ICYMI: How problematic is the Senate GOP’s ‘carpetbagger’ problem? [MSNBC]

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT 

MSNBC: How problematic is the Senate GOP’s ‘carpetbagger’ problem?
By Steve Benen
February 21, 2024

• There’s a common thread tying together several Republican U.S. Senate candidates this year: They have suspect ties to the states they’re running in.

• The Wisconsin Democratic Party criticized Hovde within moments of his launch, dubbing him as “California Hovde,” because he owns a $7 million property in Laguna Beach and has lived in the state on-and-off since 2012.

• The pushback comes nearly a year after The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published a column with a memorable headline: “Eric Hovde may run for Senate in Wisconsin, but he’s living large in Laguna Beach, California.” The same piece added, “Hovde was named by the Orange County Business Journal as one of its 500 most influential people in Orange County in 2020.”
  
  
• Stepping back, it’s hard not to notice the familiarity of the circumstances.

• In Pennsylvania, Republican Senate hopeful David McCormick has been credibly accused of living in Connecticut.
  
  
• In Montana, Democrats have been eager to remind locals that Republican Senate hopeful Tim Sheehy is relatively new to the state, having moved there from Minnesota.
  
  
• In Nevada, Democrats have been eager to remind locals that Republican Senate hopeful Sam Brown ran for office in Texas.
  
  
• In Michigan, Republican Senate hopeful Mike Rogers lived in Michigan, then moved to Florida, then moved back for the campaign.
  
  
• In early January, The Washington Post reported that Christie Roberts, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said she was watching the “amount of GOP Senate candidates who are just rich guys with tenuous connections to the states they are running in.”

• Evidently, she has plenty of candidates to choose from.

• Politico, looking ahead to the 2024 cycle, wrote last year, “A number of 2024 Senate candidates in competitive races have a carpetbagger problem,” and there’s ample evidence to bolster the point.

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