ROUNDUP: In Battleground Debates, Weak GOP Senate Candidates Unable to Escape Their Records of Corruption, Extremism, and Rubber-Stamping Toxic Agenda

CNN: “Tuesday’s Senate debates in Maine, Georgia and Iowa offered a revealing look at how Republicans are navigating a difficult political environment in the closing weeks before the midterm elections, with control of the narrowly divided Senate at stake”

Across the Senate map last night, Democrats put their weak, flawed GOP opponents “on the defensive” and held them to account for their corruption and self-enrichment, their “close ties” to white nationalists, and their refusal to stand up to the Trump administration’s reckless tariffs and price-spiking war in Iran – underscoring just some of the “challenges facing Republicans as they try to hold onto their Senate majority.”

Amid a “difficult political environment” and “the president’s plummeting popularity,” GOP Senate candidates shamelessly and desperately scrambled to paper over their records as loyal foot soldiers for the Trump administration:

• In Iowa, Josh Turek slammed hypocritical Ashley Hinson – who has said she is running to be Trump’s “top ally” in the U.S. Senate – for her self-enrichment in DC, her openness to raising the retirement age, and her support for the administration’s tariffs and the Iran war. Asked directly if she would vote to end the war in Iran, Hinson said no.
• In Georgia, notorious bigot and MAGA extremist Mike Collins claimed that diesel prices, which are at a record high, are “coming down,” and flatly refused to answer for the open federal investigation into himself and his office by the bipartisan House Ethics Committee for misusing taxpayer funds or to denounce his connections to neo-Nazi propaganda.
• And in Maine, Troy Jackson held Susan Collins – a “reliable vote” who “never let the Republicans down” – to account for her own admission that there aren’t enough votes in the U.S. Senate to end the Iran war – making the point that it’s time for Democrats to control the chamber – for voting to confirm all of Trump’s pro-trade war nominees, and for handing over $70 billion to ICE without guardrails or accountability. 

See for yourself:

IN GEORGIA

Jewish Insider: Rep. Mike Collins ducks question about white nationalist influencer son-in-law at Senate debate

• Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) on Tuesday dodged a question about his son-in-law, a white nationalist influencer who has apparently recorded and posted antisemitic and white nationalist videos while living on Collins’ property, at the second Georgia Senate debate.
  
• Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) had hammered Collins on the issue, and Collins’ other ties to extremist figures including former congressional staff, at a previous debate last week, accusing Collins of hiring “half of the Third Reich.” 
• “These young people feel like they’ve been forgotten, and they’re just lashing out” [said Collins].
• Ossoff responded by pressing Collins to commit to ensuring that no more neo-Nazi propaganda would be shared from his home before the election. 
• “Mike, if any of those folks were based in my house, then I’d understand you’d ask me to take responsibility for them,” Ossoff shot back. “What I asked you, Mike, was can you commit for just three weeks to stop the production of neo-Nazi propaganda from your home? We all know what’s happening. Why can’t you stop it? Why won’t you commit right now to stop it?”
• Collins also defended his support for the Iran war, praising the administration for having the “leadership” to send in U.S. forces to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

IN IOWA

The Hill: Hinson, Turek tangle in fierce final Iowa Senate debate

• Rep. Ashley Hinson (R) and state Rep. Josh Turek (D) squared off in a heated second and final debate for the open Iowa Senate seat on Tuesday.  
• The pair, who clashed in their first debate last week, are locked in a toss-up race for outgoing Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R) seat in the upper chamber. Election forecasters have moved the race in the ruby red state in Democrats’ favor, as Republicans face tough political headwind this cycle.
• Turek […] expressed opposition to the president’s deal with Moscow but quickly hammered the House Republican’s votes against a war powers resolution to rein in the war in Iran.  
• “We are in this situation because of this unnecessary war in Iran that Ashley Hinson voted in favor of continuing seven times,” he said. “This has led to gas prices going up in Iowa more than almost any other state.”  
• Tuesday’s debate took a testy turn as attention shifted to the candidates’ personal finances and voting records.  
• “We have a corruption crisis that’s leading to an affordability crisis because we’re sending people like Ashley Hinson up to D.C. not to fight for the people of Iowa but to go up there and to make themselves more wealthy and to look out for the billionaires,” Turek said Tuesday.  
• Attack ads opposing Hinson have focused on her personal wealth, […]
• Turek has zeroed in on her growing wealth in Congress, particularly her husband’s 2021 sale of his insurance agency to a private equity company.  
• Hinson said Tuesday that she doesn’t own any publicly traded stocks, which is reflected in her personal financial disclosure filed in August, though she and her husband do report a list of mutual funds and ETFs.   
• Hinson’s personal financial disclosure report shows that her spouse, Matt Arenholz, owns privately held stock from High Street Insurance Partners valued between $1 million and $5 million. The firm bought out the insurance company that Arenholz co-owned, according to PolitiFact. He received part of the sale.  

IN MAINE

Maine Morning Star: Three takeaways from the latest Senate debate between Collins and Jackson

• During their second to last debate Tuesday night, incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins and Democratic nominee Troy Jackson continued to make the case that their approach to a Donald Trump presidency would be best for Maine. 
• The candidates had hammered this point in the first debate, when they blamed each other for Mainers’ struggles, and in the second, when they disagreed over how to address high energy costs. Discussion of tariffs, among several issues, again brought this fundamental disagreement into focus Tuesday night. 
• After Jackson took aim at Collins for her campaign being financially supported by nearly 100 billionaires and their spouses […]
• “She didn’t deny that 90 billionaires are funding her,” Jackson added. 
• Tuesday’s debate put an even finer point on the candidates’ different approaches to legislating under Trump. 
• Jackson described Mainers’ choice as one between “a senator who helps Donald Trump hurt Maine, then tells us how concerned she is, or somebody will stand up against him before another family in Maine has to pay the price,” referring to the fatal U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement shooting of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford three months ago. 
• How Collins has used her power also came up during debate about the president’s tariffs, when she mentioned that she got concrete, pulp and road salt removed from the tariff list. 
• Trump had openly promised to impose sweeping tariffs before he took office, and Jackson said, “When they did it, she acts like she’s surprised: ‘I’ll send a letter.’ That is not how you’re supposed to be using your power as the most powerful U.S. senator chair of appropriations.”
• But Jackson called that work “a Band-Aid for a real big problem with a narcissist in the White House that is going to do whatever he wants.”