Dems are Pursuing a Risky Strategy in a Key Senate Race. Will It Work?
As one of the most important battleground Senate races in the country, where Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown is hoping to hold his seat in red Ohio—and possibly majority control of the chamber along with it—Democrats are deeply invested in Tuesday’s Republican primary that will decide who Brown will be running against.
Now, they’ve literally invested in it too. A group called Duty and Country, funded by Senate Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC, is spending roughly $2.7 million in the state’s Republican primary to tilt the outcome in favor of far-right, Trump-endorsed candidate Bernie Moreno. State Sen. Matt Dolan, who has been endorsed by Gov. Mike DeWine, has taken the lead in the polls, but Moreno is close behind, with Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose trailing.
It’s not the first time in 2024 that Democrats have elevated a Republican Senate candidate—that, too, happened just a few weeks ago in California. Why would Democrats throw valuable resources behind their adversaries?
It’s all part of a strategic gambit that Democrats embraced, somewhat newly, in the 2022 midterm cycle, and it’s not without its critics. The usually impartial New York Times called it “an enormously risky strategy” two years ago, after Democrats waded into a handful of Republican primaries to elevate more extreme, far-right candidates. Those extremist candidates, according to Dems’ own polling, would turn off swing voters, making them weaker candidates in a general election contest versus Democrats.
Despite those detractors, the strategy proved remarkably successful, especially in the Upper Midwest. In Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race, Democratic candidate Josh Shapiro spent money to elevate eventual Republican primary winner Doug Mastriano, who held a bevy of cockeyed, far-right beliefs. Mastriano, forced to defend those out-there positions, came unglued in the general election, and Shapiro trounced him.
In another high-profile primary, Democrats spent to elevate Trump hard-liner John Gibbs over moderate Peter Meijer, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection attempt. Gibbs beat Meijer narrowly, becoming the Republican candidate in Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District. The gambit, again, paid off: That swing district race was won a few months later by Democrat Hillary Scholten.
Even in races where it didn’t work out, the downside was capped. Democrats tried to elevate a more extreme right-wing Senate candidate in Colorado, and failed; Democrat Michael Bennet won easily even against the more moderate Joe O’Dea. Despite playing with fire, Democrats came away from that cycle without once getting singed.
Early in the 2024 cycle, it seems that this approach will again be a fixture. In a state where moderate Republicans still seem to have some purchase—DeWine is not Trump-aligned, though he’s hardly a liberal—a far-right candidate like Moreno might have a tougher path to reelection. Brown, the Democratic incumbent, faces a steep uphill battle in a state where Democrats haven’t been competitive statewide in quite a while; facing up against a weaker, more extreme candidate like Moreno would mark a slight advantage for a candidate who will take all the help he can get. Trump-backed Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance ended up being a massive financial drain on Senate Republicans just two years ago, requiring huge cash infusions to secure a victory against a nonincumbent Democrat. Dems have reason to believe this matchup would be even more favorable.
And yet: The strategy of boosting Republicans is already being stretched to more dubious ends than last cycle. In March’s California Senate primary, Democrat Adam Schiff spent lavishly to animate the barely breathing Senate campaign of Republican Steve Garvey. Schiff’s millions were so effective that Garvey, despite having no real money, staff, or platform, actually finished first in California’s jungle primary, ahead of Schiff and all other Democrats. The two will face each other in a runoff in November.
But there’s a critical difference between what Schiff did and Democrats’ intervention into the Ohio race.
The Ohio Senate race shares some important features with the successful 2022 races highlighted above: All of them were swing districts or swing states, and all of them were in partisan primaries—meaning that elevating one Republican over another did not have any real adverse effect on Democratic competitiveness or turnout elsewhere on the ticket.
In Schiff’s race, the opposite was true. California is resoundingly not a swing state; Republicans are not competitive statewide. Meanwhile, the state does not have closed or partisan primaries; it has an open, jungle primary system, where the top two candidates, regardless of party, face off in November.
Schiff, fearing a head-to-head matchup with a progressive Democrat who is more aligned with the state’s actual politics, spent lavishly to help Garvey to prevent that from happening. His campaign went to great lengths to juice Republican turnout, contacting high propensity Republican voters with mailers and more.
Schiff got what he wanted, but the outcome was effectively the opposite of what Democrats have generally accomplished with their pro-Republican meddling. Juiced-up Republican turnout made life harder for down-ballot Democrats all over the state; Democratic groups had to pony up critical resources to ensure that they didn’t get locked out of critical runoffs by missing top-two finishes. (According to Schiff’s own campaign, “Republicans turned out in massive numbers,” though they offered no explanation as to why.) So Schiff benefited personally, and Democrats everywhere suffered for it. Whether this has any lasting effect on the general election remains to be seen.
Schiff can now win his California Senate seat without spending another cent. On the other hand, if Democrats manage to force a Moreno vs. Brown showdown in Ohio, which will be more favorable than taking on Dolan, it will still require tens of millions of dollars, if not more, for Brown to gut out a Democratic victory.
There was some hope that Schiff would simply donate his vast trove of resources to needy Democratic senators in these highly contested swing states. So far that doesn’t seem to have happened. He continues to fundraise for himself.
