ICYMI: Candidate challenges, primary scars have GOP worried about Senate chances [Washington Post]

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Washington Post: Candidate challenges, primary scars have GOP worried about Senate chances
Republicans are struggling in several of the marquee races in the fight for control of the upper chamber
By Michael Scherer, Colby Itkowitz and Josh Dawsey
July 10, 2022

Key Points:

• Four months from Election Day, Republicans are struggling in several of the marquee Senate races because of candidate challenges and campaigns still recovering from brutal Republican primaries.

• “In some of these contests right now, there are some concerns, at least in the Senate map,” said Kevin Madden, a veteran GOP operative. “There are warning signs that some of these candidates are not as strong as they could be given the opportunity at hand.”

• Behind the scenes, Republicans operatives are growing increasingly nervous. One GOP strategist watching the Senate race closely, who like others interviewed for this article requested anonymity to speak more openly about internal deliberations, said that “there are massive problems on the candidate front.”

• It’s not just political novices who are struggling. In Wisconsin, GOP Sen. Ron Johnson is roughly even with three of his four potential Democratic rivals in a Marquette University poll last month, taken before new disclosures that his office had attempted to play a role in pushing an alternate slate of electors for the 2020 election. Johnson was viewed favorably by 37 percent of the state’s registered voters in that poll and unfavorably by 46 percent.

• Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, is also polling slightly behind his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, following a brutal Republican primary that flooded the state’s airwaves with attack ads against the retired surgeon and television personality.

• Democrats have also been pointing to recent reporting on J.D. Vance, the GOP senate nominee in Ohio, comparing abortion and slavery in an interview last year with a Catholic podcast.

• In Arizona, where the primary is next month, they have gone after Blake Masters, a Donald Trump-backed candidate for the Republican Senate nomination who has promoted the false claim that the former president won the 2020 election and has espoused hard-line immigration views.

• Democratic candidates have also posted strong fundraising numbers in recent days, with Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democrat running against Vance, raising $9.1 million in the second quarter of the year.

• Georgia… has been an especially worrisome race in Republican circles. NRSC staff members have been concerned about the recent performance by Walker and did not know, for example about his multiple nonpublic children.

• “I don’t know anyone who has confidence in the campaign including people on the campaign. He doesn’t have standard candidate discipline,” said Erick Erickson, a conservative radio host in Georgia. “He just doesn’t have a deep grasp of the issues nor really the desire to learn those issues. My sense is he just thought he could carry the Trump flag through Georgia and rally enough Republican candidates, and never thought about independent voters.”

• The situation in Pennsylvania is also challenging for the GOP, as Oz digs his way out of the months of personal attacks from his Republican primary rival, David McCormick, whom he beat by fewer than 1,000 votes.

• Democrats have settled on a strategy of hammering Oz further, focusing on his recent return to Pennsylvania after living for decades in New Jersey, New York and Florida. Fetterman has trolled Oz on social media over his immense wealth.

• “Dr. Oz’s biggest disadvantage in the race for Pennsylvania Senate is being from New Jersey,” said Rebecca Katz, a consultant for Fetterman, before noting that Oz or his campaign had misspelled his address in Huntingdon Valley, Pa., on a recent federal form.

See also: New York Times: A Bluer Picture. “A brighter picture is coming together for Democrats on the Senate side. There, Republicans are assembling what one top strategist laughingly described as an ‘island of misfit toys’ — a motley collection of candidates the Democratic Party hopes to portray as out of the mainstream on policy, personally compromised and too cozy with Donald Trump.”

###