Alex Isenstadt, Seung Min Kim and Kevin Robillard report that Republicans have a shortage of cash to support candidates whose success or failure at the polls will determine the makeup of the Senate that takes office in January:
Republicans are set to be massively outspent on TV ads in seven of the eight states that are likely to decide control of the chamber. The spending disadvantage could badly hinder the GOP’s prospects, and it has led to growing frustration among the party’s top strategists — many of whom are convinced it’s long past time to cut Trump loose and focus almost exclusively on preserving the Senate majority.
Republicans say they are particularly concerned that Democrats will use their financial advantage to tie the GOP candidates to an increasingly toxic Trump, who is now besieged by numerous accusations of sexual assault. [...]
“I think it’s very disconcerting,” said Steven Law, who oversees Senate Leadership Fund, the principal outside group defending the Republican majority. “What we’re seeing is, Democrats’ big money has concluded that the presidential race is banked. So now, it’s pouring into the most competitive Senate races.”
Law added that Democrats on the other hand are blessed with “almost giddy donor enthusiasm.”
Perhaps he wanted to, but Law did not acknowledge that enthusiasm for funding a takeover of the Senate majority is fueled in great part by the rancid fellow Republicans have chosen to be their presidential candidate this year: a man who has a warm spot for white nationalists and misogyny who has been inciting hatred and violence for more than a year and is so deeply entangled in verifiable lies that he now spends considerable time at his ever-smaller rallies telling lies about lies.
One key Republican problem? The National Republican Senatorial Committee raised a lot of money but spent it early on—leaving it begging now. And some of the usual suspects, the Koch brothers, for instance, aren’t coming through the way they have in the past.
But Democrats hoping for victories in Florida, Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—where they are set to outspend Republicans except in Florida—still worry that there could be a surge of Republican money flowing to these Senate races in the final weeks of the campaign. And then, of course, there’s the impact of dark money.
Do you live in a state that will determine the presidential race and/or who controls the Senate? Get involved this weekend in crucial door-to-door canvasses and phone banks.