Here’s what each party would do with power — and what divided government would mean for policy.
Once the dust settles from the midterm elections, what — if anything — is Congress likely to do over the next two years?
Right now, polls and forecasts suggest the Senate still is a toss-up, while Republicans are more likely than not to win a majority in the House of Representatives. That would mean some form of divided government, with Republicans in charge of one or both houses of Congress while President Joe Biden and his veto pen would be able to stop them from implementing much of their agenda. But it’s still possible, although it currently looks less likely, that Democrats could hold onto the Senate, giving them two more years of a Democratic trifecta.
Those three scenarios — Republicans winning just the House, Republicans winning the House and Senate, and Democrats holding onto control of Congress — differ in important ways. A Republican-dominated Congress could create something like gridlock, leading to potential battles over the debt ceiling and government funding and giving the Senate the power to hold up Biden’s nominees. A split legislature, with Republicans controlling only the House of Representatives, would put a focus on investigations and, potentially, lead to a vote to impeach Biden. And if Democrats retain control, they’ll face many of the same challenges they did over the last two years.
Here are the three possible outcomes of the midterms and what might happen once the new Congress begins in January 2023.
Scenario 1: Republicans control both houses of Congress
How likely is it? Not unlikely! Forecasts from Politico and FiveThirtyEight suggest Republicans are favored to win the House, while the Senate is a toss-up that comes down to a few key races.
What’s at stake? If Republicans win control of the House and Senate, they’ll have the scope to pursue a legislative agenda beyond what they’ve promised on the campaign trail — even if President Joe Biden’s veto could ultimately block most of their ability to make it a reality.
GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who would become House Speaker if elected, released a “Commitment to America” agenda in September — mostly a vague, one-page outline of Republican talking points like “curb wasteful government spending” and “create good-paying jobs,” though it was sprinkled with a few specifics, like a pledge to hire 200,000 more police officers and end proxy voting in Congress, which allows members to cast votes remotely. McCarthy also promises to “confront Big Tech” and expand school choice and a “Parents’ Bill of Rights.”
The one-pager and the Republican campaign for controlling Congress mask what are sure to be larger fights within the Republican caucus around fiscal policy. Many House conservatives are interested in using forthcoming debt limit fights to force Democrats’ hands on cutting entitlement programs.
This hasn’t been a center of the midterm campaigns: the Commitment to America agenda says nothing about Medicare or Social Security. But earlier this year, the Republican Study Committee, the House’s conservative caucus that comprises nearly 75 percent of the House GOP, released a 122-page manifesto that pledged to cut Medicare and Social Security benefits by raising the eligibility age as well as pushing beneficiaries to enroll in private Medicare and retirement plans.
In the Senate, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) endorsed the idea of forcing Congress to vote on reauthorizing Social Security and Medicare every five years, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) backed voting on the entitlement programs annually. Some conservatives and even prominent liberals believe Republicans could use the threat of a government default to force Democrats’ hand in these areas, though, for now, Biden has promised to veto any cuts to the programs. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has also so far rejected these ideas, calling them nonstarters, but the debate is unlikely to die out.
The Republican agenda for abortion rights also hasn’t been something they’ve sought to campaign on in the midterms but could become a top issue if they take control of Congress. The Commitment to America platform states merely that the Republican Party would “defend the unborn, fight for life,” but the RSC manifesto lists nearly two dozen anti-abortion bills the caucus supports codifying, including a bill effectively prohibiting abortions after about six weeks, and one that would provide 14th Amendment protections to fetuses.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) introduced a bill in September banning abortion after 15 weeks. In 202when he introduced a bill banning abortion after 20 weeks in 2021, 45 Senate Republicans joined in support. While anti-abortion groups are pressing Republicans to go on the offensive, it seems for now congressional Republicans are waiting to see how the issue plays out in the midterms.
With two years ahead of the next presidential election, it’s likely GOP lawmakers will be keen to avoid giving Biden more big bipartisan wins, like they did in his first two years, compromising on issues like gun control, infrastructure, and competitiveness with China.
Were Republicans able to retake the Senate, they would be able to vote down Biden’s judicial nominees (including any that come up on the Supreme Court), block them wholesale from consideration, and pressure the White House to pick what they perceive as more moderate options. Republican lawmakers have already signaled that they may not consider Biden’s nominees.
