May30

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

It's Deja Vu All Over Again

The Republican Party's mascot is the elephant. Maybe this is not a good choice. Elephants famously have very long memories. When an elephant sees a former friend from 50 years ago, he or she often gets wildly excited. Maybe the goldfish would be a better choice for the GOP. The GOP's memory span is clearly less than 2 years, since it appears to be determined to make the same mistakes that it made in 2022 all over again. The problem, as usual, is candidate quality, especially in tough Senate races.

The core problem is that the NRSC keeps giving into temptation. Finding a good-looking, popular, or extremely wealthy outsider who has never been in politics (especially one who is prepared to self-fund the campaign) is irresistible. Only it doesn't seem to work well, especially when the Senate candidate doesn't even live in the state where the Senate election is. Democrats don't do this. When they need someone new in a Senate race, they typically go for people with an electoral track record, such as Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) in Arizona, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) in California, Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE) in Delaware, former representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in Florida, County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D) in Maryland, Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) in Michigan, Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ) in New Jersey, and Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX) in Texas. Every one of these has won at least one election in the state where the Senate race is. That means they know something about the politics of the state and also can't be accused of being carpetbaggers.

Here's the Republican line-up in some races where candidate quality is sure to play a role.

• Arizona: Kari Lake is the mother of all people with candidate quality problems. In 2022, at a campaign event, she asked if there were any McCain supporters in the room, and said that if any were present, they should get the hell out of there. After losing the 2022 gubernatorial race, she declared herself the winner and has been talking about that ever since. She has flip-flopped on abortion a couple of times. She told her supporters to strap on a Glock, something that could come back to haunt her. After all, Glocks are made by the Austrian company Glock Ges.m.b.H. Why not an American pistol? What's wrong with a good old American Smith & Wesson .38 Special? Lake spent so much time at Mar-a-Lago that Trump told her to go back to Arizona to campaign. She's also not very good at fundraising and informally the NRSC has already written her off as hopeless. Polls show Ruben Gallego with a consistent lead. If former governor Doug Ducey (R) had run, he could have won it.
  
  
• Montana: Republican candidate Tim Sheehy is a former Navy Seal, owns a big cattle ranch in Montana, and is worth north of $200 million. What's not to like? Well, his military service is controversial. He has said he was shot in Afghanistan, possibly by friendly fire, but he has also said that he lied to a park ranger in Glacier National Park about shooting himself in the foot there, which would be a federal crime. This confusion led to this ad:
  
  
  
  Now about that ranch. Sheehy grew up in a mansion in Minnesota and used that as his voting address until 2016. When he bought that big ranch in Montana, he closed it off to local elk hunters and allows only people who pay him over $10,000 to hunt there. This won't go over big with local hunters. Finally, his aerial firefighting company is indeed worth over $200 million, but the vast majority of its income comes from government contracts. So much for his rugged individualism.
  
  
• Ohio: Wealthy Mercedes dealer Bernie Moreno started to run for the Senate after Rob Portman announced his retirement in 2021. Moreno met with Donald Trump and then quickly dropped out. Reportedly, Trump secured his exit from the race with a promise to support him if he ran against Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) in 2024. Moreno did run and Trump did support him, which seems to suggest there really was a deal. The amazing part is that Trump kept up his part of the bargain.
  
  Earlier this year, it was reported that someone with access to Moreno's e-mail account signed up for an adult website looking for "Young guys to have fun with." Moreno claims it wasn't him, but questions linger, keeping in mind that with many Republican voters, it remains the case that gay is not OK. Also, Moreno is now very Trumpy, but in 2016 he described Trump as a "lunatic invading the Republican Party." Expect that to surface again this year. In short, the only things going for him are Trump's endorsement and a lot of money, but Brown has won three Senate races in Ohio due to his brand of populism.
  
  
• Pennsylvania: In 2022, Connecticut resident David McCormick ran against New Jersey resident Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania Republican senatorial primary and Oz won, presumably because New Jersey is closer to Pennsylvania than Connecticut is. Oz lost the general election to now-Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA). But McCormick is taking another whack at the piñata, even though he still lives in a $16 million house on Long Island Sound. He does own a property in Pittsburgh, but he doesn't live there and hadn't voted in Pennsylvania for 16 years prior to his 2022 run. Wealth is not a new thing in his family. He claims that he grew up on a family farm, son of a teacher. Well, dad was a "teacher" of sorts. He was president of Bloomsburg University and the "family farm" was the president's mansion. McCormick does own land in Pennsylvania, but it has been rented out for decades and is merely income-producing property that happens to be in Pennsylvania.
  
  
• Wisconsin: Again, the Republicans picked a rich carpetbagger with a tin ear. The candidate opposing Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) is Eric Hovde, a wealthy bank owner who was born in Wisconsin but now lives in California. The bank is in Utah. He is also CEO of a private equity firm and real estate development company. He can definitely self-fund. In a radio show, he once proclaimed that people in nursing homes shouldn't be allowed to vote because you're going to die soon and don't have any real skin in the game. He has also been sued by the family of a former resident of a nursing home his bank has owned for years. The suit alleges that elder abuse and negligence led to the resident's death. All this is going to go over big with seniors and their families. Hovde has also attacked single mothers for destroying the family unit. But he isn't only against poor people. He has attacked George Soros and the Rothschild family in ways that can be considered antisemitic.
  

The Nevada Senate race is slightly different. There is a Republican primary between Army veteran Sam Brown (who also has no political experience) and Jeff Gunter, a wealthy doctor who was Trump's ambassador to Iceland. He's been running ads claiming he is 110% pro-Trump. He is hoping for Trump's endorsement. If he gets it and wins the nomination, he will be another candidate with a quality problem. (V)