Democrats couldn't take Senate because Cal Cunningham 'couldn't keep his zipper up', says Chuck Schumer
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has told the Democratic Party donors in recent calls that the passing away of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the sex scandal of Cal Cunningham dashed the blues’ hopes of regaining the chamber, Axios reported. Cunningham, a former member of North Carolina Senate, looked good to beat GOP incumbent Thom Tillis in the race for a Senate seat for most part of the year but lost the advantage after admitting that he had an extramarital affair. The 47-year-old attorney and Iraq War veteran eventually lost by less than two percentage points to Tillis.
In early October, Cunningham, married and father of two, admitted to sending sexual text messages to Arlene Guzman Todd, a strategist in California. He apologized in a statement saying: “I have hurt my family, disappointed my friends, and am deeply sorry. The first step in repairing those relationships is taking complete responsibility, which I do.” Cunningham, though, refused to drop out of the race. The text messages were later leaked in public.
Undisclosed text messages that were previously obtained by The Associated Press and other interviews showed that the relationship between Cunningham and Guzman went beyond suggestive texts to intimate encounter in July. Schumer rued the recruit of Cunningham and said on several occasions that the latter “couldn’t keep his zipper up” to put his party’s chances in jeopardy, according to Axios.
Sara Gideon's loss against Susan Collins another blow
Similarly, the loss of Sara Gideon against Collins, the incumbent since January 1997, was another blow to the Dems. Gideon, the Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, looked to dethrone the veteran GOP senator but could not pull it off despite Maine decisively favoring Joe Biden over Donald Trump in the presidential election.
According to Schumer, Collins did herself a favor by opposing the pick of Amy Coney Barrett as the late Ginsburg’s successor in the Supreme Court even as the GOP hurried to confirm her to see the top court tilting heavily in favor of the conservatives. Collins, who faced criticism in the past for supporting Brett Kavanaugh as a SC judge and backing Trump’s acquittal in his impeachment trial, changed her stance by opposing the move to fill Ginsburg’s seat before the next president took over, strengthening her appeal to the Democrats, Independents and those undecided. Though Barrett went on to get the confirmation of the Senate, Collins too gained a political ground and eventually beat Gideon.
Schumer also wanted Stacey Abrams for Georgia run
Schumer, 70, also regretted that the Democratic Party could not pick Stacey Abrams to run for a Senate seat in Georgia, where a couple of runoffs in January will decide the two major parties’ final standings in the chamber. According to one source that spoke to Axios, Schumer acknowledged he tried to pick Abrams but added that she insisted on choosing Raphael Warnock.
The Senate at the moment sees the GOP having 50 seats while the Democrats have 46 while there are two independent senators who caucus with the Dems. It has come down to the two Georgia runoffs on January 5 to decide who eventually controls the chamber. But for the Democrats, even two wins will not ensure a clean majority.