The mastermind behind this epic disaster was Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), whose mismanagement of the National Republican Senatorial Committee— wasting nearly $180 million on consultants and self-promotion while he vacationed in Italy aboard a luxury yacht — left the NRSC’s coffers virtually empty in the final months of the campaign. The committee had to cancel ad buys in critical swing states and take out $13 million in loans in September just to cover its operating expenses. And Scott’s failure to intervene in the primaries left Republicans with a slate of unelectable candidates who lost winnable races in state after state.
Now, after leaving the NRSC $20 million in debt and Democrats with an expanded majority, Scott has announced he will run for Senate GOP leader. His candidacy gives new meaning to the term “failing up.”
There won’t be a Republican majority to lead unless Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) — the man left to clean up Scott’s mess — succeeds where Scott disastrously failed. And the new NRSC chairman has a warning for his fellow Republicans: If the GOP blows it again, they won’t get another chance to win Senate control for a decade or more.
In an interview in Daines’s campaign offices, he pointed out that in 2024, the GOP is defending no seats in states Biden won, while Democrats are defending three in states Donald Trump won in 2020 (Montana, Ohio and West Virginia) and five in states Biden won by 5 points or less (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Michigan). Add to this the surprise candidacy of former Maryland governor Larry Hogan (R) — who was recruited by Daines’s chief of staff, Darin Thacker, the old-fashioned way, by a heartfelt letter urging him to run — having put a Democrat-held seat in play, and that’s nine good pickup opportunities.
But after November, Daines warned, the opportunities dry up.
“I’m a Procter & Gamble exec from 13 years,” he said. “They teach you how to think and lead strategically” and “look out over the horizon” to assess opportunities and risks. So he looked at the Senate map for 2026. “It started to get real quiet that night when I saw there were zero red states … with Democrats up [for reelection] in ’26,” he said. Then he looked at 2028. “It even got quieter: It was zero.”
In other words, he said, if Republicans fail to take back the majority this cycle, “we likely stay in the minority through 2030.”
The drought could actually last longer, he explained, if Democrats win the Senate, the House and the presidency — something that is unlikely but not impossible given their recent record of upset wins. Then, he said, “the filibuster is gone.” The only reason it survived Biden’s first two years, when Democrats had unified control of government, is because two Democrats — Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) — saved it.
“Both are retiring,” he said. Without the filibuster, Democrats could pack the Senate by making D.C. and Puerto Rico states, which could result in “four Democrat senators in perpetuity added to the mix.” They could ram through H.R. 1, which would allow them to rewrite federal voting rules to favor their party. That means “no more voter ID requirements” and “mail-in ballot elections everywhere.” Finally, he said, they could pack the Supreme Court with additional justices who would uphold their power grab.
He is determined to make sure that does not happen. Unlike Scott, who failed to intervene in the primaries, Daines made sure the GOP nominated the most electable candidates in key states. “When you look at election cycles … filing day is as important as election day,” he said. “So we weren’t afraid to get involved — in some cases, aggressively — in primaries because the stakes are too high to sit back and just kind of watch it all unfold.”
Daines worked to find what he called “winsome conservatives” with Reaganesque qualities who could “appeal beyond just the Republican base, and also to independent voters, [who] will decide these tight elections.
“The nation’s yearning for that,” he said….
Read More: Opinion | Daines looks set to turn around the GOP’s 2022 Senate debacle