Former President Trump is increasing the pressure on Senators Jon Tester (Democrat, Montana) and Sherrod Brown (Democrat, Ohio) as Senate Republicans move closer to regaining the majority.
During Trump’s visit with Republican senators last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (South Carolina) urged the former president to do more to “defeat” the two Democratic incumbents from red states. Republicans only need to defeat one of them, and in addition, West Virginia Governor Jim Justice (R) must win the Senate seat in the fall, as widely expected, to retake the upper chamber.
Trump seemed willing to comply with this request.
“I think he’s watched them suddenly become very big Trump fans in their respective states,” said Senator John Thune (SD), the second-highest ranking Republican senator, of the two Democrats who must appeal to Republican voters in their ruby-red states.
GOP members, he said, wanted Trump to set the record straight with voters.
But defeating Tester and Brown will be no effortless feat for Republicans backing candidates Tim Sheehy and Bernie Moreno. Both incumbents are considered battle-tested politicians who have endured tough re-election battles, including in a presidential election year, and have now emerged on the other side.
But none of their joint Senate victories came when Trump was at the top of the ballot, which Republicans believe will be a complex hurdle. Tester won Montana by just 3.5 points, while Trump beat Biden there by 16 points in 2020. In Ohio, too, Brown won his last re-election by about 7 points, while Trump won by 8 points in 2020.
Graham told the former president during a meeting Thursday at the headquarters of the Republican Senate campaign arm that he had overtaken both Sheehy and Moreno, as well as the rest of the Republican Senate candidates who are running against a number of well-funded incumbents.
“We recognize that his success is our success,” Graham told reporters. “I said, ‘Mr. President, you are doing better than any Republican Senate candidate in all the states that matter to us in terms of winning the majority. We are in this together.'”
“The path to a Senate majority is also the path to the White House,” he added.
Still, Democrats are quick to point out that Trump has a lot of work to do in the competitive presidential races themselves, meaning Montana and Ohio may not be his top priority. They also point to his lack of success in the Senate in recent election cycles, with Republicans unable to win the majority when he was on the ballot in 2020 or in 2022, when many of his personally ordained candidates lost the general election contests.
“I do not see Senator Herschel Walker [in office],” said a Democratic activist with experience in Senate campaigns. “Moreno and Sheehy have a lot of weaknesses.”
While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) and other Republican leaders have repeatedly stressed that unseating well-funded incumbents is no effortless task, Republicans are increasingly confident that the party can win that one extra seat. Montana offers the best opportunity to do so.
Tester has a distinctive brand that has served him well in Big Sky Country, but Republicans argue that what helped him win in 2018 will work against him this time. Most Republicans argue that Sheehy is a stronger candidate than Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) was six years ago, and that the environment will almost certainly be better for the GOP this election cycle.
“I think Tester is as dead as you can be as an incumbent at this point. I just don’t understand the bill to bring him back,” a national GOP operative told The Hill, adding that Trump’s increased engagement there was “obviously helpful” and that “it’s not doing any harm.”
Supporters of the tester deny this claim.
“We do this every six years. Republicans say Jon Tester is weak, and they use the same maneuver,” said a Democratic strategist with ties to Montana. “I know how much they want Jon to be a weak incumbent, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a Beltway fantasy. They make this up every six years.”
In Ohio, meanwhile, the national GOP strategist argued that Democrats could “use Romney’s tactics” on Moreno and “make him look like an enemy of the working class.”
“There will be a significant number of Trump/Brown voters. The question is: What can [Moreno] “Maintain this margin?” said the employee.
“The challenge remains – can Bernie Moreno stand on his own two feet a little?” they added
A GOP operative with ties to the Moreno campaign rejected that characterization, noting that at the same point last election cycle, current Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) was trailing former Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) by double digits and that Moreno had lost by only five percentage points. He added that Brown had already slipped into the red with his ads.
“Every smart agent knows that with the nationwide name tie this fall, Sherrod Brown’s blind loyalty to Biden will be exposed and momentum will build for the campaign of Trump-aligned candidate Bernie Moreno,” the agent continued. “It will be difficult for Brown to hold on in November.”
Republicans are also quick to note that some of the ads the Brown campaign has run so far are the kind of ads they would consider for a GOP candidate. The headlines of these ads are current ads Hollowed-out automobile factories in the spotlight and affected workers and Brown’s work on Requirement that US steel is used for all infrastructure projects financed by the federal government.
An outside group affiliated with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.) has also current ad published He highlighted the Interdict Act that Brown worked on with Trump to prevent fentanyl and other drugs from entering the U.S. It is messages like these that are causing members to increasingly push Trump into these states.
“Our people were obviously just interested in him setting the record straight and making sure that people in these states understand who he’s supporting and that there’s no confusion,” Thune said. “There’s a lot of innuendo in these campaigns … to places where they now agree with Trump or it’s very implied that they’re friends with him and working with him, etc.”
“The differences will probably become apparent over time,” he added.
