Senate Democrats think they’ve found a major weakness in five battleground races that will decide control of the Senate: Out-of-state carpetbaggers.
Republicans…have recruited wealthy candidates in Wisconsin, Montana, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada. These wealthy candidates often own multiple homes, multiple businesses and the means to live wherever they’d like — including out of state. And Democrats are ready to pounce.
The first campaign ad released last week by Senate Majority PAC, aligned with Senate Democrats, calls Republican challenger Eric Hovde “pure California.” “On Wisconsin’s side? Don’t bank on it,” the narrator says of Hovde, a Wisconsin real estate developer and California bank owner who runs H Bancorp and owns a $7 million home in Laguna Beach.
For much of his adult life, he’s lived outside of the state. The day after he announced his candidacy, the Wisconsin Democratic Party bought a Cameo message from actors on “The Real Housewives of Orange County” wishing their “neighbor” good luck in his new job.
Hovde has faced these attacks before. He moved back to the state in 2011 for his first Senate run and was attacked by his Republican primary challengers for being an out-of-stater.
Democrats plan to hammer the issue in Pennsylvania and Montana, too. In Montana: Republican Tim Sheehy, who is running against third-generation dirt farmer Sen. Jon Tester…is facing attacks from Democrats that he is one of the wealthy out-of-staters moving to Montana, creating congestion and driving up property costs.
“Wealthy outsiders are changing our state, driving up the cost of housing,” a sixth-generation Montana rancher says in a Tester ad.
The Democratic Party refers to Republican Dave McCormick as “Connecticut resident Dave McCormick.” He is running against Sen. Bob Casey, whose family has a long history in Pennsylvania.
[McCormick] spends a lot of time at his home in Connecticut, where he ran the hedge fund company Bridgewater Associates…and regularly flies a private jet service from Connecticut to Pennsylvania, where he has been campaigning, including one on Friday.
Sam Brown is Republicans’ preferred candidate to run against Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen. He ran for a U.S. House seat in Texas in 2014. Club for Growth Action aired an ad in Brown’s primary saying, “It will literally take an act of God to get me out of Texas.”
Democrats say his elections in two states show that he’s a career politician who doesn’t understand Nevada.
Accusing candidates of carpetbagging is an attack as old as time. And it’s often effective.
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