Tuesday brought a big and potentially telling moment in that clash: Trump-backed businessman Bernie Moreno’s victory in the GOP Senate primary in Ohio. He will now face Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) in one of the most fiercely contested Senate races this year.
In selecting Moreno, Ohio Republicans not only gave Donald Trump what he wanted; they also gave Democrats what they wanted. Democrats spent millions of dollars to help push Moreno over the line, believing he would be a weaker general-election opponent for Brown in a state that goes red in presidential elections.
Whether that turns out to be the case, we’ll have to see. But extreme candidates have cost the GOP before, up to and potentially including Senate majorities. And there’s reason to believe it could happen again.
So far this cycle, Republicans have fended off some of their more potentially problematic MAGA-aligned statewide candidates. But a few have emerged as standard-bearers in very important races — namely: Moreno, Senate candidate Kari Lake in Arizona and North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson.
And even mere hours after Moreno’s victory, we got some timely reminders of how much these candidates loom over — and could hurt — the GOP’s 2024 prospects.
The reason Moreno and Lake are so significant is that their races could well determine Senate control. Republicans need to win one or two seats to recapture the upper chamber, and they’re heavily favored to take one in ruby-red West Virginia. Arizona and Ohio are two of their next-best opportunities to add a potentially pivotal second pickup.
But in Ohio, Moreno has consistently run worse in general-election polls than primary opponent Matt Dolan — by between two and seven points. Moreno also runs significantly worse than Trump; a poll released over the weekend showed Trump leading President Biden by 11 points in Ohio, but Moreno trailing Brown by 11. (Like Trump, Moreno has labeled the 2020 election “stolen” and Capitol riot defendants “political prisoners.” He also in his 2022 Senate campaign supported a no-exceptions abortion ban, though he has walked that back.)
In Arizona, a poll released Wednesday showed Trump leading Biden by four points, but Lake trailing her likely Democratic competitor by two. (Lake continues to baselessly claim her loss in the 2022 Arizona governor’s race resulted from a stolen election.)
The story is similar in North Carolina, which doesn’t bear upon Senate control but is the marquee 2024 governor’s race. There, a poll released Wednesday showed Trump leading by three points, but Robinson trailing by two. (Robinson’s recent history of extreme comments and conspiracy theories has little compare even in the Trump-era GOP.)
There is limited polling in each of the above races, and there’s a long time until November. But we’ve seen this story play out before.
Republicans lost a series of key Senate races in the 2010s thanks to flawed candidates; you might recall the likes of Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock.
In 2022, the GOP also ran a bunch of flawed, Trump-aligned statewide candidates who almost uniformly underperformed other Republicans. That might well have cost the party the Senate.
Lake was a case in point. A voter study after her 2022 campaign indicated she lost because lots of voters who otherwise mostly voted Republican wouldn’t pull the lever for her.
And if that kind of thing happens again — in her race or other races — it could matter greatly.
“Not only will Moreno handily lose to Brown,” said GOP operative Brittany Martinez, a former aide to the Republican National Committee and ex-House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), “he will be just the latest in a long list of MAGA-endorsed candidates who are incapable of winning in a general.”
A Trump spokesman responded by calling Martinez a “dummy.”
Another key Senate moment
Speaking of big news in the battle for the Senate, a new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll released Wednesday gave Republicans a shot in the arm.
It shows former Maryland governor Larry Hogan (R) leading by double digits against a pair of potential Democratic foes: 50-36 over Prince George’s County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks, and 49-37 over Rep. David Trone.
It’s the first high-quality poll since Hogan announced his campaign last month, and it suggests that even deep-blue Maryland could be in play for the GOP.
This comes with some significant caveats. Yes, Hogan was a very popular, moderate governor. But we’ve also seen how popular governors in states that favor the other party can come up well short when the races are federal — and the Senate candidate will be 1 of 100 votes for one side or the other.
Former Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen (D) was a popular governor before he lost by 11 points in 2018. Ditto former Hawaii governor Linda Lingle (R) in her landslide 2012 loss and former Montana governor Steve Bullock (D) in his 10-point loss in 2020.
And sure enough, while Hogan leads, the poll also shows Maryland voters prefer a Democratic-controlled Senate to a Republican one by a 55-35 margin.
That’s the percentage of Americans who have an unfavorable opinion of both presumptive presidential nominees, according to a new Pew Research Center poll. These are the voters known as “double-haters.”
Why is that significant? It’s one of the highest double-hater numbers we’ve seen to date, and from a very high-quality pollster. (Other recent polls have shown this contingent ranges from 17 to 24 percent of the electorate.) It also suggests the double-haters could well exceed the modern high-water mark, 2016, when exit polls showed 18 percent liked neither Trump nor Hillary Clinton.
The Pew survey showed about 4 in 10 independents and adults below the age of 30 like neither candidate.
All of which reinforces that we could be headed for a historic perceived lesser-of-two-evils election.
