DIEHL: LIZ LOSING LUSTER
Says voters giving him ‘Kavanaugh bump’
GOP U.S. Senate candidate Geoff Diehl claims he’s benefiting from a “Kavanaugh bump,” with the contentious Supreme Court nomination fight energizing Republicans and compelling some Democrats to support him against Democratic rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whom Diehl called a “national embarrassment.”
“I’ve noticed just in the past few days myself people saying they don’t like how things went,” said Diehl, a Republican state representative from Whitman. “They were very upset that she seemed to be one of the ringleaders in setting up this tone.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in Saturday as the newest member of the Supreme Court after a brutally contentious several weeks during which several women levied sexual-misconduct allegations against him, including one, Christine Blasey Ford, who testified that he had drunkenly groped her when they were teenagers.
“People don’t like that the senator used uncorroborated testimony of Ford to fundraise,” Diehl said, referring to an email Warren sent out in the midst of the rancor seeking donations while referencing Ford’s testimony. “Every action the senator is taking is a calculated effort to position herself for a presidential nominee.”
Warren, who’s frequently talked about as a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, announced Sept. 29 that she’s “taking a hard look” at a run for the nation’s highest office, saying the hearings have pushed her in that direction. The senator repeatedly accused Kavanaugh of lying and, in a fundraising email, referred to him as a “partisan hack” and “entitled judicial hitman.”
Diehl said he hasn’t yet done polling recently enough to back up the hypothesis he’s seen an increase in support. The most recent polling, conducted between Sept. 17 and 21 by WBUR and MassINC, showed Warren up over Diehl, 56-30.
National media reports lately have proclaimed a “Kavanaugh bump,” helping the GOP close what had been a yawning enthusiasm gap the Democrats held in the run-up to the midterms.
An NPR Marist poll released Wednesday showed just a 2 percent difference, a statistical tie, between Dem- ocrats and Republicans who thought the upcoming election was “very important.” That’s down from a 10-point difference favoring Democrats in July.
In several key races, polls show gains for the GOP, notably in North Dakota and Missouri, where Democrat incumbents are losing ground.
Polls show Kavanaugh nationwide generally is more unpopular than not — but people also don’t like how Democrats handled the confirmation process, according to a CNN poll released yesterday.
Diehl said he believes the Kavanaugh topic could be a wedge issue that actually brings some Democrats over to his side against Warren.
“It turned a lot of new people off — she’s fully willing to ruin somebody’s life and reputation,” Diehl said. “She’s been a national embarrassment.”