In April, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wouldn’t commit to giving a Supreme Court pick a hearing in 2023 if the Republicans retook their majority. It’s something he’s done before: During the Obama administration, McConnell notably blocked Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland from ever getting a hearing by arguing that his nomination was in an election year.
What constraints would the party in power face? The House and Senate will ultimately be limited on what they can enact into law over the next two years, as Biden will remain in the White House with a veto pen he promises to use. The Senate will also lack a veto-proof conservative majority, even if Republicans win control of the chamber. But even if it’s unlikely that Republicans manage to pass very conservative bills into law, a Republican-controlled Congress will certainly be able to stymie Biden’s legislative agenda.
Scenario 2: A divided Congress
How likely is it? Congress could be divided two ways — with a Democratic Senate and Republican House, or the reverse, a Republican Senate and Democratic House. The latter is very unlikely; if Democrats perform well enough to hold onto the House, they’re unlikely to lose Senate control. The Senate is a toss-up while the House leans Republican, so the former certainly could happen.
What’s at stake? In the case of a split Congress, the likelihood of more ambitious legislation passing is exceedingly slim. Instead, the two chambers are poised to focus on their own respective priorities, while facing clashes over must-pass bills like government funding and an increase to the debt ceiling.
As House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has made clear, House Republicans are prepared to hold any increase to the debt ceiling hostage in exchange for cuts to other programs like clean energy investments and Social Security. In that case, the House and Senate could face an interminable standoff that could put the United States on the verge of defaulting on its debt, a scenario that could have devastating consequences for the economy.
On the House side, meanwhile, a Republican lower chamber would be able to proceed with its many investigations even if the GOP doesn’t control the Senate. As would be the case if Republicans captured the majority in both chambers, they’d have free rein to hold investigations in the House on everything from Hunter Biden’s financial dealings to the Biden administration’s approach to border security, and they intend to use it.
Investigations and impeachment votes can both proceed without the Senate’s approval or the White House’s signature. Some House members have already said they plan to push for the impeachment of President Biden, and have already introduced at least eight resolutions to do that.
Last week, the Atlantic’s Barton Gellman — who was prescient in predicting that Donald Trump would not admit defeat if he lost his reelection bid — published a piece detailing why he thinks a new House Republican majority would vote to impeach Biden within its first year, largely driven by mounting caucus pressure from election deniers who cast Biden as illegitimately elected.
House Republicans could also push for the impeachment of other high-ranking Biden administration officials, including US Attorney General Merrick Garland, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and Vice President Kamala Harris, and hold a series of House investigations next year if they take power, specifically on areas like Democrats’ handling of the southern border, the DOJ, inflation, and the energy crisis. Rep. James Comer (R-KY) is set to lead the House Oversight and Reform Committee and told Politico he also wants to spearhead investigations into the business dealings of Hunter Biden and the origins of Covid-19.
“Part of our constitutional duty is oversight,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), a founder of the Freedom Caucus, who’s expected to wield significant influence in a Republican majority, during the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year. “We need to know why the Biden administration has taken the intentional position of not having a border.”
What constraints would the party in power face? With Senate control, Democrats could continue to advance more judges and executive branch nominees. The Senate, after all, retains the critical ability to approve judges for district courts, circuit courts, and the Supreme Court with a simple majority. Filling these vacancies will be a crucial priority for Democrats if they’re able to hang onto the Senate, especially after Republicans spent much of the Trump administration attempting to stack the courts in their favor.
“The main difference between a split Congress and one controlled by Republicans completely would be Biden’s ability to fill judicial and other vacancies,” says Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia.
Already, the Senate has confirmed judges at a rapid clip, approving Biden’s faster than any president at this point in their term since President John F. Kennedy. Biden’s nominees have also included a significant number of women, racial and ethnic minorities, and public defenders, all groups that Democrats could continue to prioritize for these roles if they hold the upper chamber. As of early October, there were still 44 judicial nominees pending in the Senate and additional vacancies that did not have nominees yet.
Scenario 3: Democrats keep control of Congress
How likely is it? This is the unlikeliest scenario of the three, according to the polling and election forecasters. The president’s party historically loses ground in the midterm elections, and Democrats hold narrow majorities as it is. But with an unusual political climate — inflation is up, but unemployment is low, while the Supreme Court’s June abortion ruling has animated the Democratic base — they have at least an outside chance to defy one of the most consistent trends in US politics.
