In one competitive Senate election after another this year, incumbents are getting a pass from their home-state colleagues from the opposite party. It’s a rare vestige of bipartisan harmony in a chamber where that used to be the norm.

Though Republican senators say they will technically endorse and campaign for the GOP nominees, few, if any, will be going around their states and trashing vulnerable Democrats; the same goes for a key Republican incumbent being targeted by Democrats.


“I’m supporting [Rep. Jim] Renacci. I’ve endorsed Renacci,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said of the Republican running for Senate. “But as you know, Sherrod Brown and I work together on behalf of Ohio. And we do a lot in the trade area as an example. We’ve had some good success.”

“I have no intention of attacking Sen. Nelson. Why would I attack him?” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). “I’m not going to be out there telling people to vote against Bill Nelson. I’m going to be telling them to vote for Rick Scott.”

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Portman and Rubio, who hail from swing states, are returning the favor from recent campaigns when Democrats laid off of them. But the trend also extends to races in red states like West Virginia and to GOP senators who were just elected.

It’s especially striking because this fall represents the best opportunity Republicans have to pick up Senate seats until perhaps 2024, with 10 Democrats up for reelection this year in states that President Donald Trump won.

Nine of those 10 states are represented by split Senate delegations, and most Republicans believe that it’s not worth burning a bridge with their home-state colleague — particularly given the chances that the Democrat could win amid a possible wave election and later seek revenge on their GOP counterpart.

“When you are serving with someone, the more you can figure out the ways to work together — even if you aren’t voting with someone — has never been more important,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), who is facing Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) this fall.

Casey held off on attacking Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) in 2016 and is hoping for similar treatment this year from Toomey. But GOP senators are careful in how they talk about the upcoming campaigns, trying to balance party loyalty with years-long relationships with their Democratic colleagues.

Toomey would say only this when asked how he will handle his relationship with Casey on the campaign trail: “I’m supporting Lou.”

Many of these GOP senators represent swing states; it makes little sense for Toomey, Rubio, Portman or Ron Johnson of Wisconsin to attack someone they may very well have to work with for decades more. It’s much safer to tout the Republican and leave the attacks to Trump or the GOP candidate themselves.

“I always look at the positives. So I’ll be campaigning for the Republican nominee,” Johnson said.

And unlike House delegations that can sprawl to as many as the 53 members from California, home-state senators enjoy intimate relationships that by design require bipartisan cooperation in the wake of natural disasters or other crises. Rubio and Nelson, for example, have worked together closely on school safety since the Parkland shooting; Toomey and Casey have collaborated on judges; and Portman and Brown have teamed up to lure jobs to Ohio.

Past grudge matches like the battles between former Louisiana Sens. Mary Landrieu (a Democrat) and David Vitter (a Republican) are no longer common. The shift is a particular boon to the bipartisan bona fides of Democrats hoping to win reelection in Trump territory.

“It’s a reflection of some traditions in the Senate. Obviously there have been some departures from that,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chair of the Democrats’ campaign arm. But Republicans are laying off Democrats out of “respect for the bipartisan work these colleagues have done.”

In fact, bipartisan senatorial courtesies are extending beyond sitting senators this year. Retiring Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Sunday he won’t campaign against Democrat Phil Bredesen, in part, because “he’s my friend.”

There are exceptions. The most fraught split-delegation relationship in the Senate right now might be that of Republican Steve Daines and Democrat Jon Tester of Montana. Daines whacked Tester in a tweet, which he later deleted, for voting against tax reform in December and said this month at a party event: “We need to send a new senator back to Washington, D.C.”

But in an interview, Daines insisted he will rely on Trump to levy the attacks against Tester rather than taking the rhetorical lead and said he and Tester are "going to continue to work together as a team all the way through the election.”

“I’ll be campaigning with the nominee, as I would any race in Montana,” Daines said. “But I will always be respectful of my important teammate back here in Washington.”

Tester, however, isn’t buying it.

“I don’t want to get into it because I have to work with him. It’s totally bullshit. He’s already doing it,” Tester said.

Other than the Big Sky State, non-aggression pacts are now the norm, extending to red states that Trump overwhelmingly won.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) says he will campaign for state Attorney General Josh Hawley rather than against Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) has told Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) that it’s not his intention “to ever say anything negative about Joe publicly — or privately for that matter,” according to the South Bend Tribune.

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who was once hired by Sen. Heidi Heitkamp to run the Bank of North Dakota, said he would campaign in a “positive way” for GOP Rep. Kevin Cramer. And Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia enjoys a strong relationship with Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin, who did very little against Capito in 2014. She will support a Republican against Manchin but isn’t going to speak badly of him.

“I feel the same way. I didn’t do a thing against Shelley,” Manchin said. “I appreciate her and respect that.”

Due to this year’s Senate map, Republicans have almost all of the pick-up opportunities. But Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) said in an interview that she won’t be going full bore against GOP Sen. Dean Heller either, even though it’s Senate Democrats’ best shot against a GOP incumbent.

And while Democrats are happy to hear that their Republican colleagues won’t be leading the charge against them this fall, they’re sensitive to the perception that they’ve cut a deal with GOP senators to help keep both of them in office.

Instead, Democrats say the careful campaigning strategies come about through years of working together — an unspoken agreement that the Senate shouldn’t devolve any further after decades of increasing partisanship and polarization.

“I’ve never sat down and said: ‘You do this, I’ll do this.’ We’ve never done that,” Ohio Democrat Brown said of Portman, who won reelection by more than 20 points in 2016. “We’ve just been careful not to say negative things about each other. We don’t really want to say negative things.”

Elana Schor contributed to this report.