GOP Summer of Chaos: Infighting Continues to Escalate in GOP Senate Primaries

This week, Senate Republicans’ “intraparty rifts that defined the 2022 cycle and contributed to the GOP’s loss[es]” were once again on full display in races across the map.

• In Nevada, Jeffrey Ross Gunter, Tony Grady, and Stephanie Phillips entered the already “chao[tic]” “primary brawl,” joining Sam Brown and “Trump ally” Jim Marchant. And a new story in The Messenger highlighted how “Trump looms large” in the primary with Brown facing attacks from Marchant “for not endorsing Trump for president, and for not saying enough about his latest indictment.”
  

• In Ohio, following voters’ rejection of Issue 1 GOP Senate candidate and sitting Secretary of State Frank LaRose was crowned Ohio’s “biggest loser” and continues to face criticism from his primary opponents over his role as the “main architect” and “cheerleader-in-chief for Issue 1” who “made himself the face of the ‘yes’ campaign.” Bernie Moreno’s surrogate Kari Lake attacked LaRose, calling him a “swampy never-Trumper” that “was too busy running for another office to do his job making sure Election Day runs smoothly,” and LaRose’s campaign hit back, accusing “Bernie Big Bucks” of buying Lake’s endorsement. 

• In West Virginia, Alex Mooney called Jim Justice a “reckless spender,” citing recent reporting detailing that Justice “owes more than $3.5 million in failed loan payments to a small West Virginia bank.” Mooney also attacked Justice as “unfit to represent [West Virginians] in Washington” over his list of scandals, including “failing to pay property taxes, bank loans, fines, and his mounting debt.”

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