How the wrong VP candidate could cost Republicans the Senate

(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

last updated 7 January 2016

The ideal outcome for the Republican Party in 2016 is winning the White House while hanging onto its bicameral majority in Congress — but those two goals may prove impossible to reconcile.

Several of the GOP's top options for vice presidential candidates are serving in the Senate, and tapping them for the national race could destroy the Republican majority there. Two possible contenders in particular, Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), will be running for re-election in 2016 in key swing states that could turn blue without an incumbent advantage.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.