ICYMI: Democrats attack Senate GOP’s wealthy “carpetbagger” candidates [Axios]

Axios: Democrats attack Senate GOP’s wealthy “carpetbagger” candidates
By Stef W. Knight and Stephen Neukam
March 10, 2024

• Several top GOP candidates for Senate share a vulnerability Democrats are itching to exploit — million-dollar homes outside of the states they’re running in.
  
  
• Democrats are…painting Republican challengers as out-of-touch out-of-towners.

• “Carpetbagger” attacks can be potent. Republican Mehmet Oz’s roots in New Jersey were a clear vulnerability for him in Pennsylvania last cycle.

• Democrats also hope to use the wealth of Republican candidates to convey the message that the GOP is the party of millionaires — not the middle class.

• Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) has two homes — one in Michigan, where he’s running for Senate, and one in Florida, where he’s lived and even voted from after retiring from the House in 2014.
  
  
• Republican Pennsylvania candidate Dave McCormick, a hedge fund millionaire, has come under scrutiny for his Connecticut residence.
  
  
• Republican Eric Hovde is running for Senate in Wisconsin but owns a bank in Utah and a multimillion-dollar home in California.

• Tim Sheehy, who’s hoping to oust Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), is the multimillionaire CEO of an aerospace company that gets money from federal government contracts. Sheehy has lived in Montana for the past decade but grew up in Minnesota.

• Bernie Moreno, running in Ohio, would become one of the wealthiest senators if elected, with a net worth estimated to be between $25 million and $106 million. He owns stakes in multiple properties from Costa Rica to New York City to the Florida Keys.

• “Senate Republicans’ roster of recruits is full of carpetbaggers who don’t know the first thing about the states they’re running in and candidates who bring enough financial scandals and baggage to fill a bank vault,” Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesperson Tommy Garcia said in a statement.

###