In North Carolina, Sen. Thom Tillis uses his commercials to reacquaint voters with his life story, highlighting his time working as a short-order cook while attending college at night. In her ads, Maine Sen. Susan Collins reminds constituents about the federal money she secured for diabetes research. And in one ad, Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner’s family loads up an SUV with outdoor gear as he touts the new law he helped write to fund maintenance projects at national parks.
But, so far this year, one topic has been off the table for these endangered Republican incumbents: the elected official at the top of the ticket this fall. It’s a stark illustration of President Donald Trump’s declining poll numbers and the danger they could pose to the Republican majority in the Senate.
The stakes are high for Republicans: Democrats need a net gain of just four seats to flip the chamber (or three seats if the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Joe Biden, captures the White House, giving his vice president tie-breaking power in an evenly divided Senate.)
In all, the five Republican incumbents in races viewed as pure tossups by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report – Tillis, Collins and Gardner, along with Arizona Sen. Martha McSally and Montana Sen. Steve Daines – have run nearly 37,000 television spots between January 1 and July 9, according to a tally by Kantar’s Campaign Media Analysis Group for CNN.
But fewer than 5% of those ads contained pro-Trump messages, the analysis found. And, during the period examined, Tillis, Collins and Gardner ran no ads mentioning the President.
None of the five incumbents in tossup races have run any ads during the 2020 cycle that criticize Trump.
‘Tough spot
Those spending decisions underscore the “tough spot” vulnerable incumbents in battlegrounds such as Colorado and North Carolina face, said Nathan Gonzales, editor of “Inside Elections” and a CNN contributor. “They need to form a coalition of voters that includes people who love Trump and people who don’t like him very much,” he said.
“They need every last Trump supporter,” Gonzales added, “but also the independents and some moderate Democrats.”
The careful dance among vulnerable Republicans of distancing themselves from Trump without sharply criticizing the President comes as Democratic candidates find themselves awash in campaign donations as the general election draws closer.
The latest sign of Democratic fundraising strength: Retired astronaut and first-time candidate Mark Kelly announced Tuesday that he had raised nearly $12.8 million in the second quarter of this year and had about $24 million remaining in the bank as he prepares for a showdown with McSally in Arizona.
Like it or not, “many of these senators will rise or fall based on how the President is handling his own job,” said David Flaherty, the CEO of Magellan Strategies, a Republican polling firm in Colorado.
And in Colorado, where Gardner is a top target for Democrats, the first-term Republican likely will face an electorate that’s less Republican and younger than the group of voters who sent Gardner to the Senate by a narrow margin six years ago, Flaherty said. Voters unaffiliated with any party now outnumber registered Democrats or Republicans in the state.
“It’s a math problem” for Gardner, he said.
Aides to Gardner and Tillis did not immediately respond to interview requests.
Asked about the lack of Trump advertising, Collins’ spokesman Kevin Kelly said the four-term senator “historically campaigns on her long record of accomplishments for the people of Maine,” no matter who occupies the White House.
And Jesse Hunt, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said it’s no surprise that Republicans are focusing on their accomplishments.
“Republican senators,” he said, “have incredibly impressive records to run on and they’re making sure voters are aware.”
Coronavirus and jobs
Daines has run the most spots that include pro-Trump messages between January 1 and July 9 among the GOP Senate incumbents in tossup seats: 1,223, according to CMAG’s data.
But they account for a tiny fraction – just 8% – of Daines’ overall advertising this year.
The lion’s share of his ads focus on coronavirus surging through the country and how to restore a US job market decimated by the pandemic. A recent spot argues that the US must hold “Communist China accountable” for what Daines called lying about the virus and then pivots to touts the first-term senator’s effort to give tax credits to companies that return production and jobs to the United States.
In Arizona, meanwhile, McSally’s most-run spot in July features an Arizona voter warning that “the coronavirus taught Americans that we are too reliant on China for our prescription drugs,” and praising McSally’s work on the issue.
Still, the reticence about embracing Trump does not extend to all Republicans running for Congress, particularly candidates in safe GOP seats.
Overall, more than four out of every 10 congressionally focused spots run by Republican candidates, PACs, parties and groups during the period examined were classified as pro-Trump by CMAG – roughly on par with the party’s embrace of Trump during the same period in the 2018 midterm elections.
Perhaps nowhere was the pro-Trump sentiment more apparent than in deep-red Alabama in the runup to Tuesday’s Senate primary runoff between two Republicans, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Tommy Tuberville, the former head football coach at Auburn University.
Trump endorsed Tuberville and repeatedly attacked Sessions for recusing himself from the FBI investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 presidential election while serving as Trump’s attorney general.
Tuberville embraced Trump and his endorsement, with CMAG classifying 100% of the nearly 3,000 spots Tuberville aired since early this year as having a pro-Trump message. In one 30-second commercial, Tuberville declared that “God sent us Donald Trump because God knew we were in trouble.”
On Tuesday, Tuberville won easily.
