The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the sexual scandal involving North Carolina Democrat Senate candidate Cal Cunningham cost the party the chance to regain the Senate, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told Democrat donors recently, sources told Axios on Tuesday.
By winning two special elections in Georgia in January, Democrats are still hoping for a 50-50 split, which would give them a majority with Kamala Harris casting a tie-breaking vote as vice president.
But their best chance for an outright Senate majority ended when Cunningham lost his election and Republican Sen. Susan Collins won in Maine.
During a recent call with donors, Schumer said he regretted successfully recruiting Cunningham, who he said "couldn't keep his zipper up.”
A month before the election Cuningham, who up to that point had been consistently ahead in the polls, admitted sending romantic text messages to a woman who is not his wife, acknowledging that he breached his family's trust and apologized for his behavior, CNN reported.
Collins was criticized for voting to confirm Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court in 2018 after he faced charges of sexual assault, but Ginsburg’s death a few months ago gave Collins a chance to appeal to Democrats, independents, and undecideds by declaring her opposition to filling her seat on the court until after the election, according to Axios.
Schumer also told the donors he lamented not being able to recruit Stacey Abrams to run for a Senate seat in Georgia, after Abrams convinced the minority leader that Raphael Warnock was the correct choice.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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