Senate Republicans are worried former President Trump could be blowing their chances of winning back the majority as he flails in his response to Vice President Harris’s surge of momentum, according to GOP aides and strategists.
Harris has narrowed Trump’s lead in Republican-leaning Senate battlegrounds such as Ohio and Florida and pulled ahead in other states where Republicans have a chance of picking up seats, such as Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Even Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of Trump’s top allies in the Senate, is urging the former president to tone down his “showman” streak at rallies and to focus on swing voters by highlighting Harris’s record on the economy, taxes and border security, where Republicans have the advantage over Democrats.
“President Trump can win this election. His policies are good for America, and if you have a policy debate for president, he wins. Donald Trump the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election,” Graham told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview Sunday.
The GOP is, to be sure, the favorite to win back the Senate.
Republicans need only to gain two seats to take the majority, even if they lose the presidency. They are all but certain to gain one seat in West Virginia, and Sen. Jon Tester (D) faces a tough reelection bid in Montana, a state Trump is likely to win.
Trump is also favored in Ohio, where Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) faces a difficult reelection race.
Still, the last few weeks have worried Republicans as they’ve watched the polls shift and Harris energize young and minority voters in battleground states.
Ron Bonjean, a GOP strategist and former Senate GOP leadership aide, said Republicans are “running into rougher terrain, because Democrats have a much more viable candidate at the presidential level” in Harris compared to President Biden.
He said Harris’s record gives Republicans opportunities to go on offense over policy differences but warned that Trump has to focus more on policy and less on throwing red meat to his core supporters.
“Trump is trying to get on message. In the last couple of press conferences, he’s started to talk about her policies, but he just can’t help getting the crowd responses by going after her personally. He can’t get away from it. It may get a great reaction from the crowd, but it’s doing nothing for independent voters that are looking for the contrast. They know who Donald Trump is, they’re trying to figure out who Kamala Harris is,” he said.
“It’s going to be very tight election; the polls are tightening up. If Trump wants to win, he’s going to have to get way more on message and way less showmanship for his crowds, because they don’t matter. It’s the independent voters that count for actually getting over the finish line,” he added.
Harris has pulled ahead of Trump or narrowed the lead Trump had over Biden in several battleground states: Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin.
GOP lawmakers and strategists are worried Trump’s dip in the polls could augur a further slide in the fall that could imperil their chances of winning back the Senate and keeping their House majority.
A Senate Republican aide told The Hill that Senate Republicans aren’t thrilled about the trajectory of Trump’s campaign and worry what it will mean for Senate GOP candidates in key states.
“You can start to feel trepidation. Like with Arizona, you get a sense in talking to folks that it’s not going as well as we hoped. In Nevada, it’s not going as well as we hoped,” the GOP aide said.
The source said “there’s a legitimate gripe” that Trump “is not as aggressive [of a] campaigner as he could be,” referring to the amount of time that Trump is spending on the stump reaching out to voters in key swing states.
“He’s going to run the way he’s always run his campaign, and it’s not a great feeling,” the aide said of Trump’s preference for holding boisterous rallies with his core supporters instead of trying to expand his appeal to independent and more moderate voters.
Republican lawmakers fear that Trump’s personal attacks on Harris may only backfire with swing voters and put downballot GOP candidates in the awkward position of having to respond to Trump’s inflammatory statements.
“There’s no question Trump is going through self-immolation. He’s killing himself. All swing states are won by independent votes, and he’s alienated the independent vote almost every day with some foolish statement that marginalizes him, and as a result the party — and the majority of independents are educated women, and they’re just turned off by the guy and what he says,” said former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), a onetime adviser to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s (Ky.) leadership team.
Republican lawmakers view Harris as a very “beatable” candidate, given her past support for far-left proposals, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) Medicare for All Act and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) sweeping Green New Deal.
Yet Trump has insisted on attacking Harris personally, questioning her racial identity and mocking her intelligence in an over-the-top way, drawing accusations that he’s indulging in sexist tropes.
