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Republican U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters has criticized Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell after an expected 'red wave' in the midterms failed to materailize.
Masters, who was beaten by Democratic Senator Mark Kelly in Arizona, is one of several Republicans who have now appeared to question McConnell ahead of leadership elections scheduled for Wednesday following the midterm elections.
The race for control of the Senate is much closer than polling had indicated, with Democrats and Republicans currently tied at 49 seats each. If Senator Catherine Cortez Masto can win in her tight race in Nevada, Democrats will have the seats necessary to form a majority with Vice President Kamala Harris' casting vote.
If Cortez Masto is defeated, control of the Senate will be decided in the Georgia runoff election, where the margins are expected to be extremely close after no candidate won 50 percent support on Tuesday.
"The people who control the purse strings, Senate Leadership Fund, Mitch McConnell - McConnell decided to spend millions of dollars attacking a fellow Republican in Alaska instead of helping me defeat Senator Mark Kelly," Masters told Fox News on Friday ahead of his defeat.
"Had he chosen to spend money in Arizona, this race would be over and we'd be celebrating a Senate Majority right now," he said. "And so my message to the people of America, my message to actually my, the Republican senators, hopefully my future colleagues, let's not vote Mitch McConnell into leadership. He doesn't deserve to be majority leader or minority leader."
Senate Leadership Fund is a super PAC aligned with McConnell which canceled advertising reservations worth around $8 million in Arizona between September 6 and October 3 and cut another $9.6 million in ad buys in the race scheduled from October 4 to November 8.
The Alaska Republican Party voted last month to censure McConnell for supporting ads critical of Trump-backed U.S. Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka, who is running against Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski through the state's ranked choice voting system.
A number of Republican senators, including Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio, have called for the vote to be delayed but the GOP leadership is currently planning to press ahead.
"It makes no sense for Senate to have leadership elections before GA runoff," Cruz tweeted on Friday. "We don't yet know whether we'll have a majority & Herschel Walker deserves a say in our leadership. Critically, we need to hear a specific plan for the next 2 yrs from any candidate for leadership."
He was referring to the Senate runoff in Georgia on December 6 where Republican Herschel Walker will face Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock. Cruz on Saturday tweeted that not delaying the leadership vote would be "indefensible."
Senators Ron Johnson, Mike Lee and Rick Scott have reportedly been circulating a letter also calling for a postponement of Wednesday elections.
"We are all disappointed that a Red Wave failed to materialize, and there are multiple reasons it did not," the letter says, according to a copy obtained by Politico. "We need to have serious discussions within our conference as to why and what we can do to improve our chances in 2024."
Before the midterms, McConnell was widely expected to be re-elected as leader of Senate Republicans and he could still become majority leader as the nation awaits results from the Nevada and Georgia races, but signs of GOP infighting appear rife.
Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized McConnell and called for him to be replaced as leader or even impeached. He returned to that criticism in posts overnight on his Truth Social platform.
Trump alleged without evidence that fraud was affecting elections in Nevada and Arizona and said: "Mitch McConnell, the Republicans Broken Down Senate Leader, does nothing about this. He's too busy spending vast amounts of money on bad Senator Lisa M of Alaska, when Kelly S is FAR better. Should have fought and stopped the steal in 2020."
Nonetheless, Trump has also come in for criticism as a result of Republicans' underperformance in the midterms.
Several conservative media outlets took aim at Trump, while Virginia's GOP Lt. Governor Winsome Sears caused controversy when she called the former president "a liability."
Even some Trump allies have urged him to delay a November 15 announcement that is widely expected to be a confirmation of his intention to run for president again in 2024.
The final results of the midterms are not yet known and at this stage, either party could end up in control of the Senate but next week is shaping up to be a major one for the GOP.
Newsweek has contacted McConnell's team for comment.
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About the writer
Darragh Roche is a U.S. News Reporter based in Limerick, Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. politics. He has ... Read more