Republicans Worried McSally & Loeffler Losing Ground In Arizona, Georgia

With McSally And Loeffler Falling In Polls, White House Expresses Fears That Vulnerable, Unelected Incumbents Will Drag Down Trump In Battleground States

New reports show the White House is “increasingly concerned” about vulnerable unelected Senators Martha McSally and Kelly Loeffler losing in November — and taking Republican candidates up and down the ticket out with them in the battleground states of Arizona and Georgia. 

With McSally “falling dangerously behind” in public polls and facing a “substantial fundraising disadvantage” compared to Navy combat veteran and retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, the unelected senator is one of the most vulnerable in the country, with one recent pollster putting it bluntly: “McSally is doing terribly…there’s no way to find a bright spot on that one.” Trump and his campaign advisors are now privately fretting about the “trouble spot” the Arizona Senate race poses for Republicans up and down the ticket — including the president. 

Republicans are also concerned about the ongoing stock scandal clouding Loeffler’s campaign, with “anxieties” growing in the White House just days after Georgia Republicans said Loeffer “should consider dropping out.” A new poll last week showed Trump narrowly losing to former Vice President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket and both of Georgia’s Republican senators losing to Democrats, and the Cook Political Report recently moved Senator David Perdue’s race in Democrats’ direction, confirming Perdue’s recent warning that “Georgia is in play.”

Read more below about the White House’s growing concerns about these two vulnerable, unelected senators and their drag on the entire Republican ticket:

POLITICO: Trump advisers warn McSally is in trouble

By Alex Isentadt

• Senior political advisers to President Donald Trump warned Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Thursday that Republican Sen. Martha McSally is falling dangerously behind in the critical swing state of Arizona.

• Trump’s campaign team was meeting with the president at the White House to discuss the state of play in a handful of battleground states. Toward the end of the meeting, Trump pulled McConnell, who was at the White House to meet with him on another matter, into the Roosevelt Room. The discussion turned to Arizona, where recent polling has shown Trump and McSally trailing.

• Trump himself said he was concerned about McSally, according to three people familiar with the discussion. His political advisers told McConnell about recent survey numbers in Arizona and stressed she was losing to Democrat and former astronaut Mark Kelly.

• The discussion comes amid increasing Republican worries about Arizona. An array of recent polls have shown Trump losing to Joe Biden in the state, which Democrats have not won in a presidential election since 1996. Democrats have signaled they intend to make an aggressive play in Arizona.

• The Senate race is a particular trouble spot. As Senate Republicans try to protect their majority, McSally has emerged as one of the party’s most vulnerable incumbents. One survey released this week showed McSally trailing Kelly by 13 points.

• McSally is also heading into the final six months of the campaign at a substantial fundraising disadvantage. Through the end of March, Kelly had outraised McSally $31 million to $18 million. Kelly, who is the husband of ex-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, is the most well-funded Senate candidate in the country.

New York Times: White House Worries About Kelly Loeffler’s Senate Prospects in Georgia

By Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin, and Nicholas Fandos

• President Trump’s advisers are increasingly concerned about Senator Kelly Loeffler’s campaign in Georgia, a newly competitive state where the president’s own poll numbers have tightened against former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., according to people briefed on the discussions.

• [Collins’] rise has come as Ms. Loeffler faces questions about stock trades she made soon after being briefed about the threat of the coronavirus — she has denied any wrongdoing — and as Mr. Trump, in two recent Republican polls, has found himself in a statistical dead heat with Mr. Biden in a state the president won in 2016.

• Ms. Loeffler’s seat is one of a handful that Republicans have grown increasingly worried about. The others include Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado and Senator Martha McSally of Arizona.

• Much of Ms. Loeffler’s brief tenure in Washington has been marked by questions about the millions of dollars in stock sales she made shortly after she attended a briefing for senators with top government health officials in late January.

• The anxieties over the Georgia race come as multiple surveys indicate that the presidential campaign will also be competitive there. Mr. Trump carried Georgia by only five percentage points in 2016, and the state was not hotly contested.

• G.O.P. officials who have talked to Mr. Trump’s political advisers say that the White House is growing concerned about the state, and that they have been watching voter registration numbers there with trepidation.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: How Pence’s visit highlighted Georgia’s tense GOP Senate race

By Greg Bluestein and Tamar Hallerman

• No longer can a White House trip to Georgia be a simple affair, not with two powerful Georgia GOP factions warring over the administration’s favor.

• Instead, the visits take on the air of a high school drama, as the two seek to be in the afterglow of the big-man-on-campus.

• The meeting came at a delicate moment for Loeffler, who has sought to quiet an uproar over stock trades made shortly after she was briefed on the threat of the coronavirus.

• A spate of recent polls, some by Republican groups, show Loeffler either deadlocked with Collins or trailing him badly. She recently acknowledged she handed over documents to investigators probing the sales. 

• And the presence of Collins in the race has denied Loeffler a circling-of-the-wagons movement to rally Republicans behind her, and his allies are upping the pressure on Loeffler to stand aside to allow the four-term congressman to unite the GOP.

• With Joe Biden threatening to compete in Georgia in November, some administration officials worry that Loeffler can damage down-ballot contenders. 

• Either way, Loeffler shows no signs of backing down. On the day of Pence’s visit, she released the latest volley of ads in a $4 million TV campaign that seeks to reframe her as an able administrator in the pandemic era – and blames the “trash” media for her problems.

• Expect Collins and his allies – a group that now includes former Rep. Karen Handel, the foremost suburban Republican woman in Georgia – to keep pushing for her to quit the contest.

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