Democrats Lose Control of US Senate

Democrats lost control of the US Senate on Wednesday morning, a body their caucus currently controls by a 51-49 margin. While there are still some close races that have not been called, when the dust settles, Republicans will have picked up at least three seats in the upper chamber.

What that actually means for legislative support for Kyiv is unclear. In general, Republicans in the Senate over the past two years have been much more receptive to Ukraine aid than have been Republicans in the House of Representatives (whose control is still up for grabs as of Wednesday).

And even with Senate Republicans gaining a few new colleagues on their side of the aisle with more isolationist views or offering only lukewarm support, that may not be enough to disrupt the majority sentiment among the Senate’s anti-Kremlin legislators. Still, question marks about the new members’ positions remain.

There were 33 Senate seats up for election on Tuesday. Of those, 19 were held by Democrats, 10 by Republicans, and four held by independents who caucus with Democrats (Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Angus King of Maine, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Bernie Sanders of Vermont).

Of all the races, only about a dozen were considered true battlegrounds: notably, contests in Arizona, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. 

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Flipped seats

West Virginia

Again, Republicans only needed a single seat advantage to even the balance of the 100-member upper chamber. And Republicans flipped West Virginia early and easily on Tuesday evening.

Manchin, a reasonably pro-Ukraine Independent, had shaded much further to the Republican side in recent years, on energy issues especially. He did not seek re-election in West Virginia, and as a result his seat was scooped up by Republican candidate Jim Justice by a whopping 40 percent margin.

Justice, West Virginia’s former governor, has shown himself to be a friend to Ukraine, requesting $5 million from his not-so-wealthy taxpayers to help rebuild a bombed children’s hospital in Mariupol in 2022.

Ohio

In Ohio, Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown lost to entrepreneur Bernie Moreno, a Bogota, Colombia-born Republican who is on record as saying “we’ve already spent $110 billion [on Ukraine], another $60 billion to have a bloody stalemate doesn’t accomplish anything. What we need to do is we need to drive towards peace.”

Montana

In Montana, Republican challenger Tim Sheehy handily defeated Democratic incumbent Jon Tester. A former Navy SEAL, Sheehy has made only peripheral remarks about Ukraine, but in general, his position is to call for an end to the war.

Tight races

Florida

In Florida, the incumbent Republican Rick Scott comfortably retained his seat in what was billed as a battleground race, which is not great news for Kyiv supporters, as Scott had voted against a number of measures to fund Ukraine’s battle for sovereignty.

New Mexico

Democratic incumbent Marin Heinrich kept his post by about a 10-percent margin in what pundits were casting as a closer race. Heinrich has been a staunch supporter of Kyiv, frequently meeting with Ukrainian refugees in his own Southwestern state.

Arizona

On Wednesday morning, still only about 60 percent of the votes had been counted in Arizona, as the seat vacated by Sinema was being tightly contested between Republican TV personality and unsuccessful 2022 gubernatorial candidate, Kari Lake, and the state’s Democratic representative from its 3rd district, Ruben Gallego.

Gallego was leading by a 50-47 percent margin with just more than half the votes counted, and Ukraine supporters can hope that the trend will continue to the end. In October, Lake wrote on Instagram, “Gallego would rather pour $260 billion of your hard-earned tax dollars into Ukraine to fight for their borders, not our borders.”

Other important Senate races where Democratic seas were in grave jeopardy were in the “Blue Wall” states of Pennsylvania, where the incumbent is Sen. Bob Casey Jr.; Michigan, a contest between Democrat Elissa Slotkin and Republican Mike Rogers for the seat vacated by Democrat Debbie Stabenow; and Wisconsin, where the incumbent is Tammy Baldwin, one of the more outspoken proponents of Ukraine in the chamber.

All of those seats were being contested by only a handful of votes.