ICYMI: Trump’s Bid to Shape GOP Faces Test With Voters in May Races [Associated Press]

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Associated Press: Trump’s Bid to Shape GOP Faces Test With Voters in May Races
By Steve Peoples
May 2, 2022

Key Points:

• Republicans are waging deeply personal and expensive attacks against each other that are designed, above all, to win over Trump and his strongest supporters.

• Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who leads the GOP’s effort to retake the Senate, described the month of May as a brutal sorting period likely to be dominated by Republican infighting instead of the policy solutions or contrasts with Democrats he’d like to see.

• “The primaries too often become sort of character assassinations,” Scott said in an interview. “That’s what has happened.”

• Six months before the general election, the Republican candidates in key primaries have already spent mountains of campaign cash attacking against each other as Democrats largely save their resources — and sharpest attacks — for November.

• With early voting already underway in Ohio, a half-dozen Republican candidates in the state’s high-profile Senate primary and their allied outside groups have spent more than $66 million this year combined on television advertising as of last week, according to Democratic officials tracking ad spending. The vast majority of the ads were Republican-on-Republican attacks.

• In Pennsylvania, where Trump-backed Dr. Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund executive David McCormick are locked in a fierce fight for the GOP nomination, the candidates and allied outside groups have spent more than $48 million on television advertising so far.

• In North Carolina, Republican forces have spent more than $15 million on a divisive primary pitting Trump-backed Rep. Ted Budd against former Gov. Pat McCrory.

• Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, who leads the effort for Democrats to keep the Senate majority, said Republicans are essentially creating the Democrats’ general election ads for them. He described the intensity of the Republican infighting in several states as “toxic for the character of the Republican candidates.”

• “They’re trying to compete to see who is the Trumpiest of the Trumpsters,” Peters said. “They’re not talking about issues that people care about.”

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