New Reports Highlight GOP Senate Candidates “Checkered Pasts” and “Damaging Primaries”

A series of new reports highlights how Senate GOP candidates are facing growing scrutiny over their “checkered pasts” while engaging in “fierce and damaging primaries.” 

• The Washington Post reports how “Republican struggles to settle on candidates have left some wondering whether the party will blow its big chance to retake the U.S. Senate,” and how “fierce and damaging primaries in some states risks weakening candidates for a general election.”

• The Washington Examiner details that “Republicans are growing increasingly concerned that candidates in states crucial to winning a majority in the chamber may have baggage that could sink their bids.” 

• And last week, Salon reported on the series of “misogynist” comments from several Republican Senate candidates — many who have been elevated by Trump. 

Read more about Republicans’ candidate struggles:   

The Washington Post: Republicans seek a U.S. Senate takeover in 2022 but struggle over candidates
By Michael Scherer and Mike DeBonis 
November 14, 2021

Key Points:

• Republican struggles to settle on candidates have left some wondering whether the party will blow its big chance to retake the U.S. Senate.

• The party’s front-runner in Pennsylvania, Sean Parnell, is awaiting a judge’s ruling on accusations, which he denies, that he choked his estranged wife and hit one of his children. The top-polling Missouri GOP candidate, former governor Eric Greitens, is trying to downplay his resignation from office after allegedly tying up his mistress in the basement of his marital home. And in Georgia, the party’s likely nominee, Herschel Walker, is bracing for a Democratic advertising assault about his ex-wife’s claims that he threatened her with a gun.

• Competitive primaries elsewhere have pushed the debate in the Republican Party far outside the comfort zone of general election strategists, as the candidates fall over each other to indulge former president Donald Trump’s election conspiracy theories. 

• The challenges have forced Republicans to play defense, often against fellow members of their own party, in multiple states that Biden won in 2020, like Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania. The prospect of fierce and damaging primaries in some states risks weakening candidates for a general election, when Republicans seek to win over voters who previously rejected Trump.

• Some Republican strategists, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to criticize the party’s midterm strategy, said they are concerned about a possible return to dynamics that defined the 2010 Senate elections, when Republicans failed to reclaim the Senate despite a massive win in the House. 

• “We’ve seen in multiple Senate cycles that flawed Republican candidates can become a major problem for their party in Senate races,” said David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “And quite candidly, there isn’t a Glenn Youngkin running in Senate races across the map.”

The Washington Examiner: Senate candidates’ checkered pasts leave some Republicans worried about 2022 prospects
By Kate Scanlon
November 14, 2021

• Republicans are growing increasingly concerned that candidates in states crucial to winning a majority in the chamber may have baggage that could sink their bids.

• Some worry Republican candidates for the Senate in Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Georgia face significant misconduct allegations, which could imperil their efforts to win a general election should they succeed in their primaries, which could cost the party that potential majority.

• Parnell, a military veteran who narrowly lost a race for Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District in Pittsburgh’s suburbs last year, was endorsed in the race by former President Donald Trump. But since that endorsement, he has had his personal life spill into the public eye during divorce and custody proceedings, including allegations of domestic abuse. Christopher Nicholas, a veteran Republican political consultant, told the Washington Examiner “it’s all been downhill” for the candidate after Parnell received Trump’s endorsement.

• Though some Republicans believe Greitens, who is seeking but has not yet received Trump’s endorsement, could prevail, others say the scandal, which cost him the governorship, could also cost him a Senate seat. 

• Walker has been backed by Trump, as well as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell reportedly hesitated to endorse Walker due to allegations that he threatened the lives of two women, including his ex-wife.

• Walker’s primary opponent Gary Black has said the violent episodes should disqualify him as a candidate. 

Salon: 2022 Republican primaries: Who will take gold in the Misogyny Olympics?
By Amanda Marcotte 
November 12, 2021 

• Parnell’s ugly divorce has produced some headline-grabbing testimony from his ex-wife about the their marriage. 

• Parnell is just one of a number of candidates Trump is supporting, who face allegations of violence against women…Trump is enthusiastically backing former football star Herschel Walker in the GOP primary for the Georgia Senate seat currently held by Democrat Raphael Warnock, despite accusations by Walker’s ex-wife of “physically abusive and extremely threatening behavior,” including multiple threats to kill her. 

• Similarly, Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters is reframing a very real problem — wage and income stagnation — in sexist terms, because it keeps families from having “one breadwinner” while  “one parent stay[s] at home with the kids.”

• Perhaps no individual does more to show how much Republicans are banking on misogyny in 2022 than the perpetually thirsty “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance…in April, Vance decided that his main attack on Joe Biden’s Build Back Better proposal was to bash the Democrats for offering affordable child care programs, tweeting that “normal Americans” don’t want daycare just “so they can enjoy more ‘freedom’ in the paid labor force.”

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