After a disappointing performance from Republicans in the 2022 midterms, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) laid out his plans to take back a majority in the chamber, focusing on “high-quality” candidate recruitment.
While Republicans faced a number of opportunities in 2022 to flip Democratic seats, a common criticism — even coming from the party’s Senate leader himself — is that the GOP candidates in states such as Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania weren’t strong general election candidates. Many of them had the backing of former President Trump.
McConnell said in an interview with CNN that Republican Senate leadership, and its campaign arm, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), would be focused on recruiting and supporting candidates that they think can win in November.
“We’ll be involved in any primary where that seems to be necessary to get a high-quality candidate, and we’ll be involved in every general election where we have a legitimate shot of winning — regardless of the philosophy of the nominee,” McConnell said.
The recruitment of those candidates has already started, as Republicans eye a number of chances to flip Democratic seats in 2024. The electoral map is advantageous for the GOP, including opportunities to take seats in states that Trump won decisively in 2020, such as West Virginia and Montana.
In West Virginia, McConnell has already been successful in lobbying the state’s popular Republican governor, Jim Justice, to run for Senate. Whether he faces Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is up in the air, as Manchin has yet to announce whether he will run for reelection.
“What we do know about West Virginia is it’s very, very red, and we have an extremely popular incumbent governor who’s announced for the Senate,” McConnell said. “And we’re going to go all-out to win it.”
McConnell said the GOP would compete “heavily” in four states in particular — West Virginia, Montana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. He admitted that in other states, such as Arizona and Wisconsin, it would take an “outstanding candidate” to knock off the Democratic or — in the case of Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema — Independent incumbents.
“And I think there are some other places where with the right candidate, we might be able to compete — in Nevada, Arizona,” McConnell said. “But as of right now, the day that you and I are talking, I think we know that we are going to compete in four places heavily, and that would be, Montana, West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.”