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Oct 9, 2026

  • Press Release
  • DSCC FRIDAY TAKEAWAYS: A Twister for Senate Republicans, Paxton’s Record Label, ‘Nuff Sayed, Let Them Eat Road Salt, and Hinsane Savings Advice

    DSCC FRIDAY TAKEAWAYS: A Twister for Senate Republicans, Paxton’s Record Label, ‘Nuff Sayed, Let Them Eat Road Salt, and Hinsane Savings Advice

    TGIF. Welcome back to Friday Takeaways from the DSCC – your weekly update from the DSCC Press Team on what you need to know across the Senate battlegrounds. There are 2️⃣5️⃣ days until the midterms. 📲 DROP US A LINE: [email protected].

    🌪️ A TWISTER FOR SENATE REPUBLICANS: With under four weeks until the midterms, “the Senate map is shifting further in Democrats’ favor – and with it, their odds of winning back the majority.” This week, race raters at the Cook Political Report shifted three Senate races towards Democrats, including Kansas, where Trump won by 16 points. Two years ago, Cook called Senate Democrats’ quest to retake the majority “herculean.” Now, they project Democrats will win up to 6 seats – “squarely within the range of the four seats [Democrats] need to net for a majority.”

    🍊 WE’RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE: A new report from MS NOW highlights how GOP Senate candidates’ million-dollar homes in the Sunshine State have become a “liability” on the campaign trail, with Mike Rogers, Michele Tafoya, Roger Marshall, and Ken Paxton facing criticism for their “Florida connection,” and being labeled “out of touch” “carpetbagger[s].” 

    🤐 PAXTON’S RECORD LABEL: Ken Paxton and his “dumpster fire” campaign fell further into shambles after being rocked by not one… not two… not three… not four… BUT FIVE leaked audio recordings where he was caught trashing Trump, saying he has no control over his campaign that has been taken over by D.C. insiders, blaming Trump’s Iran war (which he publicly backed) for the rising gas prices hurting his campaign, threatening to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and bemoaning the fact that incumbent Senator John Cornyn has refused to help him out… 

    • 📼 RECORDING RUNDOWN: There have been so many leaked audio recordings that it may be hard to keep track…
      • 🎙️ TAPE 1: TRASHING TRUMP – First, in stunning leaked audio reported by the New York Times, Paxton was caught trashing President Trump to D.C. lobbyists, saying his GOP midterm convention hurt his campaign… Texans know that Paxton is a cheater who only serves his own corrupt self-interests… and now Trump gets to experience it firsthand.

      • 🎙️ TAPE 2: “ALL COMING FROM DC” – Then, POLITICO reported that Paxton told the same lobbyists that his campaign is “all coming from DC,” not Texas, and that he isn’t making the decisions, saying: “I don’t control message or what we’re doing […] I don’t have ability to change anything.”

      • 🎙️ TAPE 3: BLAMING THE WAR – The next day, Paxton’s campaign continued to fall apart after Axios obtained a recording of Paxton admitting behind closed doors, when asked what is dragging his campaign, that it’s “the war, it’s gas prices, it’s diesel” and that high costs are “why we’re having a hard time with numbers.”

      • 🎙️ TAPE 4: “SUCK IT UP” – On Thursday, the Texas Tribune released more leaked audio – this time of Paxton literally laughing with wealthy D.C. lobbyists about bigger tax breaks and threatening to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, saying: “We have to suck it up.”

      • 🎙️ TAPE 5: “HE WANTS ME TO LOSE” – And on Friday, CNN reported that Ken Paxton complained that outgoing Sen. John Cornyn “wants me to lose” and is “clearly not helping” – the latest in Paxton’s complaints about how everyone is responsible for his flailing campaign…. except for him.

