Republicans in tight races avoid Trump’s convention
There are at least nine Republican senators at serious risk of losing reelection in November.
But only one of them, Iowa’s Joni Ernst, decided that it was in her best interest to share the primetime spotlight with President Trump at this year’s Republican National Convention.
“For years, I’ve worked closely with the president for farmers in Iowa and across the country,” Ernst said Wednesday night, evoking the recent derecho that devastated Iowa. “Knowing we have an ally in the White House is important.”
As the sole endangered GOP senator to appear during the public-facing portion of the RNC, Ernst was the exception that proves the rule. To retain control of the Senate next year, Republicans need to stop Democrats from netting three additional seats — unless Trump wins reelection, in which case Democrats would have to net four seats to overcome Vice President Mike Pence’s 50-50 tie-breaking vote.
To pull this off, however, GOP incumbents must walk a tricky tightrope. On one hand, they can’t afford to offend Trump’s MAGA base. Yet they also need to put some inconspicuous distance between themselves and the president, particularly in competitive states such as Colorado, Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia and Maine, where Trump’s faltering response to the pandemic and the resulting economic fallout appear to be boosting Democrats.
Skipping the RNC is an easy and relatively painless way to do just that.
Senate candidates in tight races don’t always pass on their party’s presidential convention. When Barack Obama was up for reelection in 2012, Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin, Massachusetts’s Elizabeth Warren and Virginia’s Tim Kaine spoke on stage in Charlotte. All three went on to win. This year, the Democrats’ most vulnerable incumbent, Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama, gave forceful remarks during the DNC. And some at-risk members of Congress, like Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York, have appeared at this year’s RNC.
The less popular the president, however — and the more closely the Senate map aligns with the presidential battleground — the less incentive his own party’s Senate incumbents have to show up.
In her remarks Wednesday, Ernst — whose famous first campaign ad touted her hog-castrating skills and promised that her comfort with cutting pork would “make ’em squeal” in Washington — did not seem to be concerned about the possibility that Trump might damage her reelection chances.
Instead, Ernst framed Trump as a friend of “flyover country” who would stop “liberal coastal elites and radical environmentalists” from transforming the United States into a place “where farmers are punished, jobs are destroyed, and taxes crush the middle class.”
Ernst shouldn’t be too sanguine. According to Morning Consult, the once-rising star has become the third least popular U.S. senator, with a dismal 37 percent approval rating. All but one poll taken since June show her Democratic challenger, Theresa Greenfield, leading by narrow margins.
The most recent Iowa survey hints at why Ernst may be struggling. While the incumbent is picking up a few 2016 Hillary Clinton supporters here and there (3 percent), Greenfield is flipping three times as many 2016 Trump supporters to her side (9 percent) — perhaps by promising to protect Social Security from privatization, which Ernst hasn’t ruled out.
In fact, Ernst could be one of the less vulnerable of this year’s vulnerable GOP senators, given that Trump won Iowa by more than 8 points in 2016 and still leads Democratic nominee Joe Biden narrowly in the state.
Arizona Sen. Martha McSally and Georgia Sen. David Perdue may not be so fortunate. So far, Biden has been running stronger than Clinton across the Sun Belt, in part because of the region’s increasingly diverse demographics. According to FiveThirtyEight’s latest polling averages, he’s essentially tied with Trump in Georgia (a state Trump won by 5 points in 2016) and leading by nearly 4 percent in Arizona (a state Trump won by 3.5 percent).
To get reelected, McSally and Perdue are likely to have to outperform the president, which means swaying at least a few swing voters. Right now, McSally is falling short and Perdue is treading water.
McSally’s challenger is Mark Kelly, the former astronaut and husband of Gabby Giffords, the popular former congresswoman turned gun-control advocate; he has led in nearly every poll since the start of July, often by double-digit margins.
Perdue is faring better, but his opponent, the well-funded young Democrat Jon Ossoff, appears to have pulled even in this month’s polling.
That may explain why both McSally and Perdue prerecorded short RNC “speeches” that didn’t air in primetime and are nearly impossible to see unless you search for them online.
Meanwhile, Colorado’s Cory Gardner, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, Maine’s Susan Collins, Montana’s Steve Daines and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham didn’t even bother with videos.
Collins confirmed months ago that she would not be attending. Her challenger, Democratic State House Speaker Sara Gideon, leads by about 5 points on average and spoke briefly at last week’s Democratic convention.
Gardner, who trails former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper by an even larger margin, told a local reporter this week: “I’ve never spoken at a convention before, and I don’t think anybody would want to listen to a boring speech by me.”
Earlier this week, Tillis insisted that he would have attended the convention if it had been held in Charlotte, N.C., as planned before the pandemic. Yet he was a conspicuous no-show Monday when Trump visited the Charlotte Convention Center to greet delegates. Tillis was in town that day, but scheduled another event at the same time.
Recent polls show Tillis lagging as far as 10 points behind Democrat Cal Cunningham in a state where “the Republican Party has lost support in the fast-growing communities around large cities by supporting an agenda that some people see as hostile to minorities, immigrants and women.”
Of all the embattled GOP senators, Graham was perhaps the most candid about his absence from the RNC. A formerly outspoken Trump critic who has morphed into one of the president’s most ardent defenders, he now faces a vigorous challenge from Jaime Harrison, the first Black chair of South Carolina’s Democratic Party. A recent Quinnipiac poll showed a tied race.
On the trail Monday in Rock Hill, a reporter asked why former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was speaking and Graham wasn’t.
“Well, I’m running for office,” Graham explained. “The difference between me and Nikki is: I’m up for reelection.”
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