Democrats Seek Another Opening in a Challenging Senate Map

Facing an uphill battle to maintain control of the Senate, Democrats are turning to two states that perennially break their hearts: Texas and Florida.

The retirement of Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat-turned-independent, means one red-state Senate seat the party held for years is all but gone. Public polls show Senator Jon Tester of Montana trailing his Republican opponent in a state that has swung further to the right since he last won re-election. And Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio has a tough re-election battle in a state Donald J. Trump, then the president, won in 2020 by eight percentage points.

On Thursday, the party’s Senate campaign arm announced that it was making a “multimillion-dollar” investment in television advertising in two red states where it is holding out hope of defeating two Republican incumbents, Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida.

That Democrats are turning to states with long records of tantalizing them before letting them down can be read either as a sign of hope — maybe, just maybe, this year will be different — or of concern about the rest of the map. Picking up a seat in either state could help the party offset a loss elsewhere, although Democratic officials insisted that’s not the reason for the spending.

“This is about Democrats going on offense and expanding the map,” said David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, adding that Senate Democrats have long sensed opportunity in Texas and Florida “given the weak standing of the Republican incumbents in both states.”

“We began making investments in the state to prepare for this kind of moment in 2023, and now we’ve reached a point in the campaign cycle where we’re accelerating our