Nervous GOP candidates keep distance from Trump
Republicans in battleground states are beginning to distance themselves from President Donald Trump amid signs that the party’s grip on the Senate is at risk.
Hints of nervousness among Republican candidates have fuelled the Democratic Party’s dream of overturning its threeseat deficit, which seemed highly unlikely at the start of the year. Since then Trump’s dipping poll numbers and the Democrats’ choice of Joe Biden, a moderate presidential candidate, have changed the calculus.
John James, 38, a businessman and Iraq war veteran who the president considered appointing as his ambassador to the UN in 2018, is hoping to win Michigan’s senate race for the Republicans. Asked in a video conference if there was anything on which he disagreed with Trump, he replied: ‘‘Where do you want to start?’’ He continued: ‘‘Everything from cutting Great Lakes funding, to ‘shithole countries’, to speaking ill of the dead.’’
Susan Collins, who is defending Maine against a wellfunded Democratic challenger having represented the state in the senate since 1997, has chided the president for his ‘‘very uneven’’ handling of the pandemic. ‘‘There are times when I think his message has been spot on and he has really deferred to the public health officials,’’ she said last month. ‘‘And then there are times when I think he’s been off message and has brought up extraneous issues.’’
The Republicans under Mitch McConnell have controlled the 100-member chamber since 2015. The Democrats won control of the House of Representatives at the 2018 midterms, allowing them to impeach Trump. In January the Republicans’ senate majority effectively stifled Democratic efforts to eject the president from office with a conviction in the upper chamber.
Control of the Senate is crucial to any president because a simple majority in the chamber is needed to confirm judges and cabinet appointments and to pass legislation. About a third of the seats are up for grabs every two years.
Analysts consider the races in four states defended by Republicans – Arizona, Colorado, Maine and North Carolina – to be too close to call. The likely Democratic challenger in each raised more money than the incumbent in the first three months of the year. Montana has emerged as a fifth viable target after the Democratic governor Steve Bullock said that he would contest its senate seat. A poll last week put him seven points ahead of Steve Daines, the Republican incumbent. Trump won there by more than 30 points in 2016.
Before the virus hit Republicans were talking up the prospect of gains in November. Their likeliest win is Alabama and Michigan is also a target. There James’s caution represents a change of approach from 2018, when he failed to gain Michigan’s other senate seat. In that campaign he said that he backed the president ‘‘2000 per cent’’.
Arizona and Colorado are the most likely seats to fall to the Democrats. In Arizona the party is putting up Mark Kelly, a former astronaut whose wife, Gabby Giffords, survived a shot to the head while carrying out her duties as a congresswoman there in 2011. He has raised more than any other candidate.
In Maine Sara Gideon, the Democratic state speaker, raised more than US$7 million in the first quarter of this year, nearly three times the US$2.4 million donated to Collins, whose approval rating has plummeted. In North Carolina Cal Cunningham, the Democratic challenger has a nine-point poll lead over the Republican incumbent.
– The Times