Senate retirements likely to increase Trump supporters in that body

 Washington Examiner:

Republican retirements in the Senate could help President Biden buck a trend of unfavorable midterm elections for the party in the White House — or produce an upper chamber GOP conference even friendlier to former President Donald Trump than the existing one.

The 2022 elections are expected to set up primaries between Trump-friendly populists and more establishment, business-wing Republicans in the mold of the Senate minority leader, who has reportedly told associates he would like to turn the page on the former president. Only seven Republican senators voted to object to the electoral vote tally of at least one state won by Biden, compared to over 130 GOP members of the House.

So far, only three incumbent Republicans have said they will not seek reelection next year. But Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, and Richard Burr of North Carolina all represent relatively competitive states. Their departures may make it at least marginally more difficult for the GOP to recapture the Senate, which they just barely lost in a pair of runoff elections in Georgia earlier this month.

...

“Aside from a handful of poorly run Supreme Court races and Jim Renacci’s disastrously underperforming U.S. Senate race in 2016 versus Sherrod Brown, Republicans have dominated at the statewide level in Ohio,” added Everhart, who is based in the state. “That domination has only been exacerbated by the new GOP Trump coalition of suburbs/rural voters combined with ancestrally white working, blue-collar regions in the Northeast and Southeast regions of the state."

Rep. Jim Jordan, a leading Trump ally, has left open the possibility of a run.

Lara Trump, the wife of the former president’s son Eric, has floated a bid for Burr’s Senate seat in North Carolina. She emerged as a popular surrogate for her father-in-law’s reelection campaign.

A former head of the conservative group Club for Growth and two-time GOP primary challenger to pro-abortion rights centrist Sen. Arlen Specter, who later switched to the Democratic primary, Toomey found Trump a poor fit for his free-market philosophy. When then-Rep. Lou Barletta, a populist immigration hawk aligned with Trump, was the 2018 GOP nominee for the Senate in Pennsylvania, he lost by 12 points. Yet that was a good cycle for Democrats, and Barletta was running against Sen. Bob Casey Jr., a big family name in the Keystone State.

...

Jim Jordon would be an upgrade in Ohio.  I think Pennsylvania is likely to vote GOP after Biden lied about his fracking ban and his hostility to fossil fuels.  I think Lara Trump would be a good senator, but she will have a tough race in North Carolina unless Biden continues to screw up and anger voters across the board.  He is well on his way to doing that.  It would not surprise me to see a blowout of Democrats in 2022 similar to the midterms for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. 

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