Cozen Currents: GOP on Shaky Ground

“Whether a blue wave is building or a red undertow is forming, Democrats’ chances of gaining control of Congress are rising.” — Howard Schweitzer, CEO, Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies

The Cozen Lens

• Six weeks out from the midterm elections, forecasters and both parties’ campaigns are increasingly treating a prospective Democratic majority as a realistic scenario rather than an outside one.
• State attorneys general from both parties, fueled by populist politics, have become the country’s most aggressive antitrust enforcers, targeting high-profile deals Washington has approved and raising new uncertainty for merging companies.
• The White House continues to try to exert greater control over federal spending, holding back funds it doesn’t want to send out the door.

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How Big Could a Democratic Wave Be?

The Map Moves into GOP Territory. The structural advantage the GOP began the midterm cycle with – powered by a Senate map where only one GOP incumbent is running for re-election in a state former Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024 – has steadily eroded.

• At the outset of the year, facing a history of minority-party gains in midterm years, GOP leadership and the White House were optimistic about retaining the party’s Senate majority. The only GOP-held Senate seats that appeared vulnerable were Maine and North Carolina, giving Democrats an opportunity to narrow, but not eliminate, the GOP’s majority. Republicans also saw a clear path to limit Democrats’ upside by targeting Democratic-held seats in Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Minnesota.
• Since then, President Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to its lowest point across both his terms, and rising gas and diesel prices have helped grow Democrats’ generic ballot lead to roughly eight points. Per a New York Times analysis, the political environment points to a potential double-digit swing in the popular vote margin from 2024. This shift is putting GOP-held Senate seats in much deeper GOP territory – such as Ohio, Alaska, Texas, and Iowa – in play for Democrats.
• Evidence of the shifting map is showing up in September public and private polling of key races. These polls have found Democratic strength across the Midwest despite a GOP spending advantage. It is also evident in the actions of key GOP candidates and the White House. Over the last week, Iowa Senate GOP nominee Representative Ashley Hinson, Michigan Senate GOP nominee former Representative Mike Rogers, and Ohio GOP Senator Jon Husted all called for a quick end to the conflict in Iran. In Kansas, Senator Roger Marshall (R) called for federal immigration agents to coordinate more closely with local authorities. And back in DC, Politico reports that the White House is looking for political levers it can pull to ease economic pressures and, in turn, boost GOP candidates.

Iowa is the Wave Gauge. In Iowa’s Senate race, both parties recruited nominees they’re happy with, and neither campaign has faced scandal. This makes it a cleaner test of how big a Democratic Election Night could be.

• President Trump carried Iowa by roughly 13 points in 2024, putting the state further to the right of other key Senate battlegrounds including Maine, North Carolina, and Ohio, and in line with Alaska. The state also shares demographic similarities with other so-called “reach targets” for Democrats, such as the GOP-held Senate seats in Kansas and Nebraska. Given the correlation between the races, a victory by State Representative Josh Turek (D) would signal a strong Democratic night overall, and potentially one in which Democrats pick up more than the four Senate seats minimally needed to secure a majority.
• In a sign of the increasingly competitive nature of Iowa’s Senate race, Hinson has recently broken with the Trump administration on Iran and energy policy and opted against campaigning with Vice President JD Vance at a recent rally in the state. Public polls this month found the race to be within the margin of error, and Politico reports that Hinson’s internal polling shows a similarly competitive race.

The Best Offense is a Good Defense. Despite newfound strength in GOP territory, a wave election for Democrats still requires holding seats in several states where the party’s candidates aren’t pulling away as the national environment would suggest.

• Democrats’ biggest concern is Maine, where party nominee Troy Jackson entered the race late after Graham Platner exited. While Democratic leadership views this year as the party’s best opportunity to defeat incumbent Senator Susan Collins (R), polling shows a close race, and recent reporting suggests Jackson’s campaign is struggling to unify around its strategy. Other key races where Democrats are defending seats (including New Hampshire and Minnesota) also remain close.
• The GOP also holds a cash advantage heading into the last few weeks of the campaign, which it hopes can shore up its candidates across the Senate battlefield. Per a recent NPR analysis of AdImpact data, Republicans have reserved more than $557 million in advertising compared to the Democrats’ $343 million across the nine most competitive Senate races, leading in all but Georgia.

State AGs Flex Their Muscles on Antitrust

The States Strike Back. State attorneys general (AGs) have become the country’s most aggressive antitrust enforcers, a shift now drawing open criticism from the Department of Justice (DOJ).

