Dems hope Trump’s behavior will help them regain Senate
Democrats trying to regain control of the Senate in November say they have a powerful new weapon: Donald Trump.
Montana Sen. Jon Tester, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said having Trump at the top of the GOP ticket puts even such senior Republicans as Arizona’s John McCain and Iowa’s Chuck Grassley at risk of losing their seats. He derided efforts by some GOP contenders to keep their distance from the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.
“Donald Trump for the last year-plus has said things and done things that have been totally inappropriate, and he’s gotten away with it, yet the folks here in the Senate have endorsed him almost
en bloc,” Tester told Capital Download on Thursday. “I just think when you do that kind of stuff, knowing full well what you’ve got, it speaks to who you are as a candidate.”
He dismissed efforts by some Republicans to spotlight their differences with Trump while saying they still will vote for their party’s nominee.
“The people who stand up and said, ‘ He said this thing about a judge that I didn’t like, but I’m still going to vote for him, I still endorse him’ — that’s as good as standing for all the principles that he stands for, in my opinion,” Tester told USA TODAY’s weekly video newsmaker series. “He’s their guy, and he’s a known commodity, yet they still endorse him; they still stand up for the policies he stands up for.”
That is an argument Republicans are likely to hear in Democratic attack ads this fall tying them to Trump’s most provocative declarations.
The Montana senator with a distinctive buzz cut just might be the luckiest pol in America. He chairs the Democrats’ Senate campaign arm in a year that already had a favorable landscape: Republicans have 24 Senate seats up in November, Democrats 10.
Democrats hope they will be able to gain the ground necessary to reclaim control of the chamber two years after Republicans gained it.
That would require a net gain of four seats if Democrats hold the White House or five seats if they don’t. A half-dozen of the Republican seats are in such swing states as Florida, Illinois, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“I feel very good about chances in November,” Tester said. “Very good.”
He did express concern that conservative donors, including the Koch brothers network, would divert to Senate contests money they typically would have contributed to the presidential race.
Tester credits the Democrats’ bright prospects to the quality of its candidates — but he said Trump’s presence on the ballot “is going to help our candidates.”
Even McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, are in trouble, Tester said.
He said Grassley could lose to Democrat Patty Judge not only because he supports Trump but also because he denied Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, a confirmation hearing before his panel.
“That’s not Iowa; that’s not Iowa values,” Tester said. “He’s made his bed there.”