Midterm message strategy

Instead of touting tax cuts, GOP candidates motivate with anxiety

WASHINGTON » There’s a border crisis in Pennsylvania. The radical left is surging in New Jersey. And Nancy Pelosi is a threat to New York.

Republican candidates in the nation’s premier midterm battlegrounds have embraced a central message in their fight to maintain the House majority this fall — and it has little to do with the surging economy or the sweeping tax cuts that the GOP celebrated as a once-in-a-generation achievement just eight months ago.

Instead, as Republicans enter the final month of the primary season, they’re looking ahead to a general-election strategy of embracing anxiety as a tool to motivate voters. That was clear this week as the GOP’s closing message in an Ohio special election questioned Democrat Danny O’Connor’s connection to Pelosi, the House Democratic

leader and preferred super villain for Republicans.

“We wish it got the pitch forks out and it doesn’t,” GOP ad maker Will Ritter said of the Republican tax cuts.

Some Republican strategists are frustrated the party isn’t focused on the tax law or the broader health of the economy in the run-up to Election Day. Others concede that in the Trump era, there’s no better motivator than fear of the other side, particularly the prospect of Pelosi returning to the speaker’s chair.

The plan had some success in Ohio: The race was too close to call Wednesday as Republican Troy Balderson maintained a razor-thin advantage over O’Connor, staving off an embarrassing GOP defeat for now. Going forward, the debate over highlighting the tax law will help determine whether Republicans will maintain control of Capitol Hill after November.

While Republicans are reluctant to engage on tax cuts, it’s a fight Democrats — and their voters — want.

“The tax cuts were for the top ... income earners,” said George Stringer, a 58-yearold Democrat who lives in Detroit. “The rich keep getting richer, the poor keep getting poorer.”

In Ohio, which hosted the season’s final special election, O’Connor railed against the tax cuts as a giveaway to the rich that threatened Medicare and Social Security. While his Republican opponent may prevail, the 31-yearold Democrat trailed by less than 1 percentage point in a district that’s been in Republican hands since before he was born. On the defensive, Balderson appeared in a late ad sitting next to his ailing mother and promising that he wouldn’t dismantle the social safety net.