| | | | |  | | By Charlie Mahtesian and Calder McHugh | Presented by Citi | | 
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference on March 2, 2023 in National Harbor, Maryland. | Alex Wong/Getty Images | BEWARE THE LONGSHOTS — With just six weeks to go until Election Day, conventional wisdom in Washington is that control of the Senate is likely to flip to the Republican Party. It’s a reflection of the grim underlying map for Democrats, who have a narrow one-seat majority but must defend roughly two-thirds of the 34 Senate seats up for election this year. It’s a seemingly indefensible position, with almost no margin for error. Three Democratic-held seats are in red states that former President Donald Trump carried twice. Another five are clustered across the politically treacherous battleground states. Already, Democrats are as good as one seat down because of the near-certainty that retiring Sen. Joe Manchin’s seat in West Virginia goes Republican. Yet a few races in the unlikeliest places could unravel everything. In Texas, where Republicans have a nearly three-decade long grip on statewide office, GOP Sen. Ted Cruz’s lead in the polls is just three points, according to the FiveThirtyEight polling average. In increasingly red Florida, GOP Sen. Rick Scott’s advantage has been cut to under five points. Staunchly conservative Nebraska is producing the most incongruous race of all: GOP Sen. Deb Fischer clings to a four-point lead over independent Dan Osborn. If just one of those races produced a surprise winner, the effects could be far-reaching. Republicans are counting on at least two victories — West Virginia, which appears to be a blowout, and Montana, where the race increasingly appears to be slipping away from Sen. Jon Tester. Those two wins alone would put the GOP in the majority. But in the other Senate races, Democratic nominees are surprisingly well positioned — they lead the polls in every battleground state and are running ahead of Kamala Harris’ pace. Even Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, one of the most precariously perched incumbents, continues to hold a narrow edge in a state Harris could lose by double digits. If Democrats held their losses to just two seats and could pick off just one Republican incumbent, the Senate is at 50-50. And if Harris wins, they would then hold the majority since the new vice president would cast the tie-breaking vote. It’s a bit of a long shot, of course. Texas is the Democrats’ white whale, and their statewide hopes there have been dashed over and over. The polarizing Cruz — who squeaked to reelection in 2018 — is still dealing with fallout from his appearance in Cancún in 2021 as Texas suffered from a devastating winter storm that took out power across the state. But he also cuts a huge profile in the state and isn’t taking the race for granted after his close shave six years earlier. Florida is another heavy lift. When Scott first won his seat in 2018, Democrats had a 257,000 voter registration advantage. Today, Republicans have an advantage of more than one million. An abortion referendum could boost Democratic performance, but the 2022 results are not encouraging: Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. Ron DeSantis won reelection in double-digit routs. In Nebraska, Democrats have their hopes up about an unusual candidate who has summarily rejected their endorsement. Osborn is an independent, pro-choice, pro-union, pro-gun, anti-immigration candidate who refuses to say which party he will caucus in if he knocks off Fischer. A SurveyUSA poll released Tuesday has Osborn up by one point, leading 45 percent to 44 percent, which has Democrats dreaming about a potential upset in a state that Trump should carry by around 20 points. Throughout his campaign, Osborn has attacked Fischer for taking corporate cash, highlighting how she’s gotten 10 times richer in the Senate and arguing she doesn’t show up for her constituents — he notes she hasn’t held a public town hall in the sparsely populated state since 2017. As an independent, Osborn has been able to cherry pick popular policies from both parties without appearing beholden to either. He’s also trying to tap into something much more popular in Nebraska than any politician or party — college football. The dominant color on his website is almost indistinguishable from the color on the uniforms of the University of Nebraska, and his “O” logo looks like the “N” on Nebraska’s helmets. Then there’s the matter of the name; Osborn (almost) shares a last name with Tom Osborne, the Hall of Fame Cornhuskers football coach who became a Republican politician after his coaching career — he served in the House from 2001 to 2007. The history of these sorts of races doesn’t look good for Osborn. In a 2014 Senate battle in Kansas, months of polls placed independent Greg Orman within striking distance of Republican Sen. Pat Roberts. Then undecideds in the red state broke strongly for Roberts, who ended up claiming victory by over 10 points. The odds are against Democrats winning any of these three seats — it’s not uncommon for a seemingly locked down Senate race to suddenly appear close before voters revert to their familiar voting patterns in the final days of an election. And Republicans have their own longshot hope — Maryland — where the polls suggest a closer-than-expected Senate race. A Democratic defeat in that blue-state stronghold would be devastating to the party. What it all tells us is that the Senate outcome remains a work in progress. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s authors at cmahtesian@politico.com and cmchugh@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @PoliticoCharlie and @calder_mchugh.
