, and most controversially, propping up weak Republican candidates. All three tenets of the DSCC strategy appeared to pay off, with the Democrats expanding their Senate Majority, and Peters is arguably the man who deserves the most credit for their performance.
The first point of emphasis in Peters’ 2022 plan was the most intuitive but still drew criticism– honing in focus on retaining senate seats, not trying to expand the senate map. Six years prior, the Hillary Clinton campaign elected to ignore her clearest path to 270 electoral votes and instead campaigned with the goal of keeping as many states as possible in play– a strategy that infamously backfired, as she failed to win Wisconsin, a state she needed to win but never visited. In 2020, the Biden campaign put greater focus on states that were needed to win the election, like Wisconsin and Michigan, but still poured millions of campaign dollars into media markets in Florida and Texas, states that almost certainly would not be the electoral tipping point for the Democratic ticket. Ultimately, the cash went up in flames– Biden would go on to lose Florida by 3.4 points and Texas by 5. While Democrats hoped these ad buys would have long-term effects on democratic races, the GOP margins increased significantly in statewide races in both Florida and Texas this year.
So, based on past failures, defining a clear path to a senate majority made sense for the Democrats. Peters and the DSCC realized the best way to keep the senate blue would be to go all out from the gate protecting vulnerable incumbents in New Hampshire, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, and to focus on the single pick-up opportunity of Pennsylvania. However, implementing this strategy was far more difficult in practice than on paper. In Ohio, a strong campaign by Representative Tim Ryan and the weak appeal of “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance in the race for the open seat made the state appear like a promising pickup opportunity, despite Ohio’s dramatic rightward shift over the last decade. Ryan criticized the national party’s lack of funding in Ohio, stating in October that the Democrats “have no idea what’s going on out here.” Ryan concluded that he was going to be “playing with the team we got on the field,” through election day.
Ryan ran an undeniably effective campaign– forcing the NRSC, the DSCC’s Republican counterpart, to pour in dollars to the Vance campaign, and increasing Democratic turnout which allowed the Democrats to win additional house races in Ohio. But despite out-performing Biden, Ryan still lost by around six-and-a-half points, a margin that extra funding would have done little to change. If Peters and the DSCC had caved to the fantasy of swiping a reliably red seat, they would have put less focus and money into races in states like Nevada (D +0.9) and Georgia (D +0.9).
The second point of Peter’s master plan flew the most under the radar and involved covertly enticing strong GOP officials to stay out of races in Arizona and New Hampshire. Republican governors Doug Ducey and Chris Sununu are both popular in their respective states and were moderates who were able to distance themselves from President Trump without alienating his base.
After GOP leaders had begun to recruit Ducey to run for senate, Trump announced that he would not support him if he ran, a result of Ducey’s certification of President Biden’s victory in Arizona in 2020. According to New York Times Reporter Blake Hounshell, “Democrats tried to force quiet conversations [between Ducey and GOP officials on a potential senate run] by passing word of the talks to reporters in Washington, hoping that Trump would see the stories and tee off on Ducey.” Ultimately, Ducey decided not to enter the race, and incumbent Democrat Senator Mark Kelly handily defeated Republican candidate Blake Masters, a candidate with unsurprisingly low focus group numbers and some seriously off-putting ads.
A similar situation took place with Sununu, as he opted not to run. However, in Sununu’s case, it’s unknown whether his decision was influenced by murmurs from Democrats about the unpopularity of an abortion ban that he signed and bragged about back in 2021, or because he was genuinely satisfied in his current role as governor. In his place, the New Hampshire GOP’s choice was Army General Donald Bolduc, who thought it would be smart to spew outlandish election conspiracy theories during the campaign, despite the Granite State’s blue lean. Regardless, Bolduc lost his bid by more than 9 points, while Sununu won reelection by 15.
But the case of Donald Bolduc brings up the third, and most gutsy decision Peters and the DSCC made: meddling in GOP Primaries. Bolduc was one of a number of Far-Right GOP candidates to receive funding from Democrat-aligned groups in primaries, part of a strategy to manipulate general election match-ups.
After the Colorado Senate primary had concluded, the NRSC called out Peters for denying involvement in opposition to centrist-GOP candidate John O’Dea. “Gary Peters is either a liar or he’s too dumb to know what’s going on at the committee he runs,” wrote NRSC Spokesman Chris Hartline in a July press release with the title “Gary Peters is Lying.” “Luckily, Democrats stink at picking winners and losers for Republican voters.”
Peters did fib about the Democrat’s involvement in the races, and he probably would have been better served by owning up to the campaign strategy. But while Hartline may have been right about Peters’ dishonesty, he was wrong about the Democrats’ ability to pick successful candidates. With the exception of O’Dea (who was nonetheless defeated by a large margin by a Democratic incumbent), Democrats went six for six in selecting and funding radical GOP candidates that would lose in the General election. It certainly made a difference in New Hampshire’s Senate Race (as well as a congressional race in New Hampshire’s second district), but also with Governor’s races in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Maryland, and tight congressional races in Michigan.
Gary Peters is finally starting to receive some recognition. For years, he has consistently had one of the lowest name recognition of all Senators–in 2019, after almost two decades of public service, over a third of Michiganders still had no opinion of him, tied for the highest percentage out of any active Senator. But after his success with the DSCC, his name has been in the news more. Liberal political commentator Lawrence O’Donnell praised him in a segment on MSNBC, highlighting his fundraising performance in a role that he referred to as “the worst job in the senate,” and the Detroit Free Press called him “A Democratic hero.” But still, not enough people understand how important Peters was this cycle to the Democratic cause.
As results rolled in on election day a few months ago, I messaged the same friend who criticized Peters in 2020. We spoke about the results, particularly the impressive Democratic senate performance we were watching. Peters never came up by name, but his impact certainly did– as Democrats across the country exceeded our expectations.
Gary Peters will never be President. He probably won’t ascend to a higher role, won’t serve in any administration, and may not spend more than one more term in the Senate. He’ll be 67 in 2026 when he runs for reelection, and is considered a member of the party’s old guard. But for the party’s sake, the Democrats need to keep Gary Peters on the bench as long as possible. There were a lot of factors that influenced the surprising results two weeks ago. But particularly with the DSCC, the Democrats were on their A-game, and they have no one to thank more than Senator Gary Peters.