Whether you are out with friends to watch returns or home alone biting your fingernails, here are a few races that will be significant in determining whether President Donald Trump’s immigration message resonated in the final weeks leading up to the midterm elections.
First, there is little argument that the success or failure of Senate wannabe Rep. Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee will help determine how we admit people (and how many) to the United States in coming years.
Blackburn has a long career in the House where she earned kudos from immigration restriction watchdog group, Numbers USA as reported last month by The Tennessee Star.
In its latest survey the RealClear Politics average has Blackburn up by a comfortable 5.2% lead over her Democrat challenger Phil Bredesen.
A US Senate race in battleground Pennsylvania, that once gave immigration restrictionists high hopes, is the contest pitting a star of the movement to slow immigration, both illegal and legal, Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA-11) against Democrat sitting Senator Bob Casey.
Although Pennsylvania is a state where its large Democratic-controlled city centers—Philadelphia, Harrisburg and Pittsburgh—usually dominate voting, Donald Trump won the state by a tiny margin in 2016.
That race is a long shot for Barletta who trails Casey by double digits. An upset victory there by the Republican early in the evening (polls close at 8 p.m. Eastern time) would be a stunner and a sure sign of what could come.
A pair of governors’ races to watch are in states in the middle of America, in the central time zone along with Tennessee, so those races won’t be the earliest tests of Trump’s coattails.
Both in Kansas and Minnesota, Republican gubernatorial candidates have made immigration a centerpiece of their campaigns.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has been an important voice for immigration restriction for a decade or more. RealClear Politics has the race with his Democrat opponent Laura Kelly as a toss-up.
In Minnesota where the state has been embroiled in wrangling over whether more refugees should be resettled in the state, Republican candidate for governor, Jeff Johnson, has steadfastly maintained that the federal program should be paused for now.
According to RealClear Politics latest average, Johnson trails an advocate for open borders and a strong advocate for more refugees, Tim Walz, by 7 percentage points. Walz is a former Congressman who stepped down from his first district seat to run for governor.
Walz has a NumbersUSA immigration score card grade of F- indicating that he might well agree with outgoing Democratic Governor Mark Dayton’s 2015 pronouncement to critics—if you don’t like immigrants, find another state.
A Walz win could help Minnesotans decide if that time has come.
House of Representatives
In the battle for the House, NumbersUSA directs us to key races in East Coast battleground states to watch where immigration hawks are in tight races with Democrats who favor more immigration, more refugee resettlement and freer movement of asylum seekers across our borders.
First, and perhaps foremost, is the Virginia District 7 race between incumbent Congressman Dave Brat and his Democrat opponent, former CIA agent, Abigail Spanberger, a race analyzed at The Ohio Star yesterday.
Brat came to the nation’s attention when he defeated a rising star in the Republican House leadership, Rep. Eric Cantor in 2014. Polls close in Virginia at 7 p.m. Eastern time, so this could be one of the earliest races for nail-biters to watch as results come in.
NumbersUSA, which has been working for years to grade candidates at all levels of government on their immigration votes on twelve key issues of concern to their members, alerts its followers to watch several other East Coast House races where incumbents with A-grades from the organization are in tough races
Three in battleground North Carolina (polls close at 7:30 p.m. Eastern) and another in Pennsylvania
North Carolina-2: Rep. George Holding
North Carolina-9: Mark Harris
North Carolina-13: Rep. Ted Budd
Pennsylvania-10: Rep. Scott Perry
Finally, one last race to watch closely is the one in Iowa where eight-term incumbent Rep. Steve King (R-IA-04), a tough immigration hawk, has recently come under fire for remarks he made in Austria last summer in support of the nationalist movement there.
It appears that the Dems don’t have much of a chance this time around to unseat him. RealClear Politics puts him up by 7 points.
However, don’t assume your nails will escape damage. This one is still worth watching and fearing.
Even if King survives tomorrow night, watch the Open-Borders movement make him a number-one target in 2020 as they attempt to regain the White House in order to advance their Leftwing agenda.
