GOP Senators Disappear Trump From 2020 Ads… But Still Won’t Stand Up To Him

Vulnerable Senate Republicans Worry About Trump’s Poll Numbers While Refusing To Hold Him Accountable

GOP senators and candidates facing tough elections are showing more signs that they are increasingly worried about President Trump’s plummeting poll numbers and widespread criticism of his response to the coronavirus pandemic and protests against racial injustice, but refuse to hold Trump accountable for his failed leadership. A new review by The Daily Beast of TV ads from vulnerable Republican incumbents found a “larger trend” that Trump has “all but disappeared” from their campaign messages in paid advertising. 

Republicans including Senator Thom Tillis, Senator Cory Gardner, Senator Susan Collins, Senator Martha McSally, and failed politician John James are looking to avoid reminding voters of their support for Trump’s agenda as the president tanks in the polls in their respective states. Senate Republicans have been growing “nervous” about Trump’s “weakened standing” hurting their own electoral prospects in November as the Senate map has shifted in Democrats’ direction.

But despite these Republicans’ recent attempts to distance themselves from Trump, the NRSC already made it clear that “there is no daylight” between Senate Republicans and the White House. Republican senators are also under strict instructions from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell not to “abandon Trump” to try to save their own campaigns.

The Daily Beast: GOP Senators Disappear Trump From 2020 Ads

By Sam Stein and Lachlan Markay

Key Points:

• Four months ago, Sen. Thom Tillis put out an ad defending President Donald Trump from impeachment, boasting about the White House’s trade deals, and triumphantly noting that the president would be on the ballot in November.

• This past week, references to the president were entirely absent from the vulnerable North Carolina Republican’s latest campaign spot. In fact, the ad centered on his state’s economic pain at the precise moment that Trump’s re-election campaign was trying to sell a nascent economic recovery that it dubbed the “Great American Comeback.”

• Tillis’ change in tone underscores a much larger trend that’s taking place among the Senate’s most vulnerable Republican members. While many are happy to tout Trump in email and social media fundraising appeals, the president has all but disappeared from the ads they’re airing in their home states. 

• The Daily Beast reviewed 15 publicly available ad spots created since March by Republican Senate campaigns in the competitive states of North Carolina, Maine, Colorado, Arizona, and Montana. Fourteen of them made no mention of Trump. The only one that did, an ad from Tillis’ campaign in late April, simply mentioned that he’d been appointed to a White House coronavirus task force.

• In Colorado, Sen. Cory Gardner unveiled his first TV ad of the cycle just last month highlighting his work securing coronavirus aid for his state. The 30-second spot didn’t mention Trump. But it did plug Gardner’s collaboration with Jared Polis, Colorado’s Democratic governor.

• Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has likewise sought to burnish her bipartisan credentials. One recent TV ad from her campaign featured shots of Collins alongside Democratic colleagues including Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. But Trump was nowhere to be found in that spot, or any other her campaign has aired over the last couple months.

• That’s a tactic that a number of vulnerable Senate Republicans have embraced. Sen. Martha McSally’s (R-AZ) first ad of the cycle attacked her opponent, Mark Kelly, over his support for impeachment. Her campaign hasn’t mentioned Trump in any of the five ads uploaded to its YouTube page since late April. Instead, she’s plugged her own work securing coronavirus aid for her state and gone after Kelly over his business ties to China. 

• Michigan Republican John James, who is hoping to unseat Democrat Sen. Gary Peters and has publicly distanced himself from some of Trump’s more outlandish comments, has also seized on the China angle in advertising surrounding the coronavirus. One of his recent ads hit Peters over his lack of attendance at congressional hearings concerning China. It was one of six video ads produced by the James campaign since March on issues including health care, the coronavirus, the police killing of George Floyd last month, and his own personal biography. None of those ads mentioned Donald Trump.

• The ads from Republican Senate candidates this cycle also underscore the difficult task Republican candidates now face on the economic front, in which they appear to be eschewing much of the happy talk coming from the president. 

Read the full story here.

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