What’s at stake: Democrats would have two more years of complete control in Washington (outside of the Supreme Court). The legislative agenda is theirs to set. What do they want to do?
Based on interviews with current and former congressional staff, as well as lobbyists and progressive advocates, two items would almost surely be the subject of legislative debate and possible action: abortion rights and election integrity.
The consequences of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and anti-democratic radicalism within the Republican Party have been the two of the most consistent themes in Democratic campaigns this cycle.
Both would likely require modifying the filibuster in the Senate, presuming (as we safely can) Democrats are still short of a 60-vote supermajority. That is where the difference between a 50-seat Democratic majority and a 52-seat one matters; Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) are resolutely opposed to weakening the filibuster, but incoming Democratic senators will have signaled an openness to it on the campaign trail.
Some bills — the Women’s Health Protection Act on reproductive rights, the Electoral Count Reform Act (if it doesn’t pass this Congress), and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act for election integrity — could serve as a starting point for those efforts, if the filibuster were no longer an obstacle. But they are only starting points and far from finished products, as earlier Senate Democratic disagreements about the WHPA and voting rights laid bare.
Democrats would also have a chance to pass budget reconciliation legislation without having to worry about the filibuster (though they would be limited in what they could do).
“The good news is it’s highly unlikely the government is going to shut down and you can still pass a lot of stuff using the reconciliation process,” said Jim Manley, a longtime strategist for former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. “Nothing comes easy on Capitol Hill these days, but it helps your odds of getting something done besides continuing to fund the government.”
The contours of any reconciliation bill would depend on the macroeconomic situation. Is inflation still at historic highs? Has the economy entered a recession and sent unemployment soaring? That would dictate, at least in part, how much Democrats might be willing to approve new spending or hike taxes to pay for their spending plans.
The leftover pieces of Biden’s Build Back Better plan would likely be the starting point for any reconciliation bill that the next Congress might decide to pursue in 2023. Democrats passed climate provisions as well as fixes to the Affordable Care Act as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. But entire swaths of the BBB agenda focused on child care, pre-K, and long-term care for seniors and people with disabilities were cut out during the 18-month negotiations that were largely driven by Manchin and Sinema’s desires.
What constraints would the party in power face? The 2024 election looms, with either Joe Biden preparing to run for reelection (more likely if Democrats win a historic victory in the midterms) or a swarm of possible successors jockeying for a position from Capitol Hill. The Senate map in 2024 is much less favorable to Democrats than it was in 2022, which may make Senate leaders reluctant to put their most vulnerable members (in states like Montana, Arizona, and Wisconsin) through a messy legislative debate or force them to take difficult votes.
“If you’re just thinking of it from that perspective, with all those Democrats up for reelection, I question how much of an appetite there’s going to be for a progressive agenda,” Manley said.
It would also make a difference whether Democrats continue to cling to 50 seats in the Senate, leaving Manchin and Sinema (who are up for reelection themselves in 2024) with an effective veto pen over the legislative agenda. If they can expand their majority to, say, 52, that would give party leadership some wiggle room in deciding which policies to pursue.
Those would likely be difficult debates, on both the particulars of the policy and the prospect of changing the Senate’s rules for good. But progressives argue Democrats would have a mandate to act.
A Democratic victory would reflect “overreach by the GOP in terms of extremism, plus Democrats competently governing in some difficult terrain,” said Mary Small, national advocacy director for Indivisible. “Codifying abortion rights has also been a galvanizing issue for voters.”
Still, progressives hope Democrats feel emboldened if they wake up one morning in November (or December, depending) and learn they are still in control of Congress. They will have passed two major bills (the American Rescue Plan and IRA), weathered soaring inflation, and still earned the trust of voters.
They will also try to learn from the mistakes of the past two years, where they feel a lengthy legislative debate reduced the urgency to get something done as the immediate concerns of voters and lawmakers transitioned from the economic recovery of early 2021 to the inflation crisis of 2022. They are hoping they can tell a more consistent story about how the policies that Democrats are proposing will materially improve voters’ lives.
