RICHLAND CENTER, Wis. — It was Pride Weekend in Wisconsin, a natural time for the state’s trailblazing, openly gay senator to rally her Democratic base, but on Sunday Tammy Baldwin was far away from the parades and rallies in Madison and Milwaukee – on a dairy farm in Republican Richland County.
“I’ll show up in deep-red counties, and they’ll say, ‘I can’t remember the last time we saw a sitting U.S. senator here, especially a Democrat,’” Baldwin said for an hour. in her humble work of handing out plastic cutlery at an annual dairy breakfast, and five months before Wisconsin voters will decide whether to give her a third term. “I think that’s starting to break through.”
Wisconsin is one of seven states that will determine the presidency in November, but it will also help determine which party controls the Senate. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are running neck-and-neck in the state, which Trump narrowly won in 2016 and Biden took back in 2020.
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Baldwin, on the other hand, is well ahead of the president and her likely Republican opponent, wealthy banker Eric Hovde. Polls published early last month by The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College showed Baldwin with a 49% to 40% lead over Hovde. At the end of May, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report estimated the spread to be even wider, at 12 percentage points.
That democratic strength does not only apply to Wisconsin. Democratic candidates for Senate also hold the lead in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. A Marist poll released Tuesday shows Trump leading Biden in Ohio by 7 percentage points, but Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, leading his challenger, Bernie Moreno, by 5 percentage points, a 12-point swing.
In a warning memo shared with donors, Americans for Prosperity Action, a conservative group focused on helping Republicans regain control of the Senate, said voters in states with heated Senate races have deeply negative views of Biden , but a positive view of their Democratic senators.
“It’s still early in the race, but we’re seeing some of the same warning signs we saw in 2022,” said Bill Riggs, spokesman for the group. “So far, voters aren’t tying Democratic Senate candidates to the top of the ticket, and despite deep disapproval, Biden hasn’t become the drag you might expect.”
There is no reason why Democratic Senate candidates are doing so much better than Biden. The policy terrain for congressional candidates may be more favorable than for the president. Most Democratic candidates have incumbency power, in terms of name recognition and fundraising. And unlike Biden, most have opponents who are not well known and therefore vulnerable to negative attacks.
Over pancakes and cheese curds, Scott Crook, a retired business engineer in Richland County, repeated the negative publicity against Hovde when he called him a rich man from California — the Democrats blasted him over his $7 million home in Laguna Beach, California.
“His money isn’t fooling anyone here,” he said.
Lauren Hitt, a spokesperson for the Biden campaign, said Democratic candidates in the Senate were on the president’s agenda. It has benefited them, and will ultimately benefit Biden.
“In 2022, Democrats had the best midterm performance of any presidential party in decades because the Biden-Harris agenda is incredibly popular,” she said, citing abortion rights and drug price controls. “President Biden’s record won at the ballot box in 2022, and it will win again in 2024.”
Republican Senate campaign officials also dismissed any concerns. Reagan McCarthy, a spokesman for Moreno, noted that while Moreno is clawing his way out of a brutal primary season, Brown has the support of barely more than 40% of voters — “a deadly spot for any sitting president.”
Elizabeth Gregory, a spokesperson for Dave McCormick, the Republican challenging Sen. Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, pointed to the Times poll, which has Casey at 46% to McCormick’s 41%. “Incumbent senators with Bob Casey’s poll numbers almost always lose at this point,” she said, “and he will too.”
But for many reasons, the Democratic candidates in the Senate simply have an easier time than Biden. In terms of policy, they are much less bothered by controversies in which the president finds himself caught between the left flank of his party and the broad center of the electorate. Voters generally do not expect Senate candidates to shape U.S. foreign policy in Israel, nor do they oppose a porous U.S.-Mexico border.
“They don’t blame her for all the things they blame President Biden for,” said Pam Flick, a retired teacher and Democrat from Richland Center, Wisconsin.
As Biden balances priorities, including contentious issues like getting billions of dollars in aid for Ukraine, Democratic candidates can zero in more closely on issues like lowering child care costs — which Baldwin spoke about in Milwaukee on Monday.