• While the federal government has taken a more hands-off approach to antitrust enforcement under President Trump, states have sought to pick up the mantle of more aggressive enforcement, typically led by their respective AGs. This effort has attracted interest from red and blue AGs alike, reflecting the current bipartisan popularity of anti-corporate populism.
• The states’ biggest success so far arguably came in their victory in a jury trial targeting Live Nation and Ticketmaster. However, this is far from their only notable intervention. Most recently, a group of states intervened in the merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery and litigation is underway challenging the deal between Nexstar and Tegna. These challenges aim not always to block the merging parties outright, but to secure additional concessions for their home states.
• This independent, interventionist policy has prompted recent criticism from the DOJ, with Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward particularly critical of challenges in cases already approved by the DOJ, arguing that only the federal government should handle cases involving national businesses. Woodward is the current leader for antitrust policy at the DOJ, and has previously expressed a strong preference for settlements over litigation, making this reaction unsurprising. Still, he went as far as to suggest that Congress should pass new legislation limiting states’ antitrust jurisdiction.

Deal or No Deal, It’s Also Political. For state AGs, and increasingly governors, opposing a high-profile merger is both an enforcement action and a campaign message.

• While these challenges are driven by economic and antitrust concerns, they also have strong political motivations. They allow public officials to distinguish themselves from the White House while signaling to voters that they are willing to take on corporate interests that are unpopular with supporters of both parties.
• Still, not all cases carry equal political weight. Their value often varies depending on a company’s public image. Thus, when evaluating cases with similar economic profiles, the more consumer-facing deal is more likely to prompt intervention, as it offers greater political upside given its visibility and potential impact on constituents.
• The political implications of these deals can also create incentives for governors to intervene, as in Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger’s (D) recent bid to become a party to the review of NextEra Energy’s purchase of Dominion Energy. Governors eyeing 2028 presidential campaigns with close relationships to their AGs may also look to leverage their challenges to bolster their populist bona fides. However, becoming involved in these cases can create competing interests between a state’s economic interests and an official’s political ideals, exposing them to criticism. This dynamic was present in California Governor Gavin Newsom’s (D) recent experience after his intervention in the state’s negotiations with Paramount.

Don’t Take Grants for Granted

Nothing Pocket-Sized About It. The Trump administration announced on Friday that it was unexpectedly and unilaterally canceling $810 million in congressionally appropriated funds.

• It’s informally called a “pocket rescission.” The Impoundment Control Act allows the president to put spending on hold for 45 days while Congress decides whether or not to approve the request. If Congress doesn’t affirmatively vote to allow it, the money must be spent as intended. But what if the president submits the request in the last 45 days of a fiscal year? The White House argues that it can legally run out the clock.
• The largest cuts are going towards services for non-citizens: refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants. The next-largest single allocations are funds for bringing foreign students and faculty to the US and for housing counseling. Programs labeled as “woke” or “DEI” are a common theme across these cuts.
• The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has previously found these rescissions to be illegal. Senior appropriator Republican Senator Susan Collins (ME) agrees, calling the move “a clear violation of the law.” But there’s not much that can be done about it. An appellate court ruled last year that only the GAO’s comptroller general has legal cause of action to sue; not any private organizations losing their funds. While the agency has released reports alleging illegality, it has yet to litigate against the administration.

Et Cetera. While pocket rescissions attract most of the spotlight, the White House has pursued other measures to spend less than Congress appropriated into law.

• The administration’s budget chief, Russ Vought, has a fundamentally different view of federal spending than the status quo up to now. Congress has argued that the funding levels they pass into law are requirements — floors that have to be cleared. Vought flips this on its head, believing that congressional spending levels are a ceiling that don’t have to be reached.
• Senator Collins recently scored a win, supposedly getting the administration to backtrack on an executive order that would have installed political officers in the process of deciding medical research grant awards. Nearly 82 percent of the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) $48 billion budget goes towards almost 50,000 extramural research grants at more than 2,500 universities, medical centers, and other research entities. For decades, awarding these grants has been a multi-stage process involving peer review panels of scientists, advisory councils that make recommendations, and final sign-off by NIH directors (most of whom are career civil servants). The executive order would have created a panel of political appointees with the power to veto or cancel almost any grants or funding across the federal government if the grants or funding didn’t align with the administration’s priorities. While this overarching rule has been beat back (for now), that doesn’t stop individual agencies from changing their internal rules and effectively imposing the same political oversight on their own.
• Beyond the forthrightly announced pocket rescission, there’s concern the same thing could be happening across the government without as much fanfare. For example, Senator Collins sent a letter calling on the White House to use $1.3 billion for Global Health Programs before the funding expires. Democrats allege billions more will either be used to close out the US Agency for International Development (USAID) or be left to rot on the vine. The executive branch was in a similar position last year, with $26 billion still unspent. While the administration was ultimately able to get most of it out the door in time, there’s no reason that has to be the case again this year.

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