    • 🐕 WHEN YOU RUN WITH THE BIG DOGS… Taken together, these recordings paint a stunning picture of a toxic candidate making “absolutely astronomically stupid” mistakes and creating “‘self-inflicted’ scandals, which have made him ‘toxic’ with key voting blocs in the deep red state.” MAGA is reportedly panicking over Paxton, with a Texas GOP strategist calling his campaign “a slow-moving car crash” – and as Cornyn put it, “Got to be more careful when you run with the big dogs.”
    • 😣 ASTRONOMICALLY BAD TO ASTRONOMICALLY WORSE: Ken’s bad week went from bad to worse after the New York Times released a bombshell report that included a never-before-reported deposition of Ken Paxton being grilled by federal authorities for using “his connections within the State Legislature to amass his wealth,” which eventually led to him being indicted. 
    • 🧠 SELECTIVE MEMORY: Throughout the testimony, Paxton used phrases like “I don’t remember” over 200 times, including saying he lost a $200,000 stock certificate because “I don’t always keep track of this kind of stuff” and that all his taxes were prepared by his soon to be ex-wife… Paxton even admitted to delegating personal investment pitches to his publicly-paid legislative staff. Since this testimony, Paxton’s wealth has only grown, now with a net worth of up to $27 million while on a government salary. 
    • ⛳ TEE TIME ON THE TAXPAYERS’ DIME: Meanwhile, Paxton has been traveling to luxury destinations across the globe and other states where he has his 15 properties, costing taxpayers millions. According to a bombshell new investigation by the Texas Tribune and ProPublica, Paxton has taken nearly 1,000 trips with a state-funded security detail, rarely ever disclosing a stated business purpose. In total, Paxton has cost Texas taxpayers a whopping $3.3 million for his travel ranging from vacations to golf trips, which ethics experts called a clear “misuse of public funds.” 

    🧂 LET THEM EAT ROAD SALT: Up in Maine, in her first debate with Democratic Senate nominee Troy Jackson, Susan Collins was forced to defend her toxic, price-spiking record that includes having voted with Trump 96% of the time, her “key” and “pivotal” vote to advance the Republican plan that gutted Medicaid and ripped health insurance away from Mainers, her decisive vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and her role as a “willing participant” and the “most important patron” at the center of a “vile, outright bribery pay-for-play” corruption scheme. Bon appétit, Mainers!

    🎤 ‘NUFF SAYED: Abdul El-Sayed dominated this week’s U.S. Senate debate in Michigan – putting Mike Rogers on the defensive over his record of corruption, deep ties to corporate special interests, and full-throated support for Trump policies that are crushing Michiganders with higher costs on everything from gas to groceries to health care.

    • 🕚 ROGERS’ ELEVENTH-HOUR EPIPHANY: After shamelessly and unsuccessfully attempting to walk back his unpopular stance on the Iran war, Mike Rogers, in a transparently obvious and desperate eleventh-hour election pivot, announced this week that he’s finally realized “prices are too high” because of Trump’s reckless tariffs… even though he has wholeheartedly supported them his entire campaign, repeatedly dismissed concerns about tariff price hikes, defended Trump’s trade war with Canada as recently as last month, and vowed to give Trump even greater power to “unilaterally impose tariffs” against U.S. trading partners.  
    • 🤖 ERROR 404: BENEFITS NOT FOUND: Meanwhile, in newly leaked audio reported by MeidasTouch News, Rogers suggested he wants to let A.I. determine who should receive Social Security benefits, a move that could allow the Trump administration to start denying payments to vulnerable older Americans. Rogers “has a history of fighting to privatize Social Security,” has said the program was “not the best system for retirement,” and has also “praised DOGE cuts to the Social Security Administration.”
    • 💊 BIG PHARMA’S CHAMPION: In a report by The Michigan Independent, it came to light that Rogers’ campaign is being “dogged” by his opioid record on the campaign trail, with critics pointing out how he pushed dangerous legislation that “encouraged broader access to opioids but failed to regulate its use” at the peak of the opioid epidemic while his campaigns and political committees accepted more than $1 million from Big Pharma. 
    • 🏠 RENT’S DUE: Rogers’ investments of up to $250,000 in Blackstone’s private real estate fund were in the spotlight this week – just months after it was revealed executives planned to boost shareholder returns by “ramping up evictions and raising rents” for tenants in affordable and student housing. While Rogers profits from evicting and raising rents on students, Blackstone has used the same tactics in Michigan. Spartans and Wolverines, take note…

    🧑‍⚖️ THE TRIAL OF MIKE COLLINS: In the first general election U.S. Senate Debate in Georgia, Senator Jon Ossoff went on offense, slamming GOP U.S. Senate nominee Mike Collins’ abysmal record as a notorious bigot and Trump puppet who backed Trump’s reckless war and voted to make gas, groceries, and health care more expensive. Verdict due November 3rd.

