ICYMI: DSCC Chair Sen. Gary Peters Discusses How Senate Democrats Will Win Again and The Stakes of The 2024 Election

This week, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Senator Gary Peters sat down with The New Republic to discuss how Senate Democrats will win again in 2024 and the stakes of the election. Senator Peters highlighted Senate Democrats’ winning playbook: in 2022, Senate Democrats “raise[d] the resources they needed,” “ran great campaigns,” and “were more in line with the issues voters care about,” while this cycle Senate Republicans are again facing issues with “candidate quality” and remain “completely out of step” with the American people on women’s right to make their own health care decisions. 

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

The New Republic: The Run-Up
By Daniel Strauss and Grace Segers
June 29, 2023

Key points:

• Earlier this week, the [The Run-Up] Detectives sat down with Senator Gary Peters, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. A businessman who served in the Navy Reserve, Peters is well liked among Washington Democrats and chaired the DSCC in 2022, when Democrats dramatically exceeded expectations in the midterm cycle and successfully defended every incumbent Senate seat—the first time that’s happened since 1934.
  
  
• [Senator Peters said]: “Some of the same issues are at play [in 2024 as in 2022]. One will be candidate quality. There was no question a big factor in our victory last cycle was the fact that our candidates were clearly superior to what the Republicans put forward. Our incumbents and candidates were able to raise the resources they needed. They ran great campaigns, and they were more in line with the issues voters care about.”
  
  
• “Clearly the Dobbs decision was a factor.… That’s still going to be a big issue. Abortion is not going away in this election. The Republicans are completely out of step with where a large majority of the American people are.”
  
  
• “A big part of our victory last time was the fact that we invested unprecedented amounts in the ground campaign, going door-to-door, starting conversations with voters not just a couple of months before the election but over a long period of time. In fact I made a strategic decision [for] the DSCC last cycle that we would spend more money on our field operation than we did on television and that kind of media. It was the first time in the history of the [committee] that we did that.”
  
  
• “Reproductive freedom was front and center on the ballot: incredibly powerful in turning folks to turn out. It was incredibly powerful to turn out people, especially young voters. It was amazing.”
  
  
• “When you look at who did the worst in these elections, they were election deniers, and a lot of Republicans had election deniers on the ballot, and I was just so encouraged by the results that they lost. They lost. That was not a popular thing to take in a general election. It helped them win primaries.”
  
  
• “In many ways, I look at my job more as a mayor than a U.S. senator. What is important in my state? What is important in the individual communities in my state? How can I make a difference in their people’s lives for the things that they care most about? So you’ll see tailored messages in all of our states because that’s how senators do their jobs every day. They’re always fighting for people in their individual communities, and we have a lot of successes to talk about.”

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