ICYMI: Maddow Highlights Vulnerable GOP Senators in TX and FL, New Scandals Plaguing GOP Senate Candidates in PA, MT, MI

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Last night, MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show highlighted how Ted Cruz and Rick Scott are uniquely vulnerable in the Texas and Florida Senate races and detailed the latest wave of scandals plaguing GOP recruits in Pennsylvania, Montana, and Michigan. 

You can watch the full MSNBC segment here.

On Cruz in Texas and Scott in Florida: “Some unexpected stuff going on in some U.S. Senate races right now. I mean, first of all, just the fact that incumbent Republicans in both Florida and Texas, these ‘safe red states,’ are facing actual, honest-to-goodness fights to keep their seats: Ted Cruz in Texas and Rick Scott in Florida.” 

On McCormick in Pennsylvania: “Then there’s Pennsylvania where the Republican Senate candidate this weekend decided to campaign outside a cheesesteak shop in North Philly. That event ended with the manager of the cheesesteak shop saying that Republican Dave McCormick is, quote, ‘Not welcome back. You’re not welcome back.’” 

• “Then Dave McCormick crossed the street to a local Baptist Church, where the pastor there asked McCormick and his entourage to leave because he didn’t, among other things, want photos of his church’s members to be used by McCormick’s campaign. The pastor said, quote, ‘You can Photoshop. You can make things seem like they aren’t. Maybe they’re going to post we’re eating dogs or cats, like in Ohio. Forgive me if I’m wrong, I don’t trust these people.’ So that went great for the Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania.”

On Sheehy in Montana: “Then there’s Montana, where the Republican Senate candidate there is on tape repeatedly making really over the top, flagrantly racist derogatory remarks about Montana’s Native Americans, in a state where Native Americans make up fully 6% of the population.”

• “Republican candidate Tim Sheehy first tried to claim that the recordings had somehow been deceptively edited before he was forced to admit that they are real and not at all deceptively edited. He still refused to apologize for them, though.”

• “There’s also the kind of unbelievable ongoing lack of a resolution over that same Republican candidate, Tim Sheehy, saying a bullet in his arm was from him shooting himself accidentally when he dropped a gun in a national park, but then he said the same gunshot wound was actually from him serving in Afghanistan. It can’t be both.”

• “He’s refused to release any information that would clarify either way, even as the disputed gunshot wound has been a huge part of his campaign, which just seems completely untenable as we get closer to election day, but yet, here we are.”

On Rogers in Michigan: “And oh wait, there’s more. The newest, just bizarre thing to happen to a top-tier, totally tied Senate race is not only one of the strangest scandals of all, it’s one that potentially has a criminal element to it.”

• “If you turned into a Florida man, if you were retiring from someplace cold, like Michigan, you could do worse than this $1.6 million estate in Cape Coral, Florida…It was purchased just two years ago in the summer of 2022, it was purchased by Michigan Republican Congressman Mike Rogers.”

• “The problem is, just six months after Mike Rogers bought his new dream home in Florida, an even more prime piece of real estate opened up. Michigan Democratic U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow announced that she was retiring from the U.S. Senate and this new Florida resident, Mike Rogers, he really wanted to run for that Michigan U.S. Senate seat. But unfortunately, that would mean he’d have to move back to Michigan.”

• “Well, Mike Rogers decided he would buy this lovely little house in White Lake Township, Michigan. He bought it, then immediately knocked it down. This photo was taken by local reporter John King of the Michigan Advance on April 30th. It shows an empty plot of land where the house Mike Rogers bought used to be. This picture I think redefines, ‘exceptional waterfront living.’ Two months after this picture was taken, Mike Rogers registered to vote using that property as his home address. Then one month after that, he voted for himself in the Republican primary for that U.S. Senate seat, using that address as his voter registration location.”

• “Now all this is turning out to be a problem for U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers. According to the Detroit Free Press, the house that Mike Rogers is still building on that spot isn’t done. It, quote, ‘did not — and still does not — have a certificate of occupancy. That means Rogers could not live there legally. And if he didn’t live there, he may have broken the law by using that address to vote.’”

See also: MEMO: Senate Republican Recruits Have a Candidate Quality Problem.

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