ICYMI: Epidemic of Bozo Behavior Strikes Republican Senate Candidates [Slate]

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Slate: Epidemic of Bozo Behavior Strikes Republican Senate Candidates 
By Ben Mathis-Lilley
April 10, 2024

Key Points:

• This was the one thing Mitch McConnell didn’t want to happen.

• The story of 2022’s Senate races was that Republicans—at Donald Trump’s urging—botched several eminently winnable races by nominating various goofballs (Herschel Walker in Georgia), weirdos (Blake Masters in Arizona), and Dr. Oz (Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania). In a word, the GOP had a bozo problem.

• In the past week, both Wisconsin’s Hovde and Montana’s Sheehy have gotten involved in some real bozo-like situations.

• First, Sheehy. On Saturday, the Washington Post published a report about a suddenly controversial bullet in the candidate’s right arm. Sheehy had said while campaigning that the bullet is there because he was shot during combat in Afghanistan—but the Post found that he told a ranger at Glacier National Park in October 2015 that he’d been hit in the arm by a round from his own handgun when it fell to the ground.

• What Sheehy is saying now, though, is that the story he told the ranger was actually a lie. 

• There are a few problems with Sheehy’s current story:

• Sheehy has not provided any witnesses to his alleged 2015 fall while hiking, released medical records related to the incident, or given permission to the personnel who treated him at the time to discuss their recollections of his injury.

• Rolling Stone reported in March, meanwhile, that Hovde (the Wisconsin candidate) said in 2017 that if it were up to him, it would be illegal to sell alcohol commercially. 

• This, though: “NEW AUDIO: Wisconsin GOP Senate candidate Eric Hovde casts doubt on nursing home residents being able to vote: ‘Well, if you’re in a nursing home, you only have a five, six-month life expectancy. Almost nobody in a nursing home is in a point to vote.’

• This conflation of physical frailty and mental incompetence might not endear Hovde to his state’s aging population. 

• He and Sheehy are also both relative unknowns in their states who are running against longtime incumbents (Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin and Montana’s Jon Tester). Both are trailing in the latest polls. 

See also: The Washington Post: Could Republicans blow it with bad candidates — again?;  Vanity Fair: “Undisciplined,” “Wealthy Carpetbaggers” and “Weaker General Election Candidate[s]” Could Cost Senate Republicans; The Washington Post: The GOP shouldn’t count on retaking the Senate. Remember 2010 and 2022.

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