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Michelle Cottle
By Michelle Cottle
Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for Opinion and is a host of the podcast “Matter of Opinion.”
In the 2022 midterms, Donald Trump made life hell for Republican Party leaders trying to take back the Senate and win governor’s races in swing states like Arizona and Pennsylvania. In multiple primaries, the MAGA king backed unfit, unappealing players who bent the knee to him and then belly-flopped in the November elections. Remember Herschel Walker? Don Bolduc? Blake Masters? Dr. Oz?
One of the most interesting developments in Republican politics this election cycle is that Senate leaders have clearly learned some lessons from Mr. Trump’s lousy taste in candidates. After losing the House in 2018 and the Senate in 2020, then watching their anticipated red wave flatten out in 2022, Republicans are figuring out how to handle Mr. Trump better — in some cases even deploying him to advance not-so-MAGAish candidates with a good shot at winning in not-so-MAGAish states.
Whatever myriad factors were at play in 2022 (abortion rights, anyone?), a big part of the problem was embarrassingly basic: “candidate quality,” as the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell delicately put it. If Republicans wind up controlling the Senate next year, it will be because they heeded their Grim Reaper from Kentucky.
Sick of all the losing, Senate Republicans got working on quality control for 2024 before their 2022 tears had even dried. They recruited candidates in several states who had broader appeal than the previous bunch, dispatched (or at least neutered) some of their more problematic (read: unhinged) aspirants and — here’s the real kicker — kept the former president feeling heard, appreciated and important enough to deter him from making so much mischief.
Let us pause here to stress that the MAGA king is still making the Senate trail bumpy. On Tuesday, Ohio Republicans picked Bernie Moreno, a businessman blessed by Mr. Trump, to challenge the Democratic senator Sherrod Brown in November. In the final weeks of his campaign against two Republican rivals, Mr. Moreno leaned into dividing the party along MAGA lines. “The Never-Trumper movement is still alive in Ohio. It’s the last gasp of breath,” he declared. “And on Tuesday, we’re going to kill that last gasp of breath.” Mr. Moreno will now roll on toward November and try to win with the Forever-Trump base. But Ohio is in some ways the exception that proves the rule: In other states, things look less turbulent for the red team than they have in years.
Among the Republican strategists and staff members I’ve talked to, the bulk of the credit for this year’s upgraded roster is being showered on Senator Steve Daines of Montana, who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate G.O.P. campaign arm. Early in his tenure there, he announced that unlike the previous chairman, he would be playing favorites in the party’s 2024 primaries, aggressively recruiting and boosting candidates who he felt had what it took to win general elections, which, in many places, meant appealing to independent and moderate voters.
The committee elevated relatively mainstream candidates in purplish states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada. It endorsed early and often and made clear that less promising potential players could expect to get hit with unpleasant oppo research if they caused trouble. “Where there are candidates that are not able to win general elections, we’re going to be doing all we can to dissuade them,” Mr. Daines noted mildly last April. “And where there are candidates who can win general elections, do all we can to persuade them.”
In Pennsylvania, Daines & Company smoothed the path for David McCormick, the former hedge fund manager who narrowly lost the 2022 Senate nomination to the Trump-backed Mehmet Oz, who then got trounced by the Democrat John Fetterman in the general election. This time around, an early priority for Republicans was to keep another 2022 loser, Doug Mastriano, the far-right state senator who biffed his bid for governor, out of the mix. Early last year, Mr. Daines slammed Mr. Mastriano’s electability, putting him on notice that the party was not playing. A couple of months later, Mr. Mastriano announced he had decided not to run. Various G.O.P. senators, meanwhile, worked to persuade the state G.O.P., which stayed neutral in 2022, to endorse Mr. McCormick.
The biggest targets on Mr. Daines’s list are three seats held by Democrats in states that went for Mr. Trump in 2020: West Virginia, Ohio and Montana.
In blood-red Montana, the Democratic senator Jon Tester’s electoral endurance has been an enduring sore spot for Republicans. Now, this is Daines’s home state; he knows it well. And to turn up the heat on Mr. Tester, the N.R.S.C. went all in on wooing Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL who moved to the state about a decade ago and started two successful businesses. (Read: He can self-fund his campaign.) Mr. Daines arranged for multiple meetings between Mr. Sheehy and Mr. Trump. When Representative Matt Rosendale, a MAGA fanboy whom Mr. Trump endorsed for Senate in 2018 and for his House re-election in 2022, threatened to complicate life by jumping into the race last month, Mr. Daines was ready for him. Just hours after Mr. Rosendale’s announcement, Mr. Trump announced his endorsement of Mr. Sheehy. Six days later, Mr. Rosendale dropped out.
