Nineteen months ago, Donald Trump’s fixation on unproven allegations of election fraud played a major role in the Republicans’ loss of two U.S. Senate seats in Georgia and, with them, the Senate majority.
Now, the former president appears to be handicapping the GOP’s effort to regain that majority. He has helped nominate several conservative political neophytes with questionable general election prospects in the closely contested states that decided the 2020 presidential election.
That dynamic was on display Tuesday when Arizona Republicans chose Blake Masters, a culture warrior who has adopted Trump’s combative style, to run against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, one of the more vulnerable 2022 Democrats. Masters, with Trump’s backing, defeated businessman Jim Lamon and state Attorney General Mark Brnovich. Polls have shown Kelly, one of the best-funded Democratic incumbents, with a lead.
Three months before the Nov. 8 midterm elections, Republicans remain favored to upend the narrow Democratic majority in the House, though some recent polls show Democratic gains. But the Senate is far more in doubt.
A major reason is that Republican prospects are dimming in six key states, including four where Trump spurred the GOP to nominate conservative newcomers. Besides Arizona, they include Ohio and Pennsylvania, where the GOP is defending seats vacated by retiring Republicans, and Georgia, where Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is trying to hold the seat he narrowly won in January 2021.
One Republican “celebrity” candidate encountering early problems is former football star Herschel Walker, whom Trump recruited to oppose Warnock. Walker, who was living in the Dallas area until he started running, has given imprecise answers to questions about his policy positions, personal relationships and number of children. Polls show Warnock slightly ahead.
In Tuesday’s hotly contested Arizona gubernatorial primary, former television anchor Kari Lake, who strongly backs Trump’s unproven allegations of 2020 election fraud, defeated Karrin Taylor Robson, who had the support of current GOP Gov. Doug Ducey and former Vice President Mike Pence.
In a pattern mirroring the Senate race, polls show Lake trailing the Democratic nominee, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.
Trump was a mixed factor elsewhere Tuesday. Two of three Republican House members apparently survived pro-Trump challenges stemming from their votes to impeach the former president after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Washington Reps. Dan Newhouse and Jaime Herrera Beutler are both favored in November in their heavily Republican districts. The loser was freshman Michigan Rep. Peter Meijer.
In Kansas, Kris Kobach, a key figure in Trump’s failed voter fraud commission, won a comeback bid in a GOP primary for state attorney general. At the same time, Kansas voted overwhelmingly to keep a state constitutional provision recognizing legalized abortion in the first major voter test of the issue since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
With a new USA Today/Suffolk University poll showing the issue is energizing Democratic voters, abortion looms as a potential problem for Republicans in November. So does Donald Trump.
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