“Without a doubt,” Baldwin said about whether the president should focus more on kitchen table issues. “You’ve seen him tackle things like junk fees; that step alone is extremely popular. What he hasn’t done yet is connect the dots – that he’s the one cracking down.”
As Biden worked this spring to shore up sagging support among young progressives, cancel student debt against the inclinations of more moderate voters and frame the election as a fight to save democracy, Democratic candidates in the Senate their image among center-left and center-left voters. right voters they will need in swing states.
Brown went on air to promote his bipartisan work to bring semiconductor manufacturing to Ohio, never mentioning Biden’s name even though the president was instrumental in passing the legislation known as the CHIPS and Science Act. In an ad in Nevada, Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Democrat, promotes himself as “one of the most bipartisan senators” who has worked with both parties to help veterans exposed to toxic burns in Iraq. Once again, Biden is not mentioned on one of his major legislative achievements, the PACT Act.
A recent Casey ad in Pennsylvania fared even better, with hardworking workers declaring, “Our own government has turned its back on us and used Chinese steel to build our infrastructure,” adding, “Bob Casey said no .” Viewers could be forgiven for concluding that “our government” was Biden’s, even as the president pushed through the “buy American” provision for steel in his infrastructure bill.
But campaign aides in both parties are cautioning against reading too much into the policies, communications skills or strategic maneuvers of Senate Democrats. Their biggest advantages are much more obvious: Democratic senators running for re-election in Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have the power of the incumbent on their side and are running against Republican challengers who are much less well-known.
And that can make the most difference.
“We’re so damn busy that we don’t pay attention to politics,” said Sherry Nelson, 70, co-owner of the Huff-Nel-Sons Farm where Sunday’s dairy breakfast was held with her husband, Larry Nelson, 69. But, she added about Baldwin, “I think she’s doing a good job.”
As for the presidential contest, both Nelsons were extremely disappointed with their choices.
“It’s a piece of cake,” Larry Nelson said of his vote in November. “That’s about it.”
Biden and Trump are running as incumbent versus incumbent, with no advantage in name identification and both saddled with deeply ingrained negative images.
As Andrew Mamo, a strategist with the Baldwin campaign, put it, he’s trying to shape the opinions of the 50% of Wisconsin voters who don’t know the Republicans in this race and therefore could be swayed by negative advertising. The Biden campaign actually has to change some people’s opinions of Trump, and that is among the hardest jobs in politics. Voters don’t like to admit they were wrong.
The exceptions confirm the rule. In Michigan, where Rep. Elissa Slotkin is running to fill the seat of retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow, her lead over her expected Republican challenger, former Rep. Mike Rogers, is within the margin of error in most polls, with at least a quarter of Michigan voters were unsure. Neither candidate is an incumbent. Both are from the Lansing area, where much of Michigan doesn’t know them.
In the Arizona Senate race to replace Kyrsten Sinema after her retirement, Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, has a consistent lead over his Republican opponent, former news anchor Kari Lake. But that may be because the better-known candidate is Lake, and she is not well-liked, not since she refused to accept defeat in her failed bid to become governor in 2022.
Mike Berg, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said that with Republican candidates still introducing themselves, the Democrats’ most important vote share is the Democrats’ vote share, which is under 50% in most cases.
“Our candidates still have significant room to grow,” he said, adding, “these Democrats will win or lose with Biden regardless of their 11th attempts to distance themselves from him after supporting all of his disastrous policies. ”
Maybe he has a point. In the last two presidential elections, only one candidate, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, won a race in a state that went for the other party’s presidential candidate.
“The fact is that fewer tickets are being split today than at any other time in American history,” Berg said.
Republicans already have an advantage in their quest to take back the House. The Republican Party has all but captured the seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a deep red state. To maintain control of the Senate, Democrats will need to win every swing state race, plus their two races in Republican-leaning Montana and Ohio, unless Democratic challengers somehow defy the odds against Republican incumbents in Texas, Florida or Missouri.
But if Republicans want to raise the score, they shouldn’t be complacent, warned Brian Walsh, a Republican strategist who once worked at the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
“Of course no one is panicking,” he said, “but for Republicans who think Biden’s unpopularity will only translate to these other Democrats, look to 2022,” when the president was also unpopular and Democrats actually gained a seat in captured the Senate. .
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