ICYMI: Money isn’t enough to smooth the path for Republican candidates hoping to retake the Senate [Associated Press]

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Associated Press: Money isn’t enough to smooth the path for Republican candidates hoping to retake the Senate
By Thomas Beaumont and Brian Slodysko
May 6, 2024

• Frustrated by the seemingly endless cash flowing to Democrats, Republicans aiming to retake the Senate have rallied around candidates with plenty of their own money.

• But it also risks elevating untested candidates who might not be prepared for the scrutiny often associated with fiercely contested Senate campaigns.

• In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, GOP Senate candidates are being pressed on whether they live in the state. In Montana, the party’s Senate candidate recently admitted lying about the circumstances of a gunshot wound he sustained. And in Ohio, the Republican contender pitched himself as financially independent but now may be turning to donors for help repaying loans he made to his campaign.

• Complications are surfacing.

• Residency Questions 

• In Wisconsin, businessman and real estate mogul Eric Hovde owns a luxury home in California and voted absentee from the Golden State in 2023 and 2024.

• Dave McCormick, the Republican Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, has faced similar questions. He lived and worked in Connecticut, only buying a home in Pittsburgh before his unsuccessful try for the Senate in 2022.

• Biographical Questions 

• In Montana, Tim Sheehy acknowledged that he lied to a Glacier National Park ranger on a police report in 2015. He told the ranger he was wounded when his personal handgun discharged accidentally, but he has since said he was wounded in Afghanistan in 2012.

• Sheehy’s conflicting accounts, first reported by The Washington Post, could undermine the potentially compelling profile of a combat veteran.

• In Ohio, meanwhile, anxiety about Bernie Moreno was building among Republicans well before he won the party’s Senate nomination last month.

• Paying Off Debt

• Moreno, a former car dealership owner, had a net worth as high as $168 million last year. That’s what made the language in an invitation to a recent high-dollar fundraiser in Cleveland all the more notable.

• The invitation, obtained by the AP, stated that the first $3,300 of each contribution would be used for “debt retirement, until such debt is extinguished,” and before raising money for his general election contest.

• What’s unusual in Moreno’s case is that he is the only person identified on his most recent campaign finance disclosure who would benefit from retiring the campaign’s debt. The records show he lent his campaign $4.5 million in personal and bank loans, which means that the bank would also benefit by receiving interest payments.

• Ozzie Palomo, a Connecticut-based Republican fundraiser who was part of former 2024 GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s finance committee, called the priority of retiring debt “a bit of an unorthodox approach” that could be a turn-off for donors. “You invest in a campaign in hopes of them winning,” Palomo said. “Not in hopes of paying off someone else’s debt.”

See also: MSNBC: In Senate races, GOP haunted anew with ‘candidate quality’ issues; Roll Call: “Republican candidates have been feeling the heat in the media.”

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