Republican Senator Marco Rubio won a third term on Tuesday, defeating US Rep. Val Demings and grabbing a crucial seat as the GOP seeks to regain control of the Senate.
Rubio, 51, faced perhaps his toughest race as he was first elected to office in 2010 after serving as Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives. Rubio, who ran for president in 2016, is no longer mentioned as a potential candidate for the 2024 presidential election.
The senator ran a campaign straight out of the Republican Party’s playbook, linking Demings to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden, and attacking him on issues such as spending, rising inflation and the crisis in the country’s southern border.
For his part, Sen. Chuck Schumer won a fifth term by easily beating the Republican political analyst, but he will have to wait to see if he can keep his title as Senate majority leader.
Brooklyn, New York, defeated Joe Pinion, who hosted a show on the conservative channel Newsmax and was struggling in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans.
Although Schumer’s race lacked suspense, the 71-year-old senator will likely be on the sidelines in the evening, keeping a close eye on results in other parts of the country that will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the Senate in 2023. No.
Alex Padilla was elected Tuesday to his first full term as a US senator from the state of California, cementing his position as one of the few Latinos elected to a higher level of office and more open immigration. One of the leading Democratic voices in Congress for
To show how comfortable he felt as a solid favorite, Padilla, who was appointed by California Governor Gavin Newson when Kamala Harris became vice president, fought hard for election on behalf of the others. Democrats who were closer to the race focused instead on their Republican rival, constitutional lawyer Mark Meuser. Padilla also traveled to Arizona to join troubled Sen. Mark Kelly in the final weeks of his campaign.
Padilla, the son of Mexican immigrants who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was 26 when he joined the Los Angeles City Council. Putting his engineering career aside, he assumed the presidency two years later.
Padilla served two terms in the state Senate and was later elected twice as Secretary of State. He resigned during his second term to become the first Latino US senator from California.
In Oklahoma, Republican Senator James Lankford and Republican Representative Markwayne Mullin emerged victorious in the election. Mullin would become the first Native American to hold a Senate seat in nearly 20 years.
And in an unexpected twist, both Oklahoma seats in the US Senate were set to be grabbed. The state’s political landscape shook up after Senator Jim Inhofe announced earlier this year that he planned to step down before the end of his term.
In the race for the Inhofe seat, Mullin, 45, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, faced former Democratic Representative Kendra Horn, the 46-year-old Oklahoma City attorney who ousted the two-term Republican incumbent from a seat in 2018. Republicans for four decades.
Meanwhile, Sen. Tim Scott was re-elected, in what he said would be his last term serving South Carolina.
Scott defeated Democratic state representative Crystal Matthews. He was appointed to the United States Senate by then-Governor Nikki Haley in 2013, after Jim Demint resigned, also winning a special election.
Scott is the only black Republican in the US Senate.
Meanwhile, Democratic US Representative Peter Welch easily defeated a little-known Republican opponent to win the Vermont Senate seat vacated by Patrick Leahy, the longest-serving member of the House.
Welch, who was elected to the House of Representatives in 2006 and has since won re-election by a large margin every two years, defeated Republican Gerald Malloy, a retired US Army officer backed by former President Donald Trump.
In a year in which parties are vying for control of the Senate, Welch’s election maintains the state’s seat in the Democratic column.
In Kentucky, Republican Sen. Rand Paul, a moderate-leaning conservative and former presidential candidate, won a third term defeating progressive Democrat Charles Booker, an opponent from the other end of the political spectrum.
First elected in 2010 on the wave of the Tea Party movement, Paul’s victory extended a long Republican winning streak in Kentucky’s Senate race. The state has not elected a Democrat to the upper house since Wendell Ford in 1992.
Separately, Republican Katie Britt won Alabama’s Senate race, becoming the state’s first woman elected to the position.
Britt will fill the seat held by his one-time boss Richard Shelby, who is retiring after 35 years of service in the Senate. Britt was Shelby’s chief of staff before taking over as head of the state’s advocacy body. Britt defeated Democrat Will Boyd and John Sophocles of the Libertarian Party.
In Illinois, Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth was re-elected, defeating attorney Kathy Salvi, who made her political debut.
Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran who lost both legs when his helicopter was shot down in 2004, has held a seat in Congress for nearly a decade. Between 2013 and 2017, he represented Illinois’s 8th congressional district northwest of Chicago.
