WASHINGTON – Former President Donald Trump’s historic second impeachment has dominated recent headlines, but neither party expects the votes cast Saturday by senators from battleground states to be a major factor in fights for Senate control next year.
Seven Republican senators crossed party lines and joined all 50 Democrats in voting to convict Trump for inciting the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 to stop Congress from confirming Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential race. But that was 10 short of the two-thirds majority, or 67 votes, required by the Constitution. Forty-three Republicans voted to acquit Trump.
Two GOP senators in competitive races voted to acquit Trump. Just one Senate Republican up for reelection in 2022, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, voted to convict the former president. Two other Republicans in states with competitive Senate races who opted not to run for reelection, Pennsylvania’s Patrick J. Toomey and North Carolina’s Richard M. Burr, both also voted to convict.
With the midterms more than 20 months away, some party operatives don’t believe the high-profile impeachment trial will be an issue on the campaign trail next year. That was the case with Trump’s first impeachment at the start of 2020, which by November had been overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic, an economic crisis and a national reckoning over social justice.
“We’ll see what happens,” National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Rick Scott told CQ Roll Call on Friday when asked if impeachment could be an issue in the midterms.
“I think the election is going to be about issues,” the Florida Republican said. “I think the Biden administration is doing so many things that are killing jobs that it’s all going to be about job creation.”
A spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Stewart Boss, said the 43 Republicans who voted to acquit Trump “ignored the overwhelming evidence and once again put their own self-serving politics ahead of our democracy.”
A primary problem?
The more immediate political impact could be felt in primaries, particularly for Murkowski, who has been known to clash with Trump. The former president won Alaska by 10 points in November, and he has already vowed to campaign against Murkowski in 2022. Murkowski won a third full term in 2016 by 15 points, the same margin as Trump’s that year.
Murkowski is no stranger to primary challenges. In 2010, she lost the GOP nomination to a tea party challenger and waged a successful write-in campaign to win reelection. She could also benefit from a new ranked-choice voting system in Alaska, where candidates in all parties will compete in one primary, and the top four vote-getters advance to the general election.
It’s also not clear if Trump will continue to wield the same influence in GOP primaries as he did before the Jan. 6 attack.
Asked about former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s statement to Politico that Trump’s actions disqualified him from being elected again, North Dakota GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer, a staunch Trump ally who voted to acquit, told reporters at the Capitol Friday that Trump has “made it pretty difficult to gain a lot of support.”
“Now, as you can tell, there’s some support that will never leave,” Cramer said. “But I think that is a shrinking population, and probably shrinks a little bit after this week.”
Cramer said impeachment could be an issue in some upcoming campaigns, but noted, “It’s different for every senator or every member depending on where they live.”
Party lines
Aside from Murkwoski’s vote, the other senators up for reelection in the states that could host competitive Senate races according to Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales voted with their respective parties.
That includes Democrats Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Mark Kelly of Arizona, and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who voted to convict. Biden carried all four states, but he carried Georgia and Arizona by less than half a percentage point, meaning Kelly and Warnock are top GOP targets in 2022. The two senators are running for full terms after winning special elections in 2020.
“January 6th was a dark day for our country,” Kelly said in a statement. “There has to be accountability for the attack on our democracy to uphold the rule of law and make it clear that it cannot happen again.”
Biden also carried Wisconsin, where GOP Sen. Ron Johnson is up for reelection, by less than one percentage point. Johnson voted Saturday to acquit Trump. The Wisconsin Republican has not yet said whether he will run for a third term, but the Democrat who is already in the race slammed Johnson’s vote on Saturday.
“The trial may be over, but we won’t forget this,” said Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson. Nelson’s campaign launched a billboard earlier this week accusing Johnson of treason, and calling on him to resign.
Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio also voted to acquit Trump. The Sunshine State has been a perennial battleground, and Trump won it by 3 points in 2020 after also carrying the state in 2016.
The Jan. 6 attack and the House vote to impeach Trump took place while Trump was still in office, but Rubio said in a statement that he voted not to convict Trump largely because Trump is no longer in office, and he worried about the precedent of impeaching a former president.
“I voted to acquit former President Trump because I will not allow my anger over the criminal attack of January 6th nor the political intimidation from the left to lead me into supporting a dangerous constitutional precedent,” Rubio said. “The election is over. A new President is in the White House and a new Congress has been sworn in. Let history, and if necessary the courts, judge the events of the past.”
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(Chris Cioffi contributed to this report.)