“Doing nothing is not going to help us make the argument in 2024,” Small said. An unlikely victory in 2022, she said, would call for “repeating their work to call out the extremism of the GOP and to competently deliver on ways that improve people’s lives materially.”
The usual narrative about the “Volcker shock” leaves a lot out — and policymakers risk learning the wrong lessons.
As inflation persists at multi-decade highs, the pressure is on the Federal Reserve, above all other economic policymaking institutions, to halt rising prices. The central bank is expected to raise rates again Wednesday for the sixth time since March.
Since the climax of the last major inflation crisis in the 1970s, independent central bank chiefs willing to administer proverbial harsh medicine — raising interest rates so high they potentially cause a recession — have reigned like near-deities over our economic lives.
In this, Fed Chair Jerome Powell stands in the shadow of his most legendary predecessor, the late Paul Volcker. Inflation hawks want Powell to go “full Volcker”: follow the elder banker’s example from 1979 and raise interest rates high enough to choke off demand, even at the cost of a devastating recession.
The Volcker shock looms large in the mythology of central banking: the moment when neoliberal Zeus slew the old economic Titans standing in the way of progress. Volcker’s rate hikes sent the US economy into the worst recession since the Great Depression during the early 1980s, but it eventually recovered into what’s called the “Great Moderation”: a more than three-decade stretch when inflation seemed banished even as economic growth returned.
Powell’s Fed has raised interest rates throughout 2022, and looks like it wants to channel Volcker, at least in spirit. But this “great man” story of inflation-fighting that gives the credit for stable prices to technocratic central bankers fiddling with interest rates leaves out a good deal of context that explains not only why inflation cratered, but why it stayed down.
Central bankers can engineer a sudden shortage of credit, but they can’t necessarily address knottier distributional questions, like whether workers should have the legal means to demand higher wages. Nor can they build the systems and infrastructure that increase productivity and access to cheap stuff, which are the product of decades of investment and coordination.
In other words: The monetary tightening inaugurated by Volcker was one part of an entire deflationary policy repertoire that also included union-busting and the creation of a global supply chain to hold down the costs of labor, components, and commodities.
Neither of those options outside the realm of monetary policy is really available right now. While wages have risen, unions aren’t the real force pushing up pay anymore. And the global supply chain that gave us cheap imports from anywhere in the world is part of the problem: It’s currently breaking down. The Fed might be able to choke off credit to slow investment and job creation, but it can’t create the real-world political, legal, and logistical systems that in the past have kept prices down even amid economic growth.
To truly tame prices, we can’t just turn off the money hose. We have to plan for more concrete long-term solutions to a lack of labor, commodities, and goods.
How union-busting helped defeat inflation
The Fed has one main knob to turn to raise or lower the economy’s temperature: interest rates. When the Fed raises the cost of borrowing money from the central bank, the rest of the financial system that ultimately provides credit to businesses and households raises its rates in turn, reducing the amount of money available to open new businesses, finance big new projects, or buy homes. This is supposed to lead to fewer jobs, slimmer household budgets, and less confident workers making fewer demands of their bosses, slowing down spending and wage growth.
The relationship between inflation and employment is described in the famous 1958 economic theory known as the Phillips curve, which states that inflation rises as unemployment falls.
The conundrum described by the Phillips curve — that more jobs mean higher prices — was at the heart of conversations about pre-Volcker inflation: It appeared that after the unprecedented boom of the 1950s and 1960s, when large numbers of American employees first achieved middle-class standards of living, we consumed more than could be efficiently produced and, for instance, became more reliant on imported oil.
As prices for gas to fill boat-sized cars soared, workers asked for raises, compelling their bosses to raise prices to pay those high wages, which put pressure on their customers to demand raises from their bosses in turn — what’s known as a wage-price spiral. All the while, supposedly feckless central bankers avoided sharp interest rate hikes that might have cut off demand, trying to please politicians riding high on the birth of mass affluence. No one had the nerve to stop the cycle.
In the heroic model of central banking, Volcker and his successors like Alan Greenspan stopped the vicious wage-price cycle not only by raising rates, but by establishing the central bank’s “credibility” that the institution was independent from elected officials. That is, investors, employers, and workers could now credibly expect the central bank to raise interest rates if the economy got too hot, and would temper their wage and price setting accordingly. When expectations about future inflation are grounded by the sense that the Fed will intervene before prices spiral out of control, economic actors are supposed to have confidence that their assets will retain value, so they’ll feel safe investing or hiring.
