RNC Chair McDaniel: Possible GOP Will Pick Up Senate Seats — ‘Unprecedented in a Midterm of a First-term President’

Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel predicted Republicans would pick up seats in the U.S. Senate, which she said was “unprecedented in a midterm of a first-term president.”

McDaniel said, “We know the historical trends 30 seats lost in that first midterm when you hold the White House. Obama lost 60 seats and usually you lose seats in the Senate. So the Senate map we are talking about picking up seats which is unprecedented in a midterm of a first-term president. So that’s something that everyone should be looking at. One to see if we pick up one seat that will be defying history on the House. We have a lot of seats and the margin.”

She added, “Absolutely we’ve had an unprecedented amount of retirements and that has made it harder in some of these swing districts. But right now I’d say it’s 50-50 we are out every day working. The RNC has raised to date 250 million dollars. We’ve put 400-500 staff on the ground. We’ve trained 20,000 field organizers. That’s four times more than we did in 2016. So our infrastructure to turn out our vote to engage with our voters to talk to them about these results is the best it has ever been in the midterms. Now candidates matter and that’s going to be different in every single race. And we need these candidates to talk about their local issues go out there they have to work as hard as they’ve ever worked. Candidates who think that they’re in safe districts they’re going to have to give everything and we’re going to be there backing it up at the RNC.”

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