“I hope when the smoke clears we will still have a majority in the Senate," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images McConnell screws Dems ahead of election with October session The majority leader wants to deprive Democrats up for reelection the chance to campaign.

Traditionally, the Senate hits the road in October of an election year. But the Senate is throwing tradition out the window this year.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is planning to keep the chamber in session for a significant portion of October if not four entire weeks, costing Democrats key campaign trail days and allowing the Senate to continue its work into the fall, according to five Republican officials. The Kentucky Republican wants to keep cranking through as many lifetime judicial nominations and executive nominations as he can with his majority in the balance and the GOP still with the unilateral ability to confirm President Donald Trump’s picks.


Moreover, the Senate GOP has only two members who are considered vulnerable in the election: Ted Cruz of Texas and Dean Heller of Nevada. Democrats, meanwhile, are defending 10 seats total in states that Trump won in 2016, with at least four considered extremely competitive.

The House is expected to head home for the rest of the election season after passing a spending bill later this month. But with the Senate’s unique role confirming the president’s nominees and little political downside to staying in session, McConnell plans to forge ahead into October after slashing the August recess down to little more than two weeks.

“I plan to be here, yeah. Why wouldn’t we be?” said Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.). “You see anything that’s traditional these days? … they don’t need more than a couple of weeks to campaign.”

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The proposed work schedule also could give the GOP leverage over Senate Democrats and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer; if they are eager enough to return to the campaign trail, they may strike a deal with the GOP leader to swiftly confirm some nominees. But McConnell has to worry about attendance among his own ranks after a poor showing in August.

Still, another month in session will allow the GOP leader to continue reshaping the courts in a conservative image: The Senate GOP has already confirmed 26 circuit court nominees and 41 district court nominees to lifetime appointments, plus Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, in about 20 months time.

Another 27 district court judges and one circuit court judge is ready for the floor. And in the next two weeks, the Senate Judiciary Committee is on track to have three more circuit court judge nominees, 17 district court picks and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh ready for the floor. Several more have been nominated by the president.

“We’re going to clear the deck of all the circuit judges,” McConnell told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt last week. “If we can hold onto the Senate for two more years, we’re going to transform the federal judiciary with young men and women who believe in the fundamental notion that the job of a judge is to interpret the law as it’s written.”

It’s by far the most confirmations on the powerful circuit courts in modern history. And a reminder of the stakes of the upcoming election: If Democrats can pull off an upset win and take back the Senate, they can move to slow Trump’s nominations and set the table for the next president from their party, just as McConnell did to President Barack Obama in 2015 and 2016.

McConnell compared the Senate races to a “knife fight in an alley” during an appearance in Kentucky on Tuesday. Republicans are favored to keep the Senate, but if Democrats run the table in conservative states like Texas, Tennessee and Arizona and protect their incumbents they could take back the chamber.

“All of them too close to call,” McConnell said Tuesday. “I hope when the smoke clears we will still have a majority in the Senate.”

The Senate is scheduled to be in for four weeks in October, though some senators and staffers had hoped that would be eliminated before the election, as it was in 2016 and 2014 when the majority parties were defending many incumbents.

Whether the chamber will actually stay in that long might depend on attendance: With just 51 GOP senators, Republicans can’t risk many absences on tough judge votes. Some in the GOP who had called for no August recess missed votes, like Cruz. The Texas senator has missed 13 votes since July, the most he’s missed since his presidential run in 2016, according to GovTrack.

Democrats also could cut a deal with Republicans to confirm some less controversial executive branch nominees and judges and win a longer fall break, allowing their incumbents more time on the campaign trail. But when Democrats agreed to a confirmation deal of eight district court judges in August to gain back a few days of recess, liberals like Demand Justice executive director Brian Fallon called the move “pathetic.”