| | A message from Citi: Over one-third of suppliers reported focusing on nearshoring in 2023. With global flows and geopolitics continuing to change, supply chain resilience has proven to be critical – and as a result, nearshoring is gaining further momentum. Many companies are executing nearshoring strategies to diversify their supply chains, reduce risks associated with distant manufacturing hubs, and move production closer to their end-consumers. Learn more in the Citi GPS Report, The Future of Global Supply Chain Financing. | | | | | — Congress clears December spending patch, avoiding preelection shutdown: In Congress’ last action before Election Day, the Senate cleared a stopgap funding bill tonight that heads off a government shutdown next week, bucking the demands of former President Donald Trump. President Joe Biden is expected to quickly sign the measure, preventing a funding lapse Tuesday and delaying the government shutdown deadline to Dec. 20. It also punts a potentially bitter funding fight to just before Christmas, with the results hinging on the November elections and which party wins control of the House, Senate and White House. — Hurricane Helene on track to slam Florida as a major storm: Gov. Ron DeSantis today said his state needs to prepare for Hurricane Helene, which is on a northerly runway in the Gulf of Mexico and set to become a major hurricane before slamming into the state on Thursday. DeSantis said during a news conference in Tampa that Helene is on a path that would allow it to rapidly intensify before making landfall somewhere in the Big Bend, with the state capital projected to be directly in its path. The latest weather models, which usually show various potential paths for a storm, all predicted a similar catastrophic track, DeSantis said. — Biden: ‘All-out war is possible’ in the Middle East: President Joe Biden warned today that “all-out war is possible” in the Middle East, acknowledging the limits of his own persistent diplomatic efforts at achieving a cease-fire deal. “I’m using every bit of energy with my team” to get a cease-fire, he said in a live in-studio interview on ABC’s “The View.” “But I think there’s also the opportunity, still in play, to have a settlement that could fundamentally change the whole region.”
| | | | FOOT DRAGGING — Donald Trump today accused the Federal Bureau of Investigation of not moving quickly enough to investigate the motives in two apparent assassination attempts, while suggesting that the two suspects may have ties to Iran. Officials have not said there is any evidence to suggest that either the shooter in Butler, Pennsylvania, or the alleged attempted assassin in West Palm Beach, Florida this month were working on behalf of Iran or any other foreign actors. Trump made the comments during an afternoon speech just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina — a day after receiving a briefing from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that his campaign said was “regarding real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him.” THE LOOMING STRIKE — A looming dockworkers strike threatens to shut down East Coast ports and snarl the national economy just before the election. Crippling the economy is not just a byproduct of a dockworkers strike — it’s the point, according to the crucial leader of the union threatening the disruption. The decision to strike is largely in the hands of the mercurial and tough-as-nails head of the dockworkers union, Harold Daggett, a native New Yorker who’s been accused of having mob ties. Lately he’s been critical of the Biden administration’s labor record and provocatively asked where the president has been for his members. POLICY ROLLOUT — Kamala Harris called for federal incentives to spur domestic manufacturing across a range of industries today, ratcheting up her efforts in Pennsylvania to wrest blue-collar voters away from Donald Trump. In a speech in Pittsburgh, the vice president pledged to invest in biomanufacturing, aerospace and artificial intelligence, “so that the next generation of breakthroughs, from advanced batteries to geothermal to advanced nuclear, are not just invented but built here in America by American workers.” The speech came as Harris seeks to chip away at Trump’s advantage with voters on the economy, a top issue for voters across the country. The vice president cast herself as “pragmatic,” while adding some definition to a policy platform that Republicans have criticized as thin. Harris promised to eliminate degree requirements for federal jobs, double union apprenticeships in her first term and reform permitting to speed up building projects — though she was still light on specifics of how she’d implement her proposals. HARRIS TO THE BORDER — Vice President Kamala Harris will visit the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona on Friday as her campaign tries to turn the larger issue of immigration from a liability into a strength and hopes to counter a line of frequent, searing political attacks from former President Donald Trump. Her campaign announced today that Harris will be in Douglas, Arizona, across the border from Agua Prieta, Mexico. Just how important immigration and the border are ahead of Election Day was evidenced by Trump wasting little time reacting to word of Harris’ trip. He told a rally crowd in Mint Hill, North Carolina, that Harris was going to the border “for political reasons” and because “their polls are tanking.”
