(The Hill) – Senate Republicans are worried that former President Trump is squandering their chances of retaking the majority because of his failure in responding to Vice President Harris’s victory, Republican aides and strategists say.
Harris was able to narrow Trump’s lead in Republican-leaning Senate districts such as Ohio and Florida and take the lead in other states where Republicans have a chance of winning seats, such as Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Even Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of Trump’s key allies in the Senate, is urging the former president to tone down his showmanship at rallies and focus on swing voters by highlighting Harris’ record on the economy, taxes and border security, where Republicans have an advantage over Democrats.
“President Trump can win this election. His policies are good for America, and if there is a political debate about the president, he wins. Donald Trump, the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election,” Graham said in a Sunday interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The Republicans are undoubtedly the favorites to recapture the Senate.
Republicans need to gain only two seats to gain a majority even if they lose the presidency. They are certain to gain a seat in West Virginia, and Sen. Jon Tester (D) faces a tough re-election battle in Montana, a state Trump is likely to win.
Trump is also considered the favorite in Ohio, where Senator Sherrod Brown (Democrat, Ohio) faces a challenging re-election campaign.
Still, Republicans have been concerned in recent weeks as they witnessed the shift in poll numbers and the fact that Harris was winning over adolescent voters and minority voters in swing states.
Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist and former aide to the Republican Senate leadership, said Republicans are “moving into more difficult terrain because Democrats have a much more promising presidential candidate in Harris” than in President Biden.
He said Harris’ record gives Republicans an opportunity to go on the offensive with their policy differences, but also warned that Trump needs to focus more on policy and less on throwing meat at his core voters.
“Trump is trying to get his message across. In the last few press conferences, he’s started talking about her policies, but he just can’t stop the crowd from reacting by attacking her personally. He can’t escape that. He may get a great reaction from the crowd, but it doesn’t help with independent voters who are looking for the contrast. They know who Donald Trump is and they’re trying to figure out who Kamala Harris is,” he said.
“It will be a very close election, the polls are getting tighter and tighter. If Trump wants to win, he will have to get a lot more messages across and put on less of a show for his supporters, because they are unimportant. What matters are the independent voters who actually manage to cross the finish line,” he added.
Harris was able to overtake Trump or reduce his lead in several swing states (Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin).
Republican lawmakers and strategists fear that Trump’s decline in the polls could set off another slide in the fall that could jeopardize their chances of retaking the Senate and retaining their majority in the House of Representatives.
A Senate Republican aide told The Hill that Senate Republicans are not thrilled with how Trump’s campaign is going and are worried about what it could mean for Republican Senate candidates in key states.
“You can start to feel some concern, like in Arizona. When you talk to people, you get the sense that things are not going as well as we hoped. In Nevada, things are not going as well as we hoped,” the GOP operative said.
The source said there was “a legitimate complaint” that Trump was “not as aggressive” [of a] “The best campaigner he can be,” referring to the time Trump spends during the election campaign reaching out to voters in the crucial swing states.
“He’s going to run his campaign the way he’s always run it, and that’s not a good feeling,” the adviser said of Trump’s preference for noisy rallies with his core voters rather than trying to broaden his appeal to independent and more moderate voters.
Republican lawmakers fear that Trump’s personal attacks on Harris could backfire on swing voters and put Republican candidates on the lower ballots in the awkward position of having to respond to Trump’s inflammatory statements.
“There’s no doubt that Trump is burning himself up. He’s killing himself. All the swing states are won by the independent vote, and he alienates those votes almost every day with some stupid statement that marginalizes him. The result is that the party and the majority of independents are educated women, and they’re just repulsed by the man and what he says,” said former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), a former adviser to the leadership team of Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Given her past support for far-left proposals such as Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) Medicare for All Act and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (DN.Y.) comprehensive Green New Deal, Republican lawmakers view Harris as a “beatable” candidate.
Nevertheless, Trump did not refrain from attacking Harris personally, questioning her ethnic identity and exaggerating her intelligence, which earned him accusations of using sexist stereotypes.