    • 🚩 HATE IN THE RANKS: Meanwhile, Collins was hit with yet another scandal as it becomes clearer and clearer that he is surrounded at work, at home, and now at his campaign by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Klan associates… According to new reporting from the Daily Beast, Collins elevated “campaign-appointed leaders” with leadership roles in “a far-right group founded by […] a former Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi National Alliance leader.” The group has been “classified as a white nationalist hate group.”
    • 🗓️ CHECK BACK NOVEMBER 5TH: And at a recent campaign stop in Dawsonville, Collins was caught claiming to a voter that gas prices are coming down “fast” – claiming that the price of gas will come down “November 5th” – days after the election… Pinky promise?
      • COLLINS: […] I just saw a report yesterday about how they got more oil through the Strait of Hormuz last month than they’ve ever gotten through. So all of that’s open, but there’s – it’s coming down. Even with the oil coming out of Venezuela, there’s just so many dynamics playing. But I can assure you—
      • ATTENDEE: When do you think we’re going to see it really make some progress?
      • COLLINS: November 5th.
      • ATTENDEE: After the election?
      • COLLINS: Oh yeah, it’s a – it’s a politics, it’s political!
      • ATTENDEE: So regardless of the outcome?
      • COLLINS: […] It’s coming down fast.
    • 📯 HONK IF YOU’RE PAYING MORE FOR DIESEL: Georgians aren’t buying it… A group of Georgia truckers publicly challenged Collins to stand up to Trump and demand an end to the war in Iran, which is causing prices to skyrocket across the country. Georgians have paid an extra $1.4 billion for gas than they normally would have since the start of the war in Iran, with each household having spent roughly $352 more on gas than they would otherwise have… On the campaign trail, Collins has said that Trump is doing a “fantastic job” on the war, which he has voted multiple times to continue.

    💰 HINSANE SAVINGS ADVICE: GOP Senate candidate Ashley Hinson spent the first Iowa Senate debate lecturing Iowans about their saving habits while they struggle under her toxic, price-spiking agenda. As Iowa’s “dismal economic outlook” creates “an opening for a Turek victory,” Hinson “fiercely defended” her vote to kick at least 110,000 Iowans off health care and rip away $9 billion in Medicaid funding from her state. She also “defended the tariffs” she has repeatedly voted to uphold while they “battered” Iowa’s agricultural economy, was “hammered” for voting seven times to continue the price-spiking war in Iran, and was forced to answer for increasing her net worth “15x since coming to Congress.” Easy to lecture Iowans about saving when you’ve grown your net worth 15x in Congress.

    • 📉 LISTED AS A LIABILITY: This comes after a new dispatch from CNN’s Jeff Zeleny detailed Hinson’s attempts to mislead Iowa voters and whitewash her record of voting seven times to continue the price-spiking war in Iran while telling angry Iowans that she is seeking to end it… Despite admitting in private that the Iran war has become a “political liability,” Hinson, unlike “two of her fellow Iowa Republicans in Congress,” has continually rubber-stamped it amid “record diesel prices,” “surg[ing]” gas costs, fertilizer prices “near peak levels,” and inflation in Iowa higher than the national average – all while publicly downplaying the toll on Iowa families. 
    • 📈 RETURN ON INVESTMENT: Don’t forget… Hinson has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars from Big Oil companies that have seen record profits up to $14 billion from the Iran war.

    • 🏧 INSUFFICIENT ANSWERS: Now, Hinson is desperately avoiding questions from local press across Iowa as her floundering “team has grown increasingly wary of the tight race” and has begun to “panic” now that it’s becoming clear Iowa voters are ready to reject her this November…
      • KTTC: Hinson was not available for an interview with KTTC on Thursday.
      • WHO: Despite her team calling the news conference this morning, Hinson did not show up.
      • KCRG: TV9 asked Hinson’s team for an interview after the roundtable to ask about those Medicaid concerns. Her team declined the interview request.

    ⚖️ MARSHALL LAW: A shocking new joint investigation by the Kansas Reflector and MS NOW exposed rank corruption within the U.S. Senate office of floundering GOP Sen. Roger Marshall, raising “questions about the line between Marshall’s campaign and his taxpayer-funded Senate office.” Who needs donors when you can just charge the taxpayer!

    ❌ PROBLEMATIC PATTERN: Jon Husted’s campaign was rocked again this week by new allegations that another campaign chair was investigated for sexual abuse of a minor… According to TiffinOhio, Husted “promoted Gary Click as campaign chair after child sex abuse investigation went public”…  

    • 👀 YOU KNOW HOW THIS LOOKS, RIGHT…? For anyone who hasn’t been following along, this is the latest example of Husted surrounding himself with deeply disturbing figures in Ohio politics:
      • Husted’s campaign chair in Ohio’s largest county served jail time after committing sexual misconduct with a minor. Husted enlisted Andrew Havas as a chair despite his 2009 guilty plea to assaulting a minor being public record.
      • Husted is still proudly touting the endorsement of State Representative Rodney Creech, who has been accused of sexual misconduct involving a minor relative.
      • Husted also took more than $116,000 from Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirator Les Wexner before voting against releasing the Epstein files.
    • 💻 DOES NOT COMPUTE: At a rally in Vandalia this week, Husted lived up to his name as “the face of data centers” in Ohio, even posing for a picture with an attendee holding a sign that praises them… 


