Republican Senate candidates take the spotlight at Milwaukee convention as GOP eyes expanded map

By Simone Pathe, CNN

(CNN) — The excitement at the Republican National Convention isn’t just about Donald Trump and his new running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance – it also extends to Senate candidates who the party believes can help deliver the former president a GOP majority on Capitol Hill.

While Democrats in competitive Senate races have largely been overperforming President Joe Biden in polling so far this year, Republicans are hopeful that that movement in favor of Trump at the top of the ticket will close those gaps and potentially expand this year’s playing field. That was reflected in the roster of candidates speaking Tuesday night, which included Hung Cao, the GOP Senate nominee in Virginia, a state Biden won by 10 points in 2020.

Besides Virginia – which New York Times/Siena College polling out this week showed to be a margin-of-error presidential race – Republicans are also eyeing the Senate race in New Mexico, a state Biden carried by 11 points.

Montana Sen. Steve Daines, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, specifically touted New Mexico GOP nominee Nella Domenici, the daughter of the late Sen. Pete Domenici, at a CNN-Politico Grill event in Milwaukee on Monday. Polling conducted by the NRSC and Domenici’s campaign last month showed her in a margin-of-error race with Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich.

Democrats, however, don’t see trouble signs for their incumbents in those states. “While Democrats are taking nothing for granted, New Mexico and Virginia have elected Democrats to the US Senate for over a decade and will do so again this cycle,” said a national Democrat working on Senate races.

Republicans need to pick up just one or two seats to flip the Senate, depending on who wins the White House. And with Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin retiring from deep-red West Virginia, they’re likely to get at least one of those. The top three seats on CNN’s ranking of the Senate seats most likely to flip have consistently been in states Trump twice won comfortably, followed by presidential battlegrounds.

Maryland, which backed Biden by more than 30 points, joined the list of GOP targets after former two-term Gov. Larry Hogan entered the race. But the popular Republican, who has made clear he isn’t supporting Trump despite having the former president’s support, was unsurprisingly not onstage Tuesday night.

Election observers don’t see improving numbers for Trump drastically changing a map that already favored his party.

“It expands the map for Republicans at the very margin of the battlefield. But the status quo was already a pretty expansive list of opportunities for Republicans,” Jacob Rubashkin, deputy editor of Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales, told CNN, arguing that New Mexico is a more realistic takeover opportunity for Senate Republicans than Virginia.

Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez’s conviction Tuesday in his federal corruption trial – and his colleagues’ calls for him to step down – has put a fresh spotlight on New Jersey, where Democratic Rep. Andy Kim has a strong path to election in a state that backed Biden by 16 points in 2020. There’s still the possibility Menendez could run as an independent and split the Democratic vote, but Rubashkin doesn’t think that’s a big threat to Democrats.

“The reality was that (Menendez) was so unpopular in the state by the time the verdict came down that any support he would have gotten would not have complicated Andy Kim’s path in a major way,” he said.

While the Senate landscape unquestionably benefits Republicans, some of the most vulnerable Senate Democratic incumbents have leaned on strong brands in their states and fundraising advantages to create separation from Biden. Republicans recruited a large crop of wealthy candidates, many of them businessmen, to run this year. But that hasn’t yet closed Democrats’ fundraising edge, and it’s fueled Democratic attacks on the Republican candidates’ business ties and out-of-state connections.

Daines argued Monday that polling from this spring and early summer won’t reflect what happens in November, suggesting that lower-propensity voters who support Trump will turn out this year in a way they did not during the 2022 midterms. Daines said the NRSC halted its polling on Saturday after the assassination attempt on Trump to let things “cool off a bit.” There’s been limited public polling – especially of Senate races – since last month’s presidential debate.

Since the debate, some GOP Senate candidates have run ads questioning Biden’s mental fitness for office, trying to pressure Democratic incumbents into answering whether he’s fit to serve. But Daines said this week that the president’s policies, rather than his acuity, should be the focus.

“I don’t think we need to talk about President Biden’s mental acuity,” Daines told Politico’s Rachael Bade during the CNN-Politico Grill interview, reflecting the shift in Republican messaging that was largely seen onstage Monday during night one of the RNC.

But while most Senate GOP candidates didn’t directly go after Biden’s age and mental acuity Tuesday, they didn’t all adhere to the unity message the party attempted to project a night earlier. Arizona’s Kari Lake, who is all but certain to win this month’s GOP primary, opened the Senate portion of the programming by blaming the media for divisions in America.

“Actually, I don’t welcome everyone,” she said to the crowded convention hall, pointing her finger up at what she said was the “fake news.”

Lake – who is expected to face Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego in a state that Biden flipped in 2020 but that will be tough for him to hold this year – set the tone by attacking what she called “Biden’s invasion.” The US southern border has been a central theme in GOP Senate campaign messaging this cycle, even in states that are hundreds of miles from Mexico.

Banking executive Eric Hovde, who’s challenging Sen. Tammy Baldwin in the convention’s home state of Wisconsin, blamed Democrats for the fentanyl crisis. He then pivoted to lamenting the divisions in the country and calling for Americans to take off their “red and blue jerseys.” But, like Lake, Hovde went after the media – which went over well among the Trump delegates in the audience. “The media, you have to stop dividing us,” he said.

Former House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers, who’s running to flip Michigan’s open Senate seat, blamed Biden for inflation and bashed the president’s electric vehicle policies. He also picked up on the law-and-order message and snuck in a rare reference to “nap time” at the White House in another dig at Biden.

Among the other Republicans in top-tier races on stage Tuesday night was businessman Tim Sheehy, who is taking on the most vulnerable Senate incumbent running for reelection – Montana Sen. Jon Tester. “The world is on fire under Joe Biden,” said Sheehy, who talked up his military service. Army veteran Sam Brown, who’s challenging first-term Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen in Nevada, also leaned into his military service.

Another veteran, Pennsylvania’s Dave McCormick, addressed the weekend assassination attempt against Trump. McCormick was in the front row at Saturday’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. He cast Democratic Sen. Bob Casey as a career politician, tying him to Biden and arguing that the election presented a choice between “greatness and decline.”

Ohio businessman Bernie Moreno, whom Democrats boosted in the GOP primary because they thought he’d be the weakest challenger to Sen. Sherrod Brown, invoked the most famous Ohioan at this week’s convention. Vance, the state’s junior senator, also backed Moreno in the primary and pushed Trump to do the same.

Cao, the GOP nominee in Virginia, also referred to a more famous politician to explain his race to the convention crowd. “I’m running against Hillary’s running mate, Tim Kaine,” he said.

And in the race for the seat that’s most likely to flip this year, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a former Democrat, touted his close friendship with the Trump family

But the real start of the show was sitting on a leather chair beside him. Babydog, Justice’s English bulldog, is projecting a GOP victory, the governor said.

This story and headline have been updated with additional information.

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