Confidence in central bank independence allowed for the “Great Moderation” of the late 1980s through the 2000s, where growth continued — albeit much more slowly than during the post-WWII years — and unemployment fell without sparking inflation.
It’s a very elegant schematic of balanced forces and rational actors. But it leaves out the messier side of the deflationary story of the late 20th century.
The wage-price spiral might have been broken in the 1980s by less savory means. As senior Fed economists David Ratner and Jae Sim wrote in a paper earlier this year, the wage-taming owed a lot to nitty-gritty union busting and labor policy that makes it harder to organize and collectively bargain.
In other words, they write, inflation may arise not from “too much money chasing too few goods,” as mainstream economists typically argue, but as a side effect of class conflict. Without strong unions, workers are less able to demand higher wages even as labor demand grows, flattening the Phillips curve. Ratner and Sim’s analysis found that loss of worker bargaining power reduced inflation volatility by 87 percent even without monetary interventions like interest rate hikes.
Volcker’s shock and central bank independence happened at the same time as Ronald Reagan’s anti-union effort; the emergence of New Democrats like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, who were less sympathetic to organized labor than their New Deal and Great Society forebears; and the collapse of union membership across almost every sector of the economy except government. Volcker and his central banker colleagues were keenly aware of the importance of union power to increasing wages: The minutes of Fed meetings show that these policymakers fixated on the ability of unions to set wages even after many academic economists had moved on from the subject.
Unions may be notching some wins right now, but the national unionization rate is half what it was in 1983, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking the metric. Today, rather than pushing for higher wages, unions may in fact be suppressing them: By negotiating long-term contracts, they lock in pay for their members for years at a time, regardless of what happens to price levels. Pay increases are instead driven by a wave of retirements that were likely inevitable at some point in the near future, new labor market opportunities created by remote work, and a massive number of quits in difficult, typically lo- paying jobs in health care, retail, and food service. And for all the labor market chaos, wages haven’t driven inflation, instead lagging behind the cost of living. So it doesn’t appear the calls for Powell to go full Volcker would actually solve current causes of rising prices. If we want growth without inflation, we have to find new sources of labor, energy, and stuff.
The supply chain frontier has closed
Just as Volcker’s rate hikes coincided with a bipartisan anti-union push, so the rise of central banks paralleled the acceleration of globalization and the creation of a world-spanning super-efficient “just in time” supply chain. New logistics infrastructure, trade deals, and methods of inventory management allowed firms to get cheap commodities and components from the other side of the world astonishingly quickly. Globalization also reinforced the attack on unions, since it allowed businesses to move factories to countries with weaker labor laws, humbling labor leaders of industrialized economies. After the 1980s, and especially after the fall of the Soviet Union, markets began to integrate many formerly communist countries with large, well-educated — but poorly paid — workforces and ample natural resources. The creation of global supply chains depended in large part on a relatively calm geopolitical scene, with no serious confrontations between “great powers,” who generally seemed to be on the same page regarding globalization.
The globalized world of fast free trade was supposed to take the sting out of the demise of labor’s bargaining power. Sure, workers couldn’t improve their working conditions or pay. But if the stuff their wages bought got cheaper, economists reasoned, they would have less need to demand higher pay in the first place. As some post-Keynesian economists have argued, inflation moderated when globalization increased imports and labor competition, not because investors had “anchored expectations” about central bank policy.
It’s this model of globalization that is currently breaking down, leading to volatile rising prices. As anyone who has ordered a piece of furniture in the last two years can tell you, “just in time” has become a thing of the past. Instead of speedy manufacturing getting imported from any nation on earth, now we import their supply chain bottlenecks, as, say, plumbing component manufacturers in China hamstrung by that country’s “zero-Covid” policy hold up house completions in the United States.
While supply chain bottlenecks were widely predicted to ease in 2022, geopolitics got in the way. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent economic retaliation rocked global energy supplies, a particularly troubling economic disruption since energy is a vital component of nearly every product, and further poisoned relations between wealthy Western countries and Russia’s key ally, China, where so much of the stuff Americans buy is made. Instead of getting more cheap electronics from China, the world’s second-largest economy, the US is sanctioning the chip industry there.
