Top Republicans on Wednesday credited their expanded majority in the U.S. Senate to a “Brett bump” that was caused by the explosive partisan fight to confirm conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Though not enough to save the House, hearings in the Senate that discussed unsubstantiated allegations of sexual assault angered a complacent GOP electorate, Republicans said. The issue motived base GOP voters in several deep-red states that helped decide Senate Control in the next Congress.
With 51 seats heading into Tuesday’s vote, the Republicans could emerge with as many as 54 by the time all the votes are counted in contested states. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called the Kavanaugh hearings an “adrenaline shot” that put Republicans over the top in Florida, Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota, and, possibly, Arizona.
Republicans fell short in Montana and West Virginia, although the issue nearly put them over the top in contests that were previously considered off the table.
“Very helpful,” McConnell said Wednesday during a post-election news conference, referring to the so-called “Brett bump.”
“I think the Republicans, the core voters that were critical to us, were highly offended by the questioning of the presumption of innocence and the tactics,” he said. “We were worried about lack of intensity on our side and I think the Kavanaugh fight certainly provided that. It was extremely helpful.”
In the weeks leading up to Election Day, the invocation of Kavanaugh became a rallying cry. Donald Trump, Jr., the president’s eldest son, raised the issue as he stumped for Rep. Martha McSally in Arizona, businessman John James in Michigan, and several others. Kavanaugh was a winner with GOP crowds, and Republican Senate candidates everywhere leaned on it in the final month of the midterm campaign to make up ground and push past their Democratic competition.
“I think that is one of the drivers of unity. For sure,” McSally said in an interview days before the vote. “What we’re seeing is that woke a lot of people up about ‘Wow,’ like what [Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.] said,” she added, referring to the senator’s firery speech that turned the tide during Kavanaugh’s hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. “He was speaking for a lot of people when he said that,” McSally said.
Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who won in an open contest for the GOP-held Senate seat in Tennessee, said the Kavanaugh fight was pivotal. Kavanaugh, and Trump’s determination to make the Supreme Court a decisive issue in the midterm campaign, were largely responsible for creating a “movement” that carried her to victory over Democratic former Gov. Phil Bredesen, Blackburn said.
Republicans noted that among the throng of red-state Democrat incumbents on the ballot Tuesday, one of the two victories was delivered by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., the only Democrat who voted to confirm for Kavanaugh in the full Senate vote.
Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., pulled out a narrow win, but all of the other “no” votes opposed to the newly minted Supreme Court justice lost. Among the battle-tested and well-resourced Democrats to drop were Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, and Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, although he has refused to concede and is requesting a recount.
Some Republicans believe that Donnelly, at least, would have won a third term had he supported Kavanaugh.
“A high-profile moment of contrast with President Trump is the last thing he needed ahead of an election where Trump voters were required for his victory,” said one GOP strategist involved in Senate contests. “He also tried to make his race very local. … He did everything he could to separate himself with the national Democratic Party, but Kavanaugh nationalized the race in a way that he couldn’t avoid, and it framed him as a national Democrat who stuck with the national Democrats at a moment that Hoosiers wanted him to support Kavanaugh.”
Manchin, who broke with his party to back Kavanaugh, told the Washington Examiner that he had to do what was right and vote with his state in mind, noting that the president had an overwhelming victory in West Virginia two Novembers ago.
“Look, I had a president, who nearly won a 50-percentage-point win in my home state, come here three times, I had no idea what that meant, but I knew that I just need to be me and trust the voters,” he said Tuesday, before the polls closed.
However, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., bristled at the idea of Kavanaugh being a negative for Democrats who lost on Tuesday. He believes the push to put him on the court will harm the GOP for years to come.
“What we Democrats did is show the nation that the Republicans want to fill up the bench and President Trump wants to fill up the bench with judges, justices who are against women’s right to healthcare,” Schumer said, rattling off a list of issues many GOP-backed judges are against.
“That had as much of an effect galvanizing people to vote Democratic as it did to galvanize people to vote Republican, and in the long run it’s going to hurt them far more,” Schumer insisted.
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said on the campaign trail in Nevada last week that he didn’t believe the issue would have legs through Election Day due to the issues that would inevitably crop up between then and when polls opened, namely the pipe bombs and the shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.
But the Kavanaugh effect came through for party that was starving for months for a message to latch on to, including a successful economy that was not even close to doing the trick for them heading into November. Without it, Republicans believe things could have turned out differently.
“Honestly, the Kavanaugh confirmation and fight and everything that went with it may have been the most significant boost to Republican political chances this fall,” the GOP strategist said.
Salena Zito contributed to this story from Charleston, W.Va.