And Indiana Republican Sen. Todd Young won his second term after following a cutting-edge strategy throughout his campaign by largely ignoring Democratic challenger Thomas McDermott.
In Connecticut, Sen. Richard Blumenthal won a third term in office, defeating first-time candidate Liora Levy, a Republican who had Trump’s endorsement.
Republican John Howen of North Dakota won his re-election to a third term in the US Senate.
Hoeven defeated Rick Baker, a fellow Republican who ran as an independent after losing the GOP nomination to Hoeven, and Democrat Katarina Christiansen, a Jamestown University engineering professor and political upstart.
In South Dakota, Republican Sen. John Thune won re-election for a fourth term and will return to a Senate where he is seen as a potential majority leader.
The 61-year-old Republican had a huge fundraising edge over Democrat Brian Bengs, an Air Force veteran and college professor. Thune is the second most important Republican in the Senate and once he relinquishes leadership, he is regarded as a possible successor to Senator Mitch McConnell.
Kansas Republican Jerry Moran won a third term in the Senate on Tuesday, defeating Democrat Mark Holland, the former mayor of Kansas City, Kansas.
Former President Trump endorsed Moran in early 2021, though Moran voted to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election a month before Trump received his endorsement. Holland won the Democratic primary in August against five other unidentified candidates.
Republican Senator John Boozman of Arkansas easily won re-election, but the role the two-time senator plays in his next term depends on which party gains control of the upper house.
Boozman won a third six-year term, defeating Democrat Natalie James, Kenneth Cates of the Libertarian Party, and two unregistered candidates.
Arkansas, a Republican state, will not play a leading role in restoring the balance of power in Washington, but if Republicans take control of the Senate, Boozman is in line to lead the powerful Senate committee on agriculture, nutrition and forestry.
And in Maryland, Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen won a second term, defeating Republican Chris Chaffee in a largely Democratic state.
In a unit where the Democrats outnumbered the Republicans 2-1, Van Hollen’s seat was seen as a sure thing for the Democrats.
In Colorado, Democrat Michael Bennett was re-elected to the US Senate by defeating Republican businessman Joe O’Dea.
Bennett won his third race on a promise to protect abortion rights, a sign of how important the issue is in a left-wing state like Colorado. O’Dea was one of the few Republicans to speak in favor of Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling on abortion rights that the federal Supreme Court’s conservative justices reversed a few months ago. But it didn’t help him.
The Bennett campaign attacked O’Dea for her disapproval of late-pregnancy abortion and her support for the same Republican judges who voted in Roe v. Wade’s decision was reversed.
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley won an eighth term defeating Democrat Michael Franken, moving him to a position where he would become the longest-serving Senate member.
Grassley defeated the retired Navy admiral after a race viewed as more competitive than the previous easy victory the Republican veteran had posted since he was first elected to the Senate in 1980.
Meanwhile, Republican Missouri Attorney Eric Schmidt defeated Democrat Trudy Bush Valentine to win a Senate seat considered a safe Republican seat as his party seeks to seize control of the Senate.
Schmidt, 47, will take a seat held for 12 years by Republican Roy Blunt, who announced in March 2021 that he would no longer seek a third term, ending a half-century career in politics.
In Louisiana, Republican Senator John Kennedy won a second term, dominating challenges from Democrats.
Kennedy was expected to win re-election in a Republican state where there hasn’t been a Democratic senator elected in 14 years.
Throughout his candidacy, the former state treasurer drew key support, most notably from former President Donald Trump, who won 58% of Louisiana’s vote during the 2020 presidential election.
And Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Crapo won a fifth term in the deeply conservative state, which has not elected a Democratic senator since 1974.
Crapo, 71, had a major advantage in fundraising and name recognition over the other candidates.
Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschelle Walker are locked in a tight race as Georgia election officials continue to count ballots. The question is whether they will be able to survive the voting on December 6.
For his part, Democratic Senator Brian Schatz, who started out as the clear favorite in his party-dominated Hawaii, won re-election to a new six-year term in the federal upper house against Republican Bob McDermott.
Democrat Patty Murray won re-election for her sixth term as U.S. Senator by defeating Tiffany Smiley, which she called too radical a campaign for Washington state.
