Very early on in the cycle, Senate GOP campaign chief Steve Daines prioritized recruiting wealthy, drama-free Republican Senate candidates who could finance their own campaigns, perform well in the general, and not irk Donald Trump. That trend has largely paid off, as most of Daines's preferred picks have won their primaries with the GOP nominee's blessing as they gear up for a grueling fall.
Now comes the hard part — actually kicking these Democratic incumbents to the curb with an entirely new Democratic nominee at the top of the ticket.
Like Democrats, Republicans project confidence that Vice President Kamala Harris's promotion will play to their favor at the ballot box. "The issues are the same, and my view is we're going to run on issues," Senator Cynthia Lummis (R., Wyo.) told NR in the U.S. Capitol last week. "And she was very much a part of the Biden-Harris regime. She's going to have to explain the views on the border, on inflation, on the departure from Afghanistan, and the list goes on."
"It's gonna be a tough race," Senator Roger Marshall (R., Kan.) said of the Trump-vs.-Harris contest last Thursday. He predicted the Harris-induced "positive bump" in battleground polling will start to fade "once America remembers who she is" — a "California progressive who is left of Joe Biden."
The NRSC wrote a memo earlier this month characterizing Harris as a candidate who creates "strong down-ballot opportunity" for Republicans. The memo hits her as a "San Francisco radical" and cites a number of her perceived weaknesses, including her former ranking as the most liberal senator by GovTrack (which has since been deleted), the record number of illegal immigrants who have crossed the southern border under the Biden-Harris administration, her flip-flopping on fracking, and her soft-on-crime policy positions. There's also an entire category dedicated to her "weird" habits, including laughing at inappropriate moments and repeatedly expressing her love of Venn diagrams . . .
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