Could Republicans Reach a 60-Vote U.S. Senate Majority by 2029? And Is Intel Ohio Dead?

If Intel Ohio is dead, Mike DeWine and Jon Husted should resign and JobsOhio should be eliminated--a chimpanzee is more accurate at picking winners and losers than they are.

With just five days to go, control of the U.S. Senate looks solidly in the hands of Republicans, with both Montana and West Virginia flipping from Democrat to Republican given them a 51-49 majority. Here is the latest U.S. Senate polling:

The races in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are all within the margin of error. If the polling in these races contains a Donald Trump undervote as expected, it is very possible for Republicans to win all four races, which would bring their majority to fifty-five seats (to forty-five for the Democrats). Such a margin thankfully would render moderate Republican hostage taking threats on key legislation from Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins null-in-void, thereby strengthening the chances Trump’s agenda gets enacted.

The future looks even brighter.

In 2026, of the thirty-three seats up for grabs, only John Ossoff of Georgia, Susan Collins of Maine, and Gary Peters of Michigan are in states in which their party identification conflicts with how their state likely will vote in 2024 or are in what is rightly considered a battleground state. The other thirty seats are in solid Red or Blue states held by the party aligned with that affiliation. Assuming Collins retires, the best case for the Right is picking up an additional U.S. Senate seat in 2026. With 2026 being a mid-term year, it will be tough for the Right if Trump holds the White House based on history. Much will depend on whether his agenda is delivering for Americans, as it did during his first term.

The big opportunities are in 2028. Of the seats at issue, Mark Kelly of Arizona, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin are misaligned or in a battleground state, with the other seats safely in Red and Blue states. If Johnson can hold his seat in Wisconsin, the Right could snare four more U.S. Senate seats in 2028 when the next presidential election will be held. Along with the single pick-up in 2026, such a sweep would push Republicans to a veto-proof majority in the U.S. Senate. It is a tough nut to crack, but not impossible. Much will depend on how a second Trump term turns out for Main Street America.

Even if Republicans don’t hit the 60-vote filibuster-proof mark, the closer they get will make it increasingly hard for Democrats to get back control of the U.S. Senate. Why? Because once Collins’s seat in Maine, Jon Tester’s seat in Montana, Sherrod Brown’s seat in Ohio, and Joe Manchin’s seat in West Virginia are flipped to align with their states’s voting records, only the seven battleground state U.S. Senate seats will be in play going forward (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). Right now, Democrats control eleven out of fourteen seats (79%), with Republicans only holding three seats (21%). The likelihood that Democrats will maintain such a lopsided balance in 50-50 battleground states is highly unlikely. The most probable outcome is that the parties split those seats, leaving Republicans firmly in control of the U.S. Senate for the foreseeable future.

If Trump can deport or force them to self-deport many of the illegal immigrants brought in to America over the last four years and put in battleground states and hemorrhaging Blue states by the corrupt Biden-Harris-Mayorkas Administration and the trend of Red states gaining Electoral Votes due to population shifts continues, the odds of Republicans keeping control of the White House and the U.S. House into the 2030s increase, as well. Thus, starting in 2025, America could enter a period of consistent center-Right control at the federal level that would usher in an era of low taxes, less regulation, government reform, peace through strength, greater fiscal restraint, and, hopefully, a restoration of state sovereignty under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments that allows the fifty laboratories of competition to flourish (i.e., federalism). 

P.S. I truly hope what I am hearing is not true, as it would shaft lots of Ohioans who were involved in the project or who are hoping to get a job, but a solid source is telling me Intel Ohio is DEAD. Apparently, Intel has been trying to sell the Ohio project to other companies, but no one is interested, as they are all invested in their own projects. Due to a lack of interest, Intel will pull the plug sometime after the election. Again, I hope what I am hearing is wrong. If it comes to pass, however, Mike DeWine and Jon Husted should resign in shame and JobsOhio—after the Belmont County cracker plant that never came, the Pelaton plant that didn’t build a single bike, and now the Intel failure—should be eliminated, as it performs worse than a chimpanzee throwing a dart at the wall in picking winners and losers. As you know, I have been the lone voice since the Intel project was announced warning this might happen given the company had been bleeding cash and market share. I implored policymakers to stop trying to bribe companies to come to Ohio with generous tax packages and to finally do the hard work needed to fix Ohio’s business environment. If Intel pulls out of Ohio, no one should ignore the massive red flag this loss would represent. As I have warned, Ohio is a dead state walking and needs bold color policies to be revived. Will no one raise that banner other than me?

P.S. Speaking of U.S. Senate seats, as I suggested was likely to happen a couple of months ago on The Bruce Hooley Show, it appears rumors are growing stronger that, should Trump win in five days, Husted will push DeWine to appoint him to J.D. Vance’s vacant U.S. Senate seat to avoid going head-to-head and losing badly in the 2026 governor’s race against Vivek Ramaswamy. While I think Husted will be a weak senator for Ohio along the lines of Rob Portman and DeWine, Ohioans will have dodged a bullet with Husted not becoming governor. If Husted makes this move, he will have revealed himself to be just another self-serving career politician solely focused on keeping himself on the public teat. After all, how does he claim he wants to be governor to make Ohio stronger than on a dime decide he instead is needed in Washington, D.C., to help a president he opposed in 2016 and only backed in 2020 for his own political survival? Opportunistic is now spelled J-O-N-H-U-S-T-E-D. If the Intel news is true, DeWine better not reward Husted with such a promotion. He deserves to slink back to Upper Arlington as the failure he is. As for Ramaswamy, he must have realized that he won’t do well in 2028 against his best friend, Vance, in the presidential primary, so is better off becoming Ohio governor and building a strong record of reform in the Ron DeSantis mold to run for president in 2032 (if Republicans lose in 2028) or 2036 when it will be an open race. If Ramasway does run, let’s pray he does so under the "bold colors, no pale pastel” banner I unfurled when I launched my exploratory run for governor in January 2023, including an agenda similar to the one I proposed in that run. Without such a bold colors agenda, he won’t build the record needed to win a tough presidential primary against candidates with better reform records.