If the Federal Reserve is largely removed from the internal dynamics of the labor market, it has even less to do with foreign policy and geo-strategic maneuvering.
Policymakers risk fighting the last war
The Federal Reserve is several months into its most aggressive rate-hiking cycle since Volcker’s famous shock, and inflation has not subsided. Even as higher rates choked off home sales and slowed job growth, September saw annualized inflation of 8.2 percent. The Fed’s higher rates seem to be imposing the expected economic pain, but with little deflationary pay-off.
Instead, what little relief Americans have enjoyed has come from unconventional direct interventions in the real economy, like the Biden administration’s release of oil from America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve during the spring and summer. A July Treasury analysis suggested the SPR release, with similar international actions, lowered gas prices by 17 to 24 cents per gallon.
It seems that the lessons of the Volcker era do not necessarily apply to 2022. Though our own era is dominated by rising prices and highly politicized conflicts over energy, just like the 1970s, the particulars of our current inflationary dynamics appear quite different. So it’s natural to wonder if the same policy tools will necessarily work to slow rising prices.
We don’t want policymakers to make the mistake of fighting the last war. If we leave inflation up to the central bankers rather than continuing the push for coordinated investments in cost-saving renewable energy and dense housing, or policies that reverse the shrinkage of the labor supply since the pandemic, we won’t so much beat inflation as resign ourselves to a poorer, less-resilient future.
Elaine Luria has dedicated herself to investigating January 6. Her voters don’t care.
In the first major federal elections after the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the concerted effort by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election seems to be having little impact on voters. Instead, they find a sagging economy and rising crime to be far more relevant than more abstract concerns about democracy, and appear likely to hand Republicans control of the House of Representatives.
That’s even the case here in Virginia’s heavily military Second Congressional District, where one might think voters would feel even more protective about democracy than those in other parts of the country, and where the economy is relatively insulated from some of the pain of inflation and a potential recession. Defense spending remains constant regardless of the price of gas or the stock market, and the fact that many voters can buy through the federal commissary system means that rising prices take less of a bite out of pocketbooks than they do elsewhere.
That insulation isn’t protecting the district’s two-term incumbent, Democrat Elaine Luria, from an uphill reelection fight. Luria is on the January 6 committee and has played a visible role in the nationally televised hearings about the attack on the Capitol.
In many ways, the race is playing out like most other competitive races this cycle. Luria has run ads touting her accomplishments in Congress and emphasizing abortion in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision while her opponent, state Sen. Jen Kiggans, focuses on the economic struggles and ties Luria to Nancy Pelosi as a party-line Democrat. However, the attack on the Capitol plays more of a role in this race than it does in others because of a combination of Luria’s service on the committee and the hope that the issue might resonate more with voters with ties to the military.
It isn’t resonating enough to overcome all the factors cutting against Luria, including the electorate’s displeasure with Democrats’ control of government and a district that was redrawn to lean more Republican. A recent poll in the district had Luria tied 45-45 with Kiggans, not an ideal place for an incumbent only weeks before Election Day.
Luria’s priorities are running up against voters’
Luria, who spent 20 years serving in the Navy, retiring as a commander, gives off the precise air of the nuclear engineer she is, and no one would ever mistake her for a backslapping politician. Luria is a diligent and methodical speaker in public, talking about the military in acronyms in debates and rhapsodizing about her enjoyment of the “technical aspect” of learning languages in response to a question at a local meeting of the Junior League.
“How do you decline a noun? How do you conjugate a verb? How does it all fit together? What order do they go in a sentence? So I think it was probably sort of like part of my very methodical thought process,” she told a crowd of about 30 in Virginia Beach, over plates of chicken and glasses of white wine.
The challenges facing American democracy were not as easily soluble in her view. Speaking to Vox after the dinner, Luria said two things kept her up at night: the threats posed to the United States from within and without. “If we can’t preserve our democracy, and we can’t stand up to China, nothing else matters,” she said. The threat from China, though, was not an issue in the race; the threat to American democracy was.