With his antics, Trump put both himself and his opponent in the spotlight and obscured the debate on issues GOP lawmakers wanted to have: Biden’s immigration record and the fate of the expiring Trump-era tax cuts.
A New York Times/Siena College poll conducted earlier this month found Harris ahead of Trump among likely voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – the states that make up the Democrats’ so-called blue wall.
Another Times/Siena poll conducted this month shows Harris leading among likely voters in Arizona with 50 percent support to Trump’s 45 percent, and narrowly ahead of Trump in North Carolina, a state Trump won in 2020. The poll, conducted Aug. 8-15, also showed Harris significantly narrowing Trump’s lead in Georgia and Nevada.
At the same time, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report said that Democratic Senate candidates had increased their lead in several swing states, especially Nevada, where Senator Jacky Rosen (D) is now 19 points ahead of her Republican challenger Sam Brown. Cook changed the Senate race in Nevada from “undecided” to “leaning Democratic.”
In Pennsylvania, Senator Bob Casey (R-Pa.) increased his lead over Republican candidate David McCormick from 8 to 13 points.
In Arizona, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego increased his lead over Republican Kari Lake from 5 to 9 points, and in Michigan, Democratic Senate candidate Elissa Slotkin increased her lead over her Republican challenger, former Rep. Mike Rogers (Michigan).
Particularly worrying for Senate Republicans is that internal polls show Harris catching up to Trump in Ohio, a state where Republicans had expected Trump to win by double digits.
The New York Times reported that two recent private polls conducted by Republican pollsters in Ohio found that Trump received less than 50 percent of the vote against Harris in the Buckeye State.
A Rasmussen Reports/Numbers USA poll of likely voters released Monday found Brown leading his Republican challenger Bernie Moreno with 47 percent support, while Moreno has 42 percent.
In Florida, a USA Today/Suffolk University/WSVN-TV poll of 500 likely voters conducted August 7-11 found Harris trailing Trump by just five percentage points in the Sunshine State.
Trump’s lead in Florida will affect how well the Democrats can beat Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida. In Texas, Scott is one of their two primary targets, along with Republican Senator Ted Cruz.
A poll of 1,040 likely Florida voters conducted on August 10 and 11 by Florida Atlantic University and Mainstreet Research found Scott leading Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell by 4 points.
According to the USA Today/Suffolk poll, Scott’s approval rating is only 35 percent, while 49 percent of respondents have a negative opinion of him.
Scott, a sturdy Trump ally, dismissed talk that Trump was feeble in Florida or that he himself was vulnerable to being upset by an outsider challenger.
“Trump is going to win a big victory in Florida. We are going to win a big victory in Florida,” he said in a brief interview with The Hill. “My likely Democratic opponent is a socialist. That doesn’t go over well in Florida.”
Gregg, the former Republican senator from New Hampshire, said Republican candidates for Senate risk getting bogged down in responding to Trump’s antics rather than running their own campaigns.
“I think the Republicans on the lower ballots are very concerned,” he said.
“Instead of running your election campaign, you defend his statements and eccentricities and his exclusion [of Harris]”It’s really bad for a candidate when he can’t run his own campaign. He has to spend all his time defending stupid, divisive and disruptive comments,” he added.
Senator Ron Johnson (Republican of Wisconsin), who was at the Trump Hotel in downtown Chicago on Monday to respond to the messages at the Democratic National Convention, acknowledged that the presidential race will have an impact on the fight for Senate seats.
“The frontrunners will always have some influence, there’s no doubt about that,” Johnson said. “They top the list.”
He expressed frustration that the media is not asking tougher questions about Harris’s policy positions.
“I’m going to keep pounding the media. They need to start asking Vice President Harris questions. They need to hold her accountable. They need to tell the American public, or get her to tell the American public, ‘This is how I govern. This is what I support,'” he said.
Johnson acknowledged that he does not believe it is certain for Republicans to regain the majority in the Senate, although they are believed to have no problem retaking the Senate seat held by outgoing Senator Joe Manchin (I) in West Virginia.
“I’ve always been very nervous. I’m always happy when the day comes,” he said.
