Democrats meddling in Republican primaries
In the final days of a particularly nasty Republican Senate primary in Ohio, a conservative candidate is getting an unusual boost from the Democratic Party.
As my colleague Michael Bender reported last week, a Democratic group is spending $2.7 million on one advertisement highlighting the conservative credentials of Bernie Moreno, the Cleveland businessman backed by former President Donald Trump.
The ad calls Moreno a “MAGA Republican” who is “too conservative for Ohio,” describing him in terms likely to make him more attractive to conservative primary voters in Ohio. Party strategists believe Moreno will be an easier opponent for incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in the general election.
Interference in Republican primaries has become a regular tactic for Democrats in recent years. But it has become more ideologically complicated as President Biden campaigns on the need to defend democracy against Trump-aligned Republicans like Moreno.
In his Senate bid, Moreno has embraced Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election, repeating the former president’s discredited accusations of a “stolen” election and calling those prosecuted for storming the Capitol “political prisoners.” ‘ mentioned.
The risk of such primary interference is that Democrats could undermine Biden’s message about the threat to democracy and further erode confidence in the elections. Not to mention the likelihood that Moreno could win in November.
A history of meddling
One of the first instances of Democratic intervention in a Republican primary occurred in 2012, when Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, the Democratic incumbent, ran ads to help Todd Akin, a conservative Republican congressman, win his party’s nomination to get.
McCaskill knew that Missouri was leaning to the right, and that its approval rating would be dragged down by President Obama’s unpopularity in the state. Her best chance at re-election was to portray herself as the “reasonable moderate” in the race. And for that she needed an extreme Republican opponent.
Her team invested $1.7 million in ads for the Republican primary, calling Akin “the most conservative congressman in Missouri” and “Missouri’s true conservative.”
The tactic succeeded. After Akin won the Republican nomination, McCaskill defeated him in the general election.
Give the extreme right a boost
The strategy has become increasingly popular in recent yearsespecially as the Republican primaries have tilted increasingly to the right.
In 2022, Democrats spent about $53 million to unseat far-right Republican candidates who questioned or denied the outcome of the 2020 election. according to The Washington Postlargely in states that are democratically oriented.
Most of that spending took place in Illinois, where the party successfully promoted a Republican candidate for governor, Darren Bailey, who said it was “terrible” that Republicans in the state wanted Trump to concede the 2020 election. (Bailey, who is now running for a House seat, was a topic in Friday’s newsletter.)
The tactic has been carried over into this cycle. Earlier this month, Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat running for Senate in California, spent $10 million to elevate Steve Garvey, a Republican former baseball star. Garvey came in second in the state’s “jungle” primary, where the top two winners advance to the general election regardless of party affiliation. It is widely believed that Schiff is headed to the Senate.
The approach has also had an effect in some swing states. During the 2022 election for Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate, ran an ad during the Republican primaries highlighting the conservative credentials of Doug Mastriano, a right-wing candidate. Mastriano won the primary, after which Shapiro defeated him in a landslide.
Dangerous area
Some Democrats say the tactic risks undermining a central campaign message about the dangers to democracy if Trump regains power.
“It is risky and unethical to promote a candidate whose campaign is based on undermining confidence in our elections.” nearly three dozen former Democrats wrote House and Senate lawmakers in 2022. “Our democracy is fragile, so we cannot tolerate political parties trying to support candidates whose message is to erode our commitment to fair elections.”
There’s also a big difference between getting involved in a blue state or a swing state, and a state like Ohio, which reliably turned Republican in recent elections. In 2020, Trump defeated Biden by eight points in the state. Two years later, Republican Senate candidate JD Vance won by six points.
Ohio’s conservative terrain poses a real danger to this meddlesome strategy. If Democrats help Moreno become the Republican nominee, that could give Brown an advantage. But Democrats might as well help elect exactly the kind of candidate they most vocally oppose.
Donald Trump’s financial crisis
Donald Trump’s lawyers announced Monday that he had failed to secure a bond of about half a billion dollars in his New York civil fraud case, raising the prospect that the state could try to foreclose on some of his bank accounts. to freeze and seize some of his large properties. .
The court filing, filed a week before the bond’s maturity date, suggested the former president could soon face a financial crisis. Trump has asked the appeals court to suspend the $454 million judgment that a New York judge imposed on Trump last month in the fraud case, or accept a bail amount of just $100 million.
He has been unable to secure full bail, his lawyers said, calling it a “practical impossibility” despite “diligent efforts.” He has approached about 30 companies that provide professional bonds, the lawyers said, but has encountered “insurmountable difficulties.”
The companies would essentially promise to overrule Trump’s judgment if he lost an appeal and failed to pay up. In return, he would pledge collateral and pay the company a fee of up to 3 percent of the bond.
They appear to be addressing a significant problem: Trump does not have sufficient liquidity to obtain the bond. To offer a bond of this size, Trump’s companies would require him to provide more than $550 million in cash, stocks and bonds as collateral — an amount he simply does not have.
Trump has more than $350 million in cash, according to a recent New York Times analysis, far less than what he needs. Although the former president brags about his billions, his wealth is largely derived from the value of his real estate, which bond companies rarely accept as collateral.
The approaching deadline could not have come at a worse time for Trump. Last week, he finalized a $91.6 million bond in a defamation case he recently lost to writer E. Jean Carroll.
— Ben Protess, Kate Christobek And Maggie Haberman
Read the full story here.