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WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 28: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) talks with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) outside of the Senate Chamber before a Senate GOP caucus meeting on January 28, 2020. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
When Joe Biden moves into the White House, a narrowly split Senate will likely empower the U.S. Senate’s maverick moderates on both sides of the aisle to buck their party leaders on controversial issues.
With Senate elections remaining uncalled in four states or needing runoff votes, the range of Senate outcomes lies between a 52-48 margin favoring the Republicans, down one seat from the current Congress, or a 50-50 split that would leave Democrats in control , due to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote.
In the absence of a big Democratic majority, the strategy for getting policy changes approved through the Senate is clear, said Tony Fratto, founder of Hamilton Place Strategies LLC and a former spokesman in the George W. Bush White House.
“You end up going with the most centrist members,” he said.
Add in Biden’s long history in the Senate, where he served from 1973 to 2009, and then the branch of Congress that deems itself “the upper chamber” looks ripe to be the center of political gravity in a Biden presidency.
“We want to be clear that a 50-seat majority is really no kind of majority at all,” said Henrietta Treyz, director of economic policy for Veda Partners in a recent research note.
“Technically the Vice President could break a tie but keeping all 50 senators of either the Republican caucus or the Democratic caucus united under those circumstances is extremely difficult.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has herded his conference through tough votes in recent years with only rare defections, the most high-profile being when the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona helped sink a Republican health care bill in 2017.
McConnell will still determine almost everything that heads to a vote on the Senate floor, giving him the ability to tilt the landscape in Republicans’ favor. However, after four years of essentially political trench warfare, many senators on both sides may see a Biden presidency as a chance to act on at least a few items before talk inevitably turns to the 2022 mid-terms.
Among those who could be potential swing votes are Republican senators Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney and Susan Collins, along with Democrat Joe Manchin. While Manchin would be in the minority if the Senate, as expected, stays under GOP control, he could offset possible Republican defections or undermine criticism Republicans are being partisan on a specific issue.
Murkowski, Romney and Collins as of late Monday were three of only four Republican senators to congratulate Biden on his win, while McConnell said President Donald Trump was “100% within his rights” to look into whether there were election irregularities.
“There are places we’ll be able to work together. Look, health care is a mess, prescription drugs are too expensive, surprise billing is going on. We can make some changes there,” Romney said on Sunday on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.
“There are a number of places that we have common ground. But conservatives like myself are going to fight for conservative principles,” he said.
Manchin, in a Sunday appearance on CBS’ Face the Nation, said some of the more ambitious items favored by more liberal Democrats would fall by the wayside, like the Green New Deal and the Medicare for All.
“We’ve got to govern from that middle, that moderate middle. Joe Biden has always been there. He knows how to work across the aisle. He’ll reach out first and make the Senate work and give it every chance he can,” Manchin said.
“You’ll be surprised. There’ll be more and more crossing over, wanting to work in a more moderate Senate. I really believe that.”
Manchin has also said he would not support getting rid of the filibuster if Democrats took control, shooting down a priority among party liberals.
There remain two runoff Senate elections to be held in Georgia. If the uncalled seats in Alaska and North Carolina remain in GOP hands, as expected, Democrats would need to sweep both to gain control. But as the margin narrows, for either party, the lure of trying to be the swing vote becomes that much stronger.
The 107th Congress, from 2001 to 2003, saw three shifts in Senate control, though some were so brief they were barely noticed. It started at 50-50 with then-Vice President Al Gore casting the tie-breaking vote until Dick Cheney was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2001. In June 2001, upset with the first big George W. Bush tax cut, Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont switched from Republican to Independent and began caucusing with Democrats, giving them a one-seat majority.
That arrangement ended in November 2002, after a Republican, Jim Talent, was sworn in to replace Democrat Jean Carnahan, shifting the balance of power back to Republican hands.
