Sen. John Cornyn speaks with Steve Munisteri, Texas GOP chairman, during an Election Day visit to party headquarters in Austin. (AP/Tamir Kalifa)
update 10:30
North Carolina has put Republicans over the top. They will control the Senate, thanks to victory by state House Speaker Thom Tillis. He has ousted Sen. Kay Hagan in the costliest Senate race of the year.
Moments later, AP has called Iowa for tea partier Joni Ernst. The GOP majority stands at 52 and potentially climbing.
update 10:08pm
Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, a Republican, has survived. With that, Republicans now stand at 50 seats. They need one more to claim the majority in the 114th Congress.
update 9:40pm
Republican David Perdue has won the open Senate seat in Georgia — one of the few potential bright spots and firewalls tonight for Democrats. He beat Michelle Nunn, daughter of former Sen. Sam Nunn. That keeps the Georgia seat in GOP hands after the retirement of Sen. Saxby Chambliss, quashing Democrats’ best hope of flipping a seat.
“We couldn’t be happier with what’s been happening around the country,” RNC chairman Reince Priebus told reporters moments ago.
update 8:55pm
Louisiana’s Senate race is headed to a Dec. 6 runoff between three-term Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu and GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy. Neither topped the 50 percent needed to win.
In Colorado, GOP Rep. Cory Gardner is leading Sen. Mark Udall by a wide margin and Fox News has already called him the winner.
That puts Republicans two seats away from a majority.
update 8pm
Just in from the White House: the president has invited the House and Senate leaders from both parties to the White House for a meeting on Friday. Presumably that would be to clear the air and try to set a tone going forward.
Also, no surprise, Cornyn has been declared the winner in Texas.
And in New Hampshire, Democrats have claimed victory for Sen. Jeanne Shaheen over Scott Brown, a former senator from Massachusetts. That won’t be enough, by itself, to stave off a Republican takeover. But GOP victory there would have signaled near-certainty of that.
update 7:40pm
Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas is the first night’s first Democratic casualty. Rep. Tom Cotton has defeated him. No surprises so far as Republicans close in on their magic 51. McConnell’s victory in Kentucky looked iffy a few months ago but he’d been pulling ahead.
original post
WASHINGTON — Sen. John Cornyn is heavily favored to win a third term tonight. The suspense for him is whether he’ll remain deputy leader of the Senate minority — or whether he’ll get a promotion to deputy leader of the majority.
That depends on whether Republicans can pick up enough seats around the country to tip control of the Senate. Control hinges on the 10 tightest contests, in North Carolina, Iowa, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Colorado, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Alaska and Arkansas.
Kentucky is especially relevant to Cornyn. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. — projected to win his race the moment polls closed — would replace Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., as majority leader if Republicans wrest control of the Senate.
Control of the Senate has far-reaching implications — for Cornyn, his fellow Republicans, and for President Obama and his agenda.
Democratic challenger David Alameel on Oct. 21. (LM Otero/AP)
In his own race in Texas, Cornyn never broke a sweat this fall. That left him plenty of time and money to help with the Texas Republicans’ voter targeting efforts, and trying to elect more Senate Republicans around the country.
His own challenger David Alameel, a Dallas investor, had never run statewide before. He collected hardly any donations for the effort to topple Cornyn, and didn’t spend nearly as lavishly as some Democrats had hoped, from a personal fortune estimated at $50 million. At last count Alameel pumped about $5.5 million into the campaign — only $1 million more than he spent on a failed congressional primary bid two years ago, his only previous bid for office.
Cornyn, eager for change in the new Senate, raised more than $14 million — a bargain compared to more hard-fought races elsewhere.
Spending this fall has hit staggering levels, commensurate with the high stakes.
The five most contested Senate races – North Carolina, Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky and Georgia — each commanded upwards of $65 million in totally outlays by candidates, parties and outside groups.
In North Carolina, where Republican Thom Tillis was trying to oust Sen. Kay Hagan, spending hit $108 million.
Nationwide, outside groups have poured more than $771 million into Senate races, according to the Sunlight Foundation, a watchdog group. Nearly half of that has come in the last three weeks, fueling a deluge of attack ads from Alaska to Georgia.
The spigots may stay open in Louisiana and Georgia, where the winner needs to top 50 percent and runoffs were viewed as likely. Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, would face a runoff Dec. 6. In Georgia, Republican businessman David Perdue would face Democrat Michelle Nunn in a runoff Jan. 6 – three days after the new Congress is sworn in.