Congressional concerns

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 7th of November.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Up first, control of Congress.

Yesterday morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke with reporters about Election results.

MCCONNELL: I've been the majority leader, I've been the minority leader, the majority is a lot better. And I think that we haven't got all the results and we certainly already know we're going to be in the majority. We’re hopeful that might actually grow some.

Republicans crossed the 51-seat threshold on Tuesday…and stand to bolster their majority as the remaining races are called.

BROWN: On the House side, it’s not so clear. More than a dozen races have not yet been called, and neither side has secured the majority.

Here now with more is Washington Bureau reporter Leo Briceno.

LEO BRICENO: The results are in. The balance of power in Congress is still out.

Parts of the picture have already come into focus, starting with Republican control of the Senate.

The first clue was Republican governor Jim Justice’s Senate win in West Virginia.

CHUCK HORST: I think it was a shoe in. I think it was called pretty early. No, not at all surprised.

That’s West Virginia state delegate Chuck Horst. When moderate Democrat Joe Manchin announced his retirement and Justice threw his hat in the ring, Horst and others expected an easy win.

CHUCK HORST: You know the state’s pretty red right now and the people of West Virginia are pretty conservative and it seems that the Democrats—even the ones in West Virginia, some of them not all of them—are pretty far left like we’re seeing in Washington, D.C. and the people of west Virginia are simply not there.

Another key race was in Ohio, where Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown lost his race to Republican businessman Bernie Moreno.

BERNIE MORENO: You know, my opponent talked a lot about helping the working men and I will agree with him on the need to help working Americans. But the difference is talk without action is nothing.

Republicans were worried about a Senate race in Nebraska, where Independent Dan Osborne ran a challenging campaign against incumbent Deb Fischer. In the end, Fischer held onto her seat by almost 8 percentage points.

While Republicans have secured the majority, it’s surprising that GOP Senate candidates did not perform as well as Trump did in battleground states. Jim Curry teaches political science at the University of Utah.

CURRY: As a whole, I think it's like a good, not, kind of disappointing night for Senate Republicans then given how well Trump did, given the fact that Trump is going to win statewide in all likelihood in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona and Nevada. And they may only pick up one of those Senate seats at most. That’s kind of a disappointment yet again for Senate Republicans where they didn’t maximize their chances and they didn’t even live up to what the top of their ticket was capable of doing in those same states.

On Wednesday, Republican candidates in Michigan and Wisconsin lost their races…in states Trump narrowly won.

Turning to the House of Representatives, Curry thinks Republicans have an edge in the roughly 20 competitive races yet-to-be called.

CURRY: I'm working out the assumption that Republicans will retain control of the House that it's going to stay very narrow. They may actually lose their margins, they actually go down.

The main holdups are races in Arizona and California.

While the race for the House isn’t over, the effects are already hitting the GOP caucus. Next week, Republicans will have to decide whether they want current House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana to remain party leader…or select someone new. The GOP will hold internal elections the day after they get back to Washington on November 12.

POSTELL: Republicans don't treat their leaders who lose elections very well. And there's a bit of a narrative starting to form around underperformance in down ballot races relative to Trump.

That’s Joe Postell, professor of political science at Hillsdale College. If Republicans lose the majority, Johnson would face long odds at remaining party leader. And if Republicans keep the majority but it shrinks, that could hurt Johnson’s odds of re-taking the gavel.

Then again, Johnson might have the support of the president-elect.

POSTELL I think there was something symbolic about the Trump speech where he had Mike Johnson on the stage, and there was a line in his speech where he referred to Mike Johnson as, sort of a quasi-endorsement, you know, this is is our leader in the House.

Back on the Senate side, Republicans face the prospect of electing new leadership for the first time in 17 years.

Three Republicans are quietly campaigning to succeed Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving party leader in Senate history. Texas Senator John Cornyn, South Dakota Senator John Thune, and Florida Senator Rick Scott are all in the race.

Thune and Cornyn, like McConnell, are old school Republicans—very much institutionalists. Rick Scott leans anti-establishment, and is demanding new rules in the Senate to increase individual member participation and transparency. Of the three, he’s been the most vocal supporter of Trump.

RICK SCOTT: So two years ago, I challenged Mitch McConnell because I know there has to be a change…We need a Republican Party to start solving the problems of this country. And we have a significant number of problems.

Once the Senate is seated in January, top on the agenda will be vetting and voting on the president’s cabinet nominees. Utah professor Curry says if President-elect Trump decides to nominate figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Elon Musk, the Senate’s approval won’t be guaranteed.

CURRY: The real question is with more controversial figures that Trump may want. And I think it's still sort of completely up in the air about what he's actually going to do. But if they're people that are truly controversial, the real question comes down to are these people that Senate Republicans are comfortable with?

Amid the possibility of an extremely tight majority in the House and a fairly small majority in the Senate, Postell thinks it will be up to Trump to use what he knows about the art of the deal to get his agenda done.

POSTELL: I think he sort of started to learn about how the political system works. And that presidents need to be involved in brokering deals in Congress, especially when you've got the majority in your party in both chambers. I think he's learned something about that…. obviously he can't go it alone on everything.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno.

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