With Pennsylvania tapping out for the evening and denying the nation a result to our presidential election, the fate of the White House hangs in the balance. But thanks to the long-shot reelection of Joni Ernst, conservatives can sleep easy tonight knowing that Republicans will keep crucial control over the Senate.
Early on, the GOP exchanged Cory Gardner’s precarious seat in Colorado for Tommy Tuberville’s safe one in Alabama. Democrats then failed to flip the always-safe seats of Lindsey Graham and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. And thanks to Ernst salvaging her own seat, she all but saved the Senate math to keep McConnell in power.
With the Gardner-for-Tuberville exchange proving a wash, Republicans could only afford to lose three seats to maintain half of the Senate, a half that could have its tie broken by a hypothetical Vice President Kamala Harris. Martha McSally lost her seat to Democrat John Kelly, but Ernst’s victory doesn’t just provide enough buffer to render it null; it also provides promise to the most besieged members of the Senate.
Ernst’s challenger, Theresa Greenfield, put so much cash into the race that it became the sixth-most expensive Senate challenge of the cycle. This made sense. The GOP started Election Day overwhelmingly likely to cede both the Oval and Senate to Democrats.
Although the former question isn’t finished, the GOP can rest easy knowing that Ernst, who leaned into her heterodox status as an unabashedly conservative feminist fighting to confirm Amy Coney Barrett in what could have been the final days of her political career, still won out in the end. It’s now highly unlikely that even a President Biden would preside over an obsequious Senate.