    🛬 OUT OF STATE AND OUT OF TOUCH:
    This week in Fairbanks, Alaska, leaders slammed Dan Sullivan for his self-serving, Alaska-last agenda, while across town Sullivan was calling up his fellow Ohioan – J.D. Vance – to come bail him out… 

    • 🗣️Here’s what they had to say:
      • President of the National Education Association of Alaska Laura Capelle: “Senator Sullivan has repeatedly backed policies and wars that trigger prolonged fuel prices. Every time fuel prices surge, it hits rural Alaska hard.”
      • IBEW Local 1547 Assistant Business Manager Tim Brennan: “I believe Alaska deserves a senator who puts the interests of Alaskans and Alaska workers first. I see the members of the IBEW suffer the consequences of this firsthand. Our members are dealing with the rising costs of simply living here in the Interior of Alaska.”
      • Alaska Interior Democrats Chair Stuart Relay: “We’re paying record-high costs here in Fairbanks for fuel, for food, for housing. Why would that matter to Senator Sullivan who has tripled his net worth since being elected to the U.S. Senate and has a record of supporting his stock portfolio over Alaskans?”


    🤥 NOT FOOLING ANYONE…
    Donald Trump’s handpicked U.S. Senate candidate John Sununu tried to rewrite his pro-Trump record on CNN’s Inside Politics, but the reality is Sununu said he would “absolutely” campaign with Trump, has backed Trump’s war with Iran, and believes the U.S. Senate race is “important to President Trump’s agenda.” 

    • 👎 TRUMP’S IN THE DUMPS: Trump’s record-low approval rating and incredibly unpopular war with Iran are dragging Sununu down while the vast majority of Granite Staters have said they’re paying more for gas and groceries than just a year ago.
    • Here are the facts: 
      • 🤔 CLAIM: Sununu claimed he doesn’t need anyone to campaign with him in New Hampshire. 
      • ❌ RECORD: Sununu said he would “absolutely” campaign with Trump and has already campaigned alongside RNC Chair Joe Gruters and out-of-state Senators John Kennedy and Tom Cotton. 
      • 🤔 CLAIM: Sununu claims he has said from the very beginning, “it was a mistake to go in” to Iran. 
      • ❌ RECORD: Sununu has backed Trump’s war of choice with Iran for months, including saying it has “achieved success.”
    • 🛢️ CRUDE AWAKENING: Meanwhile, the Daily Beast released a new report this week detailing how Sununu “rushed to praise” Trump’s military action in Venezuela while owning tens of thousands of dollars of stock in Big Oil companies, such as Exxon Mobil and Shell, “which did nicely out of” Trump’s operation… 

    🎰 DOUBLE DOWN WHATLEY: DC insider Michael Whatley “doubled down” on his support for the conflict in Iran. As the Iran War drives up fuel costs for North Carolina families, farmers, and truckers, Whatley’s Big Oil and defense industry stocks are spiking by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Whatley has cheered on the war since day one, and his support has never wavered.

    • 📈 STOCK SPIKES: Perhaps he is doubling down because he has purchased additional stock in the defense industry as the stock value spikes from the war? Reporting revealed that Whatley bought additional stock in Park Aerospace, a defense contractor that supplies materials for Patriot missiles, according to his PFD. Whatley has profited by up to hundreds of thousands of dollars from his defense and oil stock, all while he continues to cheer on the Iran War. 
    • 🙈 WHERE IS WHATLEY? Meanwhile, Whatley spent the last week “rethink[ing] strategy” as he dodged questions about taking the maximum donation from the Chemours Company PAC after the company dumped PFAS in Eastern North Carolina for decades. Whatley has repeatedly refused to answer questions about whether Chemours had adequately addressed the contamination or the EPA’s decision to roll back regulations limiting PFAS in drinking water.

    📍 IN THE STATES: 

    🤳 TWEETS OF THE WEEK:


    Maeve Coyle
    @maevemcoyle 

    Maddy McDaniel
    @maddymcdaniel14

    Monica Robinson
    @mo_robz

    Tommy Garcia
    @Tommy_D_Garcia

    Joe Bush
    @TheJoeBush

    Jackson Buttler
    @jackson_buttler

    Suhani Patel
    @suhaniiipatel

    📲 DROP US A LINE: [email protected]

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