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks during the United Nations General Assembly today in New York City. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images | NO DEAL — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy today slammed efforts to broker a deal between Kyiv and Moscow that falls short of a “just peace” between Ukraine and Russia, as he seeks to rally Western allies to continue supporting the goal of totally defeating Russia’s yearslong invasion and providing Kyiv with the necessary weaponry to do so. In a speech before the United Nations General Assembly delivered in English, the Ukrainian leader warned that Russia’s continued attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid and nuclear power plants raise the specter of a major ecological crisis in Europe and will deepen the suffering of the Ukrainian people ahead of the winter. He also lambasted the U.N. system as unable to resolve wars due to Russia’s ability to veto measures against it at the Security Council. Russia, like China, France, the United States and the United Kingdom, enjoys the ability to unilaterally block U.N. actions within the organization’s most selective body. Zelenskyy also directly criticized a Chinese and Brazilian peace proposal to end the nearly three-year war between Moscow and Kyiv, arguing that proposals that do not restore all of Ukraine’s territory hearken back to the era of colonialism and imperialism. The Beijing and Brasilia-backed proposal would call for an immediate pause in fighting and peace talks to evaluate all potential peace plans. THE OBAMA EFFECT — Montreal’s Laura Palestini and northern France’s Violette Spillebout may live thousands of kilometers apart in very different countries, but when they ran for higher office in recent months, they pursued similar strategies. Each deemed the leader of their country so politically toxic that they deliberately chose not to feature them on their campaign materials, even though they are members of the same party and officially support them. Once seen as emblematic of a new generation of liberals, both Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron have seen their political legacies bruised after years in power, with right-wing movements posing a growing threat to their leadership. As Trudeau prepares to host Macron for a two-day visit, both leaders share a common concern: the Obama effect. Each could be succeeded by someone who is their polar opposite and threatens to tarnish their legacy, as former President Donald Trump did to Barack Obama following the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
| | | | A message from Citi:   | | | | | | | | | | TURN ON THE RED LIGHT — While red light therapy — using infrared lights — has existed for decades as a method to speed hair regrowth or heal wounds, it’s now coming home. At home red light therapy, or RLT, devices are now selling for hundreds of dollars, as the global market for them explodes. The theory is, training a red light in the right place can help to smooth and prevent wrinkles and generally help people look younger and healthier. But does this at home therapy really work? In The Guardian, Adrienne Matei explores the technology, its potential uses and its drawbacks.
| | |  On this date in 1978: Louis Steven Witt (right), a Dallas life insurance salesperson, appears before the House Assassinations Committee in Washington. Witt stated to the committee that he was at the scene of President John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas to heckle the President, not to signal a second assassin. | John Duricka/AP | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.
| | A message from Citi: Over one-third of suppliers reported focusing on nearshoring in 2023.
With global flows and geopolitics continuing to change, supply chain resilience has proven to be critical. As a result, many companies are finding it more relevant to execute a nearshoring strategy, shifting their manufacturing and production operations closer to their primary markets. Benefits associated with nearshoring include helping to diversify supply chains, bolster resilience, and reduce risks associated with distant manufacturing hubs.
Explore this and other supply chain trends in the Citi GPS Report, The Future of Global Supply Chain Financing. | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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