Wall Street Journal: “Primary Challenges Complicate GOP’s Hold on the Senate”
The “early headache of nightmare primary fights” is continuing for Senate Republicans. A new report from the Wall Street Journal spotlights how the GOP’s struggle to maintain control of the Senate is getting more complicated because of problematic primaries. Washington Republicans are trying to rescue weak incumbents, like unelected Senator Martha McSally and spineless Senator Thom Tillis, from primary challengers — while also desperately seeking to cut off deeply flawed GOP candidates, like Kris Kobach and Roy Moore, who have a track record of winning primaries and losing general elections.
“Republicans in Washington are scrambling to defend weak incumbents from attacks within their own party and sideline unelectable candidates as fractious primaries develop across the Senate map,” said DSCC spokesperson Stewart Boss. “These primaries in key states are shaping up to be draining and divisive battles that deplete resources, push candidates to embrace toxic positions, and ultimately cost Republicans seats again in 2020.”
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Wall Street Journal: Primary Challenges Complicate GOP’s Hold on the Senate
By Andrew Duehren
September 23, 2019
Key Points:
- A crop of conservative Republicans running in Senate primary campaigns is complicating the GOP’s attempt to maintain control of the chamber in 2020.
- In the fight for open seats in Alabama and Kansas, national Republicans are actively opposing GOP candidates they see as imperiling the party’s general-election chances even in those deep-red states, while the party is also mobilizing to stifle challengers to incumbents in North Carolina and Arizona.
- Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate, meaning Democrats could control the Senate after next year by winning a net of three seats if they won the White House and had a Democratic vice president, or four if Mr. Trump won re-election.
- Even if Republicans successfully ensure the victory of their favored candidates, primaries risk draining campaign resources and exposing candidates to months of criticism ahead of competitive general-election races.
- Facing a largely self-funded primary challenger, Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) began a $2.2 million statewide advertising campaign last week that will last through the primary election. As of the end of June, Mr. Tillis had roughly $4.4 million on hand.
- Garland Tucker, the businessman who is challenging Mr. Tillis, has run advertisements attacking various positions Mr. Tillis has taken as insufficiently supportive of the president.
- At a recent rally in North Carolina with the president, Mr. Tillis was booed when he was introduced to speak, and some local party activists have openly called for a primary challenge.
- To Democrats, a rush to embrace the president is a potential boon. Even though Mr. Trump won North Carolina in 2016, Democrats see tying Mr. Tillis to Mr. Trump as a way to blunt his performance in the state’s rapidly growing suburbs where the president in unpopular.
- Carter Wrenn, a North Carolina political consultant working for Mr. Tucker, said that Mr. Tucker, as a political neophyte, would be a stronger candidate in the general election. “It’s what everyone in Washington will tell you: ‘Oh, Lord, don’t have a primary, it will hurt us in the general election,’’’ said Mr. Wrenn. “This is a case where a primary will help them in the general election.”
- Kris Kobach, who is running in the GOP primary to succeed retiring Sen. Pat Roberts in Kansas, held a fundraiser last week with Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel and Ann Coulter, a conservative media personality.
- Meanwhile, in Arizona, Phoenix-area businessman Daniel McCarthy recently said he was challenging Sen. Martha McSally, who lost to Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in 2018 before she was appointed to an open seat.
- Mr. McCarthy’s campaign, which he has indicated will attack Ms. McSally as an inauthentic conservative, may pose a familiar challenge ahead of a general-election race against former astronaut Mark Kelly, the presumptive Democratic nominee. According to an internal memo prepared by the McSally campaign last year, a competitive primary against established conservatives like the now-chairman of the Arizona GOP hamstrung the campaign’s odds in the general election.
- But as Republicans contain the political bushfires created by the primary candidacies, Mr. Trump’s own history of railing against the party hierarchy could inspire more Republicans to run without an official blessing. “I’m just filling a vacuum for the conservative outsider in Arizona,” Mr. McCarthy said.
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