Newsman: Democrats have held on to their slim majority in the U.S. Senate but the battle for the House meanwhile, remains too close to call.
The chamber was decided Saturday evening after Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto defeated Republican nominee Adam Laxalt, a former state attorney general, according to a race call by The Associated Press.
That gives Democrats 50 Senate seats, which is enough for the majority with Vice President Harris’ tiebreaking vote.
The U.S. House remains up for grabs, with Republicans maintaining a narrow inside track to the majority.
The picture in the Senate became clear late Saturday after Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada narrowly defeated Republican Adam Laxalt to win re-election, putting her party over the threshold.
“Thank you, Nevada!” Cortez Masto said in a tweet Saturday evening after its two most populous counties, Clark and Washoe, finished counting mail-in ballots.
“I feel good for the country. Because so many people worried — I did — about this democracy,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said at a news conference late Saturday. “America showed that we believe in our democracy. That the roots of our democracy are deep and strong. And that it will prevail as long as we fight for it.”
He added that Republicans were hampered by “flawed challengers who had no faith in democracy, no fidelity to the truth or honor.”
“I feel good and I’m looking forward to the next couple years,” Biden told reporters, reacting to the Senate result at close to 11 a.m. local time in Cambodia where the president is attending a summit of world leaders. He credited the quality of the candidates and said they were all “running on the same program.”
The White House said Biden called first Cortez Masto and then Schumer from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to congratulate them.
Masto’s victory means Democrats will hold the Senate regardless of the outcome of Georgia’s Dec. 6 runoff election, when Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker will face each other again after neither cleared the 50% threshold required under state law.
A Walker win would keep the Senate 50-50, where Vice President Kamala Harris casts the tie-breaking vote for Democrats.
A Warnock victory would make it 51-49, giving Democrats one extra vote in a chamber where they have often been stymied by internal dissent from members like Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
Addressing whether Democrats can keep control of the House, Biden said it’s “perilously close,” adding, “we can win it, but whether we’re going to win it remains to be seen.”
