[Policits] The low-key Democrat with the unenviable task of defending a 50-50 Senate

[Ap0caLipse]

LINK:https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/14/democrat-gary-peters-50-50-senate-00008320

Just days after Gary Peters eked out a reelection win from a $200 million throw-down, he got a heartburn-inducing offer: Would he help run Democrats’ Senate races in a merciless midterm election? “He basically said in a very nice way: ‘Go to hell,’” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) recalled the mild-mannered Michigander telling him. “His state’s getting harder and harder. Why would he want to dive back in?”

But Peters eventually did, after further cajoling from Brown and the rest of the Democratic Caucus. And as he mulled taking the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair role, a difficult job grew even more challenging: Democrats picked up the majority by the narrowest margin possible, leaving Peters to defend a majority cobbled together with senators from historically red and purple states — not exactly safe reelection bets. In an interview at his sparsely decorated office in the DSCC headquarters, adorned with a poster of the Detroit skyline, Peters recalled his uncharacteristic initial response to Brown: “I said: ‘Sherrod, get away from me. I do not want to talk to you.’ ... It took some soul-searching.” Now, even as Biden’s approval ratings crater and incumbent Democrats publicly sweat over inflation, Peters is setting a high bar for success this fall. He doesn’t want to just hold the Senate majority — a task that probably means protecting every single incumbent in states like Arizona and Georgia — he wants to make Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s job a hell of a lot easier: “It’s a sense of mission for me to get to 52 or more” Senate seats, Peters said. Picking up two seats might not sound like a herculean task, but it would make him a near-legend in Democratic Party lore. It’s vanishingly rare for the party in power to pick up seats in the first midterm election after a new president takes over, and Biden’s current approval slump isn’t helping. Senate Republicans managed to do it with a favorable battleground map in 2018 even as they lost the House — a formula Democrats may have to replicate this year. Peters’ own resume of racking up wins in Michigan is giving Democrats hope for a fighting chance. The former Michigan lottery commissioner’s probably gotten a little luck along the way, but his personal political story is one of survival by any means necessary. He swept into office in 2008 by knocking off a House GOP incumbent, survived the tea party wave of 2010, beat fellow Democratic incumbent Hansen Clarke in a redistricting-stoked primary in 2012 and was the only new Democratic senator to take office after the 2014 shellacking. In 2020, Republicans mocked Peters, a bespectacled and laid-back former Navy officer, as “Jerry Peters” — so anonymous voters didn’t even know his name. He won in 2020 by less than two points against John James, one of the best GOP recruits in years. “I’ve got a lot of respect for the senator. And he worked really hard, I’ve got to credit that. So that paid dividends come Election Day,” said Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) who ran the GOP’s 2020 campaign arm. Still, Young said Peters’ historically Democratic state helped him personally, and he advised that translating personal electoral success across the Senate map is tricky: “They’re very different jobs.”