Democrats ‘Are Literally Praying’ For Kari Lake to Run For Senate While GOP Scurries to Recruit More Electable Candidates
AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
Senate Republican leaders are furiously working to avoid their MAGA-induced stumbles from the 2022 midterms repeating in 2024, while Democrats “are literally praying” for that exact thing to happen, according to a report by Politico.
Failed Arizona candidate Kari Lake is perhaps one of the most prominent examples, wrote Politico’s Burgess Everett and Holly Otterbein. The former television news anchor was boosted by a high level of name recognition and former President Donald Trump’s endorsement, but her far-right political positions and penchant for conspiracies resulted in her snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Lake lost to Katie Hobbs, who was frequently criticized by her fellow Democrats for a seemingly lackluster campaign, because she was so extreme that tens of thousands of Arizona Republicans voted for other GOP candidates but refused to vote for Lake.
In the aftermath of the election, Lake has only doubled down on the conspiracies, continuing to insist she won the election and calling herself the “duly-elected governor of Arizona” — even after Hobbs was sworn into office.
These antics may get cheers among the MAGA faithful, but proved to be general election poison.
Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb has already declared his candidacy for the state’s 2024 GOP Senate primary; Lake is generally viewed to be to his right and a closer fit for Trump’s wing of the party.
That has resulted in Arizona Democrats “literally praying” that Lake jumps into the 2024 Senate race, wrote Everett and Otterbein. The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the GOP organization dedicated to supporting Republican incumbents and electing Republicans to the Senate, “has not yet taken a position,” but Lake recently met with NRSC Chairman Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) and other GOP senators, which the Politico reporters deemed “a sign she is inching closer toward a [Senate] bid.”
A similar dynamic is playing out in other key states where the senate seat is on the 2024 ballot, with Democrats mostly taking great pains to not get in the way of Republicans delivering easier-to-defeat opponents. Incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) laughed off questions about a potential Republican challenger, Bernie Moreno, who “called for reparations for Northern families who fought in the Civil War.”
And in Pennsylvania, when Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) was asked about the chances the GOP might “screw up the primary,” he told Politico, “I am not going to provide them any commentary that might help them.” One private poll the reporters reviewed showed Casey sailing past Doug Mastriano, who got stomped by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) in the 2022 governor’s race by about 14 points, but a much closer margin if he has to face former hedge fund CEO David McCormick. McCormick ran in 2022 but lost the GOP primary to the Trump-backed Mastriano.
“The folks who win Republican primaries tend to be the extreme candidates,” said Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman. “And that will be an opportunity for us.”
One state where Democrats are willing to take more aggressive actions is Nevada, according to Politico, coming off “one of the closest [races] in the country” but “near-giddy” that Jim Marchant had thrown his hat in the ring to challenge Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV):
Marchant is on a multi-year losing streak in key races — but he’s still a Republican primary contender given his alliance with the former president and track record of prevailing in primaries.
“He is, I believe, a three-time loser. A MAGA election denier. And so, he’s going to have his challenges,” Rosen said in an interview of Marchant, a former state lawmaker. “He’s going to have to sell himself.”
As Rosen sees it, Marchant aligns well with the Nevada GOP’s leadership, but not the battleground state’s voters. And he’s only one name on a list of dream opponents who Democrats hope to see prevail in GOP primaries and soften their rocky path to keeping the Senate majority next year.
The Republicans aren’t willing to gamble on the whims of their own voters, and are “maneuvering to avoid the pitfalls of 2022, when the party’s campaign arm took a laissez-faire approach and essentially let Trump’s endorsement power pick many of their nominees,” wrote Everett and Otterbein. In Nevada, Daines and the NRSC are urging Sam Brown to get in the race, finding him more electable than Marchant, and “putting its thumb on the scale” for West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) over “conservative hardliner” Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV).
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) himself recruited Justice into the race, and he went so far as to publicly criticize Trump and the MAGA wing of the party for the “candidate quality” issues that plagued Republicans during the 2022 midterms.
