Republican ads suggest it’s Trump’s party
In GOP races, candidates stand solidly behind him
WASHINGTON – President Trump has appeared in nearly four out of every 10 GOP ads for Congress this year.
Republicans have praised him, parroted him, promised to drain the swamp and pledged to build the wall.
No Republican candidates for Congress have broadcast ads this year criticizing the president, a telling sign of how a party once divided over Trump has lined up behind him.
“What it clearly shows is that Trump has taken over the Republican Party. There is a benefit to being pro-Trump and a cost to being anti-Trump in the party,” said Ken Goldstein, a University of San Francisco political scientist and expert on campaign advertising.
Trump’s name or image has appeared in 37% of Republican ads for the U.S. House and Senate from Jan. 1 to May 10, according to data provided to the USA TODAY NETWORK by Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political ads. Every one of those Trump mentions has been a favorable one, according to the group.
A primary emphasis
Most of these spots have been primary ads aimed at the party base. Some GOP primaries this year have spawned competitions over who talks, acts or thinks the most like Trump. Republicans have faced attack ads questioning their depth of support for the president. In recent U.S. Senate primaries in Indiana and West Virginia, almost half the GOP spots invoked Trump.
“I’m pro-life, pro-gun and proTrump. It’s time to build the wall, make English our official language and put America first,” said Indiana Republican Todd Rokita in a spot he ran before his state’s Senate primary May 8.
“Strategically, it’s a no brainer” embracing Trump in Republican races, said Brad Todd, a GOP consultant and coauthor of a new book about the populist Trump coalition called The Great Revolt.
“The president has a brand that transcends the party,” said Todd, and a proTrump message has “no downside” among partisan GOP voters and is pure “upside” for that part of the Trump vote that is skeptical of both parties.
Overall, pro-Trump ads have aired more than 44,000 times on local broadcast television in congressional races around the country this year (almost all by Republicans), while anti-Trump ads have aired roughly 20,000 times (all by Democrats).
That disparity is partly driven by the kinds of races that have seen the biggest ad buys. There have been more contested Senate primaries on the Republican side than on the Democratic side. And the biggest Senate races are taking place in states that voted for Trump, lean Republican, or both. West Virginia, Indiana, Montana and Wisconsin have seen the most Senate ads this year.
The ‘super-conservative’ vote
“The Republican primary electorate is still super-conservative,” said Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg, referring to the target audience of many of those ads.
She said she expected the pattern to look different in the fall in states or districts where Trump lost in 2016 and where some Republicans are less likely to embrace the president in their advertising as they compete for swing voters.
At the same time, Greenberg said, a lot of GOP primary winners are “really conservative” and “aren’t people who are going to pivot (to the center) in the fall.”
Trump has been mentioned in 27% of Democratic ads for Congress, overwhelmingly in a negative light.
“When he comes on TV, all I want to do is shut it off. I don’t want my daughter to think that this is normal,” says one woman in an ad for Democrat Sara Jacobs, running in California’s 49th congressional district.
(The ad includes widely played 2015 footage of Trump on the campaign trail, with the tag line “Trump mocks reporter with disability.”)
Just under 4% of Democratic ads feature favorable mentions of Trump. Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana accounts for all those ads. Trump carried his state by 20 points in 2016.
In one ad, Tester says, “Washington’s a mess. But that’s not stopping me from getting bills to help Montana signed into law by President Trump.”
In Tennessee, another red state carried by Trump, Democratic Senate candidate Phil Bredesen invokes the president in carefully crafted language that is neither wholly negative nor wholly positive.
“Look, I’m not running against Donald Trump. I’m running for a Senate seat to represent the people of Tennessee,” Bredesen says in one of his ads.
“There’s a lot of things I don’t personally like about Donald Trump, but he’s the president of the United States, and if he has an idea and is pushing some things that I think are good for the people of Tennessee, I am going to be for it.
“It doesn’t matter where it came from. And likewise, if I think it’s not going to be good for Tennessee, I am going to be against it.”
Because of the way that Trump conquered the GOP as a party outsider, invoking him is a signal to voters on the part of a Republican candidates for Congress.
“In the eyes of many Republican voters and independents who lean Republican,” said Todd, the GOP strategist, “if you are not for the president, then you must be against him.”