Senate candidates this cycle are largely steering clear of the debate stage, in some cases avoiding it altogether, marking a major change from past years as campaigns question the debates’ importance.
For years, it was common for top Senate races to feature multiple debates. That is far from the case this year, with Ohio serving as a prime example.
The Buckeye State features one of the two most closely watched contests on the Senate map, but Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) and Republican Bernie Moreno are unlikely to participate in any debates this fall. Brown and former Rep. Jim Renacci (R-Ohio) took part in three in 2018.
Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a pair of incumbents running in contested races, are both only slated to debate once. Each appeared for two in their previous reelection contests.
Republican candidate Kari Lake and Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) participated in the only debate of Arizona’s hotly contested race this week, while the Nevada Senate race will feature its only debate next week.
“Debates below the presidential level have only rarely mattered, and they matter even less today,” said Joshua Karp, a Democratic operative. “In the past, debates have offered an opportunity to break through the noise and maybe have an outstanding moment on an important issue, but two can play at that game and the other side gets to talk too in every debate.”
“The upside of the potential to break through is offset by the potential for the other guy to break through,” Karp continued.
Political debates have become fewer and farther between, but they remained a relative constant. Presidential campaigns continued to schedule the standard three top-of-the-ticket debates and a single vice presidential meeting, and downballot campaigns largely followed suit.
In 2020, President Biden and former President Trump only met twice, interrupted by the latter’s COVID-19 diagnosis.
And this year, the debate over presidential debates grabbed the spotlight.
Biden’s reelection campaign spurned the Commission on Presidential Debates and independently organized debates with Trump and media outlets. One of those early debates ultimately led Biden to drop out of the race and pushed Vice President Harris to the top of the ticket.
Trump and Harris are also likely to only debate once despite her repeated call for a second meeting.
Strategists on both sides of the aisle say the drama has stripped debates of their importance and has given downballot campaigns a bigger opening to avoid them altogether.
“The silliness surrounding the presidential debate process is starting to filter down into the Senate races, and no longer is the standard that there must be a debate,” said Mark Weaver, an Ohio-based GOP strategist. “Now it’s fully optional.”
“When the [Commission on Presidential Debates] format was scrapped, that was the biggest indication that campaign debates were going to become an option, not a standard feature,” he added.
In Ohio, Brown said earlier this week he still plans to debate “if it gets to that.”
“I would like to debate. I’ve always said that,” he told reporters in Columbus.
A source involved in the race described the situation as a “standoff” and added that there “hasn’t been any movement on it.”
This does not mean that all campaigns are eschewing debates this year. Senate races in Montana, Pennsylvania and Michigan are all set to feature two debates apiece.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the chair of the Senate Democratic campaign arm, told reporters last month that he is supportive of his party’s stable of candidates taking part in them, but admitted the debate about debates has been harmful across the board.
“I like debates. I think debates are important for voters to see that contrast, and we like the contrast for all of our races. But … it can get a little tricky,” Peters said at a breakfast hosted by The Christian Science Monitor. “You’ll agree to debates, then the other side has a different set of debates. Then you go back and forth and nothing happens.”
“It’s sad that’s where we are as a country that we’re not engaged in that battle of ideas … as opposed to doing all of this on media and canned messages through paid media,” added Peters, who did not take part in any debates in either one of his 2014 or 2020 campaigns. “Our candidates are willing to debate, and they’ll put out debates that they will accept and hopefully come to an agreement, but it hasn’t been happening lately, unfortunately. I think that’s not good.”
Another reason for the downturn is that some operatives increasingly see more value in spending the precious time that would be devoted to preparation or debates themselves on other ways to reach voters, including barnstorming their state or doing interviews.
The operatives acknowledge the potential impact of debates has taken a hit, given how voters consume media. Most voters will not watch any portion of a debate live and will learn about them via viral clips or back-and-forth exchanges that occur.
And even then, whether they can break through the presidential force field is a tall task.
“Virality is relative. The virality of a downballot race is relative to what’s going on in the presidential contest, and if there’s a ton of presidential news, as there is all the time, it’s much harder for someone running for Congress to break through,” Karp said. “A comment in a debate that might have gone viral and been helpful or harmful in 2022 might get ignored in 2024 because of what else is going on.”
“[Debates] tend not to move the needle,” he added.
