SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE ADemocratic media consultant
who co-founded Stop Him Now.
But senators themselves
grimace at the thought of
focusing on Trump, especially in
states like Arizona, where Biden
won by a little more than 10,
votes out of more than 3.3 million
ballots cast.
Asked about the insurrection,
Kelly likened it to his days as an
astronaut.
“I was at NASA when we had
the space shuttle Columbia
accident,” he said, referencing the
deadly 2003 crash.
“You do an investigation. And
you figure out, ‘Why did this
happen?’ And then you come up
with a plan,” Kelly said.
He suggested that the House
select committee might come up
with proposals to ensure
something like that “does not
happen again,” but he does not
believe it will be a central issue in
his campaign.
“The American people are
focused on what’s going on in
their lives,” Kelly said.an email exchange.
A CNN poll released Friday
showed a small silver lining for
Democrats advocating a get-
tough-on-Trump message. Yes, by
42 percent to 32 percent, voters
said they preferred a
congressional candidate who
opposes Biden.
But by a bigger margin, 44
percent to 27 percent, voters
prefer candidates who oppose
Trump.
Garin wants to remind the
current president’s 81 million
voters that many of this fall’s GOP
candidates will be vocal
supporters of the former
president, who is very much
considering another national
campaign.
“Trump personally is relevant
to the extent that voters see
Republican victories in 2022 as
setting the stage for Trump’s
comeback in 2024,” he wrote.
Democratic incumbents have
embraced the traditional path for
running in tough midterm
elections: localizing the races and
creating separation from their
party’s unpopular president.
“When I’m home and I talk to
Nevadans, it’s the kitchen-table
issues. It’s health care, access to
health care, prescription drug
negotiations,” said Cortez Masto,
who served as chairwoman of the
Democratic Senatorial Campaign
Committee in the successful 2020
elections. “It is the cost of
prescription drugs. It is economy
and jobs and education. Those are
the top things.”
“I’m really focused on the work
when I’m here, trying to get this
child tax credit expanded or
extended. I’m focused right now
on the high cost that Georgians
and other Americans are facing,”
Warnock said in a brief interview
Wednesday, pledging to “hold
these corporate entities
responsible” for price gauging.
Warnock released a new ad
Friday that touted his willingness
to work with Republicans to get
things done for Georgians.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.),
Cortez Masto’s successor as DSCC
chairman, wants his candidates
to thread a needle.
“I think it’s incredibly
important to clearly focus on
things that are impacting families
today, which are the bread-and-
butter issues, and candidates
need to lean in to those issues,”
Peters said. “But they should also
bring up the fundamental threat
to our constitutional democracy
being posed by all too many
Republicans.”
He thinks a Trump-focused
message can help energize liberal
voters, so that ads and direct mail
might be tailored to talk about the
former president to that bloc of
supporters.
“You always have to know your
audience,” Peters said.
Grunwald’s camp, while
understanding that House and
Senate incumbents will be
reluctant to talk about Trump
controversies, is pushing party
leaders to embrace an outside
effort to even target suburban
swing voters with this message.
Rather than just sitting in a
defensive crouch talking about
local accomplishments, they say
Democrats should roll the dice
with their own national message,
tying their opponents to the ex-
president and his desire to
reclaim the presidency even after
the Jan. 6 riots.
They believe the DSCC and
super PAC allies could fill this
lane, especially since Trump has
already christened front-runners
in the Nevada and Georgia Senate
races and expects to be out on the
trail with rallies in the fall.
“The biggest ally we have is
Trump himself. He’s not going to
allow Chris Christie or Ron
DeSantis or anyone else define
the future of the Republican
Party. He wants the decision of
whether to run again be
something that he alone decides,”
said Saul Shorr, a veteranDemocrats
heading into
turbulent
reelection battles
want to focus their
campaigns on the bread-and-
butter issues that appeal to swing
voters, not Donald Trump’s
efforts to overturn the 2020
election.
Take Wednesday’s introduction
of legislation that would suspend
the federal gas tax for the rest of
this year. Its lead sponsor is Sen.
Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), with three
other initial co-sponsors being
Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-
Nev.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.)
and Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.).
That quartet represents the
most endangered Senate
Democrats and could decide the
Senate majority next year: If all
four win, Republicans probably
have no path to getting the 51
seats. These Democrats say
inflation is a big concern for their
voters, not the former president.
“Things like the price of
gasoline, the price of ground beef
or groceries or prescription
drugs, especially if they’re a
senior,” Kelly said in a brief
interview. “You know, they’re not
looking back at an old — an
election a year ago. They’re
thinking about, ‘What affects my
family?’ ”
That message has echoes of
2018 when Democrats won the
House majority on a similar
message, imploring candidates to
avoid the bright lights that Trump
messaging brings.
But some Democrats fear that
this is letting the ex-president’s
allies off the hook. They believe
that voters, both the liberal base
and some swing voters in the
suburbs, need to hear a message
that links GOP candidates to the
attempts to overturn President
Biden’s victory and future threats
to elections.
“Yes, Democrats need a
positive narrative about the work
we are doing for the American
people,” Stop Him Now, a super
PAC formed last month, said in
releasing its first ad. “Yes, we need
smart, aggressive, localized
campaigns against individual
opponents. ... But it won’t be
enough.”
It begins with video of rioters
attacking the Capitol and
transitions to various GOP
candidates shaking hands with
Trump, ending with the image of
a police officer getting crushed by
rioters on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Republicans in ’22 means
Trump in ’24,” the ad reads in its
final image, with shattered
Capitol windows in the backdrop.
These strategists expect
candidates to occupy the
traditional lanes of voicing a
positive agenda about what
incumbents have delivered and
also striking back at their
opponents with negative ads
specific to their own history.
“Our concern was that lane
three — the Trump lane — was
being abandoned,” Mandy
Grunwald, a veteran strategist
who co-founded the Trump-
focused PAC, said in an interview
Friday.
That fear grew in the weeks
after Terry McAuliffe’s loss in the
Virginia gubernatorial race, after
his closing weeks focused on
tying now-Gov. Glenn Youngkin
(R) to Trump.
He came up short in a state
Biden won comfortably. Many
Democrats deemed that approach
too risky, favoring the 2018
approach of appealing to swing
voters’ pocket books.
Geoff Garin, the pollster for
Barack Obama’s successful 2008
and 2012 campaigns, is also
calling for a sharper focus on
linking these candidates to the ex-
president.
“More important than Trump
himself is what has happened to
the Republican Party in the wake
of Trump. This is a party that in
many ways has become extreme
and radicalized,” Garin wrote inDemocrats torn on kitchen-table issues, focusing on Trump ahead of midterms@PKCapitol
PAUL KANEJABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) s ays his constituents are more concerned about inflation than they are about
the former president. “They’re not looking back at ... an election a year ago,” he said.The CaseStudy®Since our first renovation over 60 years ago we’ve
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