Who Cost the GOP Senate Control?

Do the names Shane Hazel and Doug Collins mean anything to you? Probably not, unless you live in Georgia or are a professional political analyst. For the rest of us, let me introduce you to the two men who almost single-handedly gave the Democrat Party control of the U.S. Senate in 2020.

Hazel was the Libertarian candidate in the contest for David Perdue’s U.S. Senate seat in 2020. Perdue, who was running for re-election, was being challenged by Democrat Jon Ossoff. However, since neither Perdue nor Ossoff won a majority of the vote, Georgia state law required a runoff between the two highest vote getters. That was Perdue with 2,462,617 votes (49.73%) and Ossoff with 2,374,519 votes (47.9%).

OK, fair enough, right? However, had Hazel not run, my guess is that the vast majority of his 115,039 votes (2.32%) would have gone to Perdue, putting him over the majority threshold in the general election... in which case a runoff would not have been necessary, and the GOP would have maintained control of the Senate by a 51-49 majority.

Doug Collins had a lesser effect in the other Georgia Senate race that year which pitted incumbent Kelly Loeffler against Democrat newcomer Raphael Warnock, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where Dr. Martin Luther King and his father both served as pastor.

For whatever reason, Collins, who was a Republican congressman representing Georgia’s 9th district from 2013 to 2021, decided to enter the race and siphoned off 980,454 votes (20%). Loeffler garnered 1,273,214 votes (25.9%) while Warnock received 1,617,035 (32.9%). A second Democrat, Deborah Jackson, tallied 324,118 votes (6.6%).

Had Collins and Jackson not run, it is relatively safe to say that their vote totals would have gone to Loeffler and Warnock, respectively. In such a case, the final vote totals would have been Loeffler with 2,253,668 and Warnock with 1,941,153. Whereas that would have given Loeffler only 45.9% of the vote, it is fair to assume that she might have collected enough of the remaining 14.6% of the vote that was spread amongst minor candidates (three of which were Republicans) to put her over the top. At the very least, Loeffler would have gone into the runoff with a lot of momentum.

Had both Perdue and Loeffler prevailed, the Republicans’ Senate majority would have stood at 52-48. Instead, they both lost in hotly contested runoffs, creating a 50-50 tie in the Senate but with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaking vote whenever needed.

As for why Perdue and Loeffler lost their respective runoffs, look no further than President Trump’s post-election erratic behavior and the advice of two of his attorneys, Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, for Republicans in Georgia to stay home on January 5th, the date of the runoffs, claiming that those elections would be rigged, too.

Now, fast forward to 2022. In Pennsylvania, Republican Pat Toomey was retiring after 12 years in the U.S. Senate. That vacancy set off a free-for-all as multiple candidates scrambled for their party’s nomination. On the Democrat side, Lt. Governor John Fetterman faced off against U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb and PA Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta. Running on a “workers, wages, and weed” platform, Fetterman won in a landslide, winning all 67 counties.

The early leaders for the Republican nomination were businessman Jeff Bartos and Sean Parnell, a veteran who had President Trump’s endorsement. However, Parnell was forced to withdraw from the race due to a messy divorce that included allegations of spousal abuse. Seizing on the perceived opening, political commentator Kathy Barnett, businessman David McCormick, and celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz entered the race.

Over the next several months, the race seemingly boiled down to McCormick and Oz… and they spent millions viciously attacking each other in TV, radio, and print ads. When Barnett started to gain some momentum late in the race, McCormick and Oz momentarily turned their guns on her, while continuing to demonize each other.

Thanks in large part to endorsements from President Trump – and TV and radio commentator, Sean Hannity – Dr. Oz eked out a narrow 950-vote win in the GOP primary out of 1.3 million votes cast. However, thanks to McCormick’s negative ads, Oz was “damaged goods” and had exhausted much of his war chest during his primary campaign. As a result, he was unable to defeat Fetterman, a stroke victim with diminished cognitive and communication skills… and the Democrats held onto their Senate majority once again.

So, who was to blame for Dr. Oz’s loss? Some of the blame could be laid at the feet of McCormick, but I actually think he would have been the better general election candidate because Oz was portrayed as a “carpetbagger” who had only recently moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania. So, from my vantagepoint, President Trump and Sean Hannity were at fault for backing the wrong horse.

So, there you have it, my friends. A combination of GOP in-fighting, oversized egos, weak candidates, fringe third-party spoilers, and a meddling former president and his FOX News friend unintentionally conspired together to shoot the Republican Party in the foot. Conversely, the Democrats resisted intra-party suicide and rallied around their eventual nominee.

Hopefully, the Republican Party will learn from the disasters of 2020 and 2022, but if past is prologue, I have my doubts.