Trump’s antics have put the spotlight on himself as much as on his opponent, and obscured the debate over issues that GOP lawmakers were hoping to have on 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 showed Harris leading Trump among likely voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the states that make up what’s sometimes called the Democrats’ “blue wall.”
Another Times/Siena poll conducted this month shows Harris leading Trump among likely voters in Arizona, 50 percent support to 45 percent, and Harris slightly ahead of Trump in North Carolina, which Trump won in 2020. The survey conducted Aug. 8-15 also showed Harris cutting down Trump’s lead substantially in Georgia and Nevada.
At the same time, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report said Senate Democratic candidates had widened their lead in several swing states, most notably in Nevada, where Sen. Jacky Rosen (D) is now leading her Republican challenger Sam Brown by 19 points. Cook shifted the Nevada Senate race from “toss up” to “lean Democrat.”
In Pennsylvania, incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D) increased his lead over GOP candidate David McCormick from 8 points to 13 points.
In Arizona, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego has increased his lead over Republican Kari Lake from 5 points to 9 points, and in Michigan, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, the Democratic nominee for Senate, has expanded her lead over former Rep. Mike Rogers (Mich.), her GOP challenger.
Especially concerning for Senate Republicans, internal Republican polling shows Harris gaining ground on Trump in Ohio, a state Republicans had expected Trump to win by double digits.
The New York Times reported that two private polls conducted recently in Ohio by Republican pollsters showed Trump getting less than 50 percent of the vote against Harris in the Buckeye State.
A Rasmussen Reports/Numbers USA poll of likely voters published Monday showed the incumbent Brown leading Republican challenger Bernie Moreno with 47 percent support to Moreno’s 42 percent.
In Florida, a USA Today/Suffolk University/WSVN-TV poll of 500 likely voters conducted Aug. 7-11 showed Harris trailing Trump by only 5 points in the Sunshine State.
Trump’s margin of victory in Florida will have a bearing on Democrats’ chances of knocking off Sen. Rick Scott (R), who is one of their top two targets, along with Sen. Ted Cruz (R) in Texas.
A poll of 1,040 likely voters in Florida by Florida Atlantic University and Mainstreet Research conducted Aug. 10-11 showed Scott leading the Democrat, former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, by 4 points.
The USA Today/Suffolk poll showed Scott with only a 35 percent approval rating, while 49 percent of respondents viewed him unfavorably.
Scott, a strong Trump ally, dismissed the discussion that Trump is slipping in Florida or that he himself is vulnerable to being upset by an underdog challenger.
“Trump’s going to win big in Florida. We’re going to win big in Florida,” he told The Hill in a brief interview. “My likely Democratic opponent is a socialist. That doesn’t play well in Florida.”
Gregg, the former GOP senator from New Hampshire, said Senate Republican candidates are at risk of getting bogged down in responding to Trump’s antics instead of running their own races.
“Downballot Republicans, I think, are very worried,” he said.
“Instead of running your campaign, you’re defending his statements and eccentricities and his marginalization [of Harris]. It’s really bad for a candidate if you can’t run your own campaign. You have to spend all your time defending stupid comments, divisive comments and disruptive comments,” he added.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who was at the Trump hotel in downtown Chicago on Monday to respond to the messaging at the Democratic National Convention, acknowledged the presidential race will have an impact on the battle for the Senate.
“Top of the ticket will always have some impact, there’s no doubt about it,” Johnson said. “They lead the ticket.”
He voiced frustration that the media isn’t asking tougher questions about Harris’s policy positions.
“I’ll keep banging on the media. You’ve got to start asking Vice President Harris questions. You’ve got to hold her accountable. You’ve got to tell the American public or make her tell the American public, ‘This is how I govern. This is what I support,’” he said.
Johnson admitted he doesn’t think taking back the Senate majority is a sure thing for Republicans, even though they are expected to easily pick up retiring Sen. Joe Manchin’s (I) West Virginia Senate seat.
“I’ve always been skittish about things. I never count my chickens before they hatch,” he said.