In his quality crusade, Mr. Daines has enjoyed the help of Mr. McConnell and the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with the Republican leader. Mr. McConnell was especially aggressive in wooing Gov. Jim Justice to run for Senate this year in West Virginia. Mr. Justice is not the most MAGA candidate eyeing the seat. That would be Representative Alex Mooney, whom Mr. Trump endorsed in his House bid in 2022. But Mr. Justice, a popular governor, was considered the bigger threat to the Democratic incumbent, Joe Manchin. Mr. McConnell was on a plane to West Virginia to give Mr. Justice the hard sell right after the 2022 elections, one Republican strategist told me. In the following months, the Senate Leadership Fund released multiple polls (which it doesn’t often do) showing Mr. Justice’s strength against Mr. Manchin. The dream outcome for Republicans was to drive Mr. Manchin from the race. Last November, the senator announced he would not run for re-election.
In redder environs, the party establishment went the other way. In Indiana the N.R.S.C. made clear that it would back Representative Jim Banks, the preferred candidate of Trumpworld, rather than the former governor Mitch Daniels, a more traditional model of Republican who was considering a run.
And in perhaps the primaries’ biggest surprise so far, the N.R.S.C. persuaded Larry Hogan, a popular former governor of Maryland and fierce Trump critic, to run, despite his previous refusals. Recent polling shows Mr. Hogan with a fat lead over the Democratic field. Those numbers seem unlikely to hold in a place as blue as Maryland. But even if Mr. Hogan doesn’t carry the state, he will force Democrats to throw money at a race they ordinarily could ignore.
What feels almost as surprising as Republicans’ luring Mr. Hogan into a race is the fact that Mr. Trump hasn’t freaked out about it. The former president seems to be notably less of a problem this cycle than last. He has thrown in with fewer unhinged contenders, and he has embraced Mr. Daines’s preference on candidates such as Mr. Sheehy, Mr. Justice and the former representative Mike Rogers in Michigan.
The key, say Republicans, is that Mr. Daines is considered a reliable supporter of the MAGA king, not to mention a big hunting buddy of Donald Trump Jr.’s. Mr. Daines was an early Senate endorser of Mr. Trump’s 2024 candidacy and has consistently argued that the former president could help the party win seats — not a widely held view in recent years. This kind of devotion has won Mr. Daines Brownie points with and a dollop of trust from the loyalty-obsessed Mr. Trump. The former president is even pushing Mr. Daines to run for Republican leader.
Nurturing those ties, Mr. Daines has kept up a steady flow of calls and texts with Mr. Trump, making the case for his preferred candidates and making the proper introductions when useful. He has also served as a go-between with McConnellworld, since the G.O.P. Senate leader isn’t on the best of terms with Mr. Trump.
None of which means Republicans will triumph in their quest to control the Senate. Trump fever still burns hot among the base, and some of the party’s nominees may simply prove too much for a general electorate. Notably, to avoid a nasty and futile primary, the G.O.P. establishment had little choice but to get behind the MAGAtastic Kari Lake in Arizona, who is popular with the base there. The writing was on the wall, as the Republican strategist put it to me. (She is, however, being urged to stay focused on the future rather than relitigate certain electoral defeats.) In Ohio, Mr. Moreno could wind up causing Republicans major heartburn and costing them mounds of campaign cash, though the N.R.S.C. insisted that any of the Republicans running could beat Mr. Brown (and therefore it didn’t need to endorse in the primary). And even non-MAGA candidates will be facing headwinds of Democratic incumbency, among other challenges.
But those are concerns for down the trail. For now, the G.O.P. is feeling pretty upbeat about its candidate quality — not to mention its progress in learning how to manage Mr. Trump. This should have Democrats and other MAGA skeptics more than a little uneasy.
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Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for Opinion and is a host of the podcast “Matter of Opinion.” She has covered Washington and politics since the Clinton administration.
@mcottle
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