Speaking to Vox, Luria expressed her disappointment that Republicans were not dealing with the gravity of the attack on the Capitol and directed her ire specifically at her opponent, state Sen. Kiggans. “She won’t say Biden was legitimately elected president, even though she’ll dance around it. ‘He really lives in the White House. I wish he didn’t. He is the president. He’s ruining the economy,’ and all these petty and flippant remarks that don’t have the seriousness or gravity of someone who is trying to take that responsibility of writing and upholding the laws of the country. There is a spectrum, some folks are a lot more vocally spewing conspiracy theories and other things, but she certainly in my mind has refused to acknowledge the facts.”
When asked if she thinks Kiggans knows what she is saying is wrong, Luria responded, “That’s the part that bothers me about it the most. I absolutely think that she doesn’t believe what she said, as a person. She doesn’t believe that but she feels she has to say it.”
Kiggans is no Marjorie Taylor Greene. First elected in 2019, she is a mother of four with a gold-plated political resume. After serving 10 years as a Navy helicopter pilot, she became a geriatric nurse. While she isn’t a bomb thrower, the Republican hopeful is also not a polished communicator and has been particularly press-shy during her congressional campaign. Her campaign did not respond to repeated phone calls, text messages, and voicemails.
At a public appearance with Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, she took two quick questions from a national television reporter before running off. When asked about January 6, Kiggans said, “Of all the doors we’ve knocked, we never hear any complaints about January 6. Economy, economy, economy.” In response to a follow-up, the Republican candidate responded, “Joe Biden’s the president. He’s destroying the country. We say it every time. Said it just a couple days ago in the debate.” Her responses were indeed almost identical to what she had said in a debate earlier that week.
In conversations with voters at an early-voting location in Virginia Beach, the economy weighed far more heavily than the attack on the Capitol. While jets from a nearby Naval Air Station roared overhead, those coming and going from casting their ballots didn’t view January 6 as a factor. Mike Malbon told Vox that he had voted for Kiggans. Although he had never voted for Luria, he described himself as a swing voter who had voted for Trump, Obama, and George W. Bush. Malbon said his vote was based on the fact that he was “just not really happy with what the Democrats were doing.” When asked if he’d thought about January 6 while voting, Malbon said, “I’ve thought about it for sure. I probably would never vote for Trump again, I would have otherwise.”
Melinda Salmons, who said she was voting for Kiggans because she thought Luria was in Nancy Pelosi’s pocket, echoed this. When asked about Trump, she told Vox, “Donald Trump doesn’t affect me one way or another. The man is not running. I’m like a lot of people, I like what my pocketbook says. I do not like what he says.”
One person at the polling place freely brought up past election issues. Pilar Eteke, who said she was an observer for the Republican Party, told Vox about how “globalists” have been “rigging elections for at least 20 years on behalf of both parties.” It was her first election cycle working as a poll observer, and Eteke, who raved about an Ohio-based QAnon influencer, expressed broad concerns about how poll workers at the early-voting site were doing their jobs.
“See how you feel when we’ve lost our democracy”
Luria acknowledged that voters were struggling with high inflation. “I’m very sensitive to the fact that it is a difficult time economically for people right now, gas prices, consumer prices, you know, paying more than you’re accustomed to at the grocery store.”
The poll that had Luria tied with Kiggans also showed that 39 percent of voters in the southeast Virginia congressional district had the economy as their top issue. Only 14 percent ranked threats to democracy as their top issue, which lagged behind abortion as well as the economy. This was reflected nationally: In a recent national poll conducted by the New York Times and Siena College, only 8 percent of voters thought “the state of democracy” was the most important issue facing the country, lagging far behind the 44 percent who picked either the economy or inflation. Further, a Republican operative familiar with the race noted to Vox that January 6 just wasn’t an issue that seemed to be moving voters at all in polling.
But Luria pushed back pointedly when asked about the fact that voters were not terribly concerned about the state of American democracy. “I’m just tired of answering this question,” she said. “It should be front of mind for everyone. Just wake up on January 20, 2025, and see how you feel when we’ve lost our democracy.”
And she wasn’t shying away from the topic on paid media; she made it the focus of her closing television ad.
After redistricting made the district less friendly to her and national trends looked ugly, Luria was confident in the decisions she made. “If it’s not popular with voters and I don’t win reelection, I’ll be able to sleep at night because I know I did the right thing … in the long run, I think I’m on the right side of it, and the economy will recover. Democracy may not.”