GOP Insiders Clash Over Party’s Senate Prospects

GOP insiders alarmed about funding shortfalls for their most prominent midterm election candidates have turned on each other in their search for scapegoats after a disappointing opening to the campaign season.Senator Rubio, facing a tough re-election campaign, this week sent an email to supporters “begging” for money and warning that he didn’t have enough funding to see the campaign through. Similarly dire appeals have also gone out from Republican Senate hopefuls Herschel Walker in Georgia and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania.They are not alone. Following a bitter primary season, Republicans across the country without the last names “Trump” or “DeSantis” are finding themselves hard up on funds when compared with their Democratic opponents.The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, blames candidate quality for the GOP’s problems with its election efforts.“Senate races are just different — they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” he said after conceding that the House was more likely to flip to Republican control than the Senate.President Trump blames Mr. McConnell, whom he referred to as a “broken down hack politician” in a social media post. He said Mr. McConnell should spend more time and money “helping them get elected.”Mr. Trump has raised more than $100 million through his Save America PAC this election cycle, but less than $500,000 has been doled out to candidates, mostly in sums of $5,000 a candidate.According to financial disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission, the PAC spent more than $1 million on legal fees during July and another $650,000 went to the Smithsonian to pay for portraits of the president and his wife, Melania.Underpinning the GOP infighting is an argument that the party reached too far in trying to flip safe Democratic seats in places such as Washington and Colorado.A political scientist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Brian Arbor, whose research focuses on campaign strategy, tells the Sun that such a strategy isn’t anything out of the ordinary.“It’s very common for parties to spend the summer probing for weaknesses in the other side’s defenses,” he tells the Sun. “I’m not surprised that they tried some stuff in Colorado and Washington and it didn’t work, and I’m sure you can find some stuff the Democrats did as well.”The real problem faced by the Republicans, Mr. Arbor said, is a genuine, if subtle, change in the national environment, rather than any strategic error by Mr. McConnell or other party leaders.A confluence of events — such as the high court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision, the January 6 committee’s hearings, and some recent legislative victories — have put some wind in the Democrats’ sails, Mr. Arbor said.The shift is “small, but it could be very meaningful,” Mr. Arbor said. Campaign strategy is “overrated” in comparison to the effects that candidates have on races, he added.A data scientist at Decision Desk HQ who teaches at Washington University at St. Louis, Liberty Vittert, largely agrees. While national Republicans shifting money around might tell you where they are focusing their efforts, she said, it doesn’t qualify as a strategic blunder.“I don’t think that they’re scrambling yet,” she tells the Sun. “Statistically speaking, I wouldn’t say things are going poorly for them yet, but it’s certainly not going to be a landslide.”Where the Republicans are encountering problems, Ms. Vittert said, is in the quality of their nominees. She said merely average Democratic candidates in Senate races such as those in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Ohio have been bolstered by weak GOP opponents, many of them hand-selected by Mr. Trump for their loyalty rather than their credentials.Mr. Trump’s outsize role in the campaign, even when he is not on the ballot, has been a drag on Republicans, Ms. Vittert said, and brought in more anti-Trump money for Democrats.Whatever the reasons behind it, a political scientist and pollster at the University of North Florida, Michael Binder, believes Republicans are now playing defense.“There’s been an evolution of thought,” Mr. Binder said. “Six months ago they thought it was going to be a whitewash — it was about maximizing gains.“They’ve had to change and shift course because they didn’t see all these things happening,” he added.Republicans have had to pivot from a campaign almost solely about inflation to one where other issues like abortion are competing for attention.Whether the party has truly shifted strategy or is simply moving into a new phase of the campaign, that even Republican leadership are admitting that their Senate candidates are underperforming does not bode well for the GOP’s prospects in November.

GOP Insiders Clash Over Party’s Senate Prospects

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