Midterm elections 2022: Democratic Senate candidates’ playbook

Democrats scrambling to retain control of the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections plan to tout their party’s legislative accomplishments and ambitions – and to make the case that those policies are the best answer to voters’ concerns about Covid-19, inflation and the broader economy.

They can promote their quick action under the Covid relief bill passed in the earlier, more successful stretch of President Joe Biden’s tenure, as well as a generational investment in the nation’s infrastructure.

They may also promise to revitalize Biden’s Build Back Better plan and voting-rights legislation, two massive initiatives that have sputtered out while the party has held narrow minorities in Congress and the president’s approval ratings have plunged.

CNBC spoke with Democratic campaigns, staff to incumbents running for reelection and political strategists to hear their views on how the party can win in 2022. Uniting all factions of the Democratic Party and its supporters is a focus on one critical topic: Fighting rising costs.

Strategists say the party must both reiterate their efforts to cool the current bout of inflation and how the policies the party championed throughout 2021 will work to boost consumers’ bank accounts. They also stress that message should be coupled with a knock on Republicans for blocking those efforts.

Campaigns advisors told CNBC that candidates should show voters they care about working families and the middle class through policy efforts to reinstate the child tax credit, attempts to lower health-care costs and expand access to child care.

A representative for Sen. Raphael Warnock’s campaign highlighted several efforts to lower costs and combat inflation.

The campaign said the Georgia Democrat has in the last 12 months pushed the Biden administration for federal funding for the state’s ports, secured more than $140 million in grants to address affordable housing needs and introduced legislation to lower drugs prices.

“It shouldn’t cost working people an arm and a leg to get their prescriptions filled,” Warnock said in a Twitter post on Dec. 10. “I’m urging my Senate colleagues to support my Capping Prescription Costs Act to ensure every American can access the medication they need.”

Warnock won his seat in a special election in January 2021 and is serving the remainder of a term vacated by former Sen. Johnny Isakson, who resigned for health reasons in 2019.

He will ultimately face one of his Republican challengers, including retired football player Herschel Walker and former Trump administration official Latham Saddler. Former President Donald Trump endorsed Walker’s bid for the Senate seat.

While Georgia is a must-win state for Democrats hoping to maintain their paper-thin majority in the Senate, that isn’t the only political battle brewing in the Peach…