Inside the RedZone: Ohio's jumbled primary is 3 weeks away
Then comes Pennsylvania in five weeks. My initial scouting report.
Slowly but surely we’re inching out of winter’s remnants and dawdling into spring, where the political primary season will bloom. (It hit 78 (!) degrees in D.C. today.)
Winners will march on to the fall for galactic battle; losers will earn scorn and be relegated to spending their days doom-scrolling Twitter and meme-wandering on Instagram like the rest of us.
May marks the red zone of primary politics, when a cascade of important states choose their nominees.
Therefore, mid-April is an appropriate time for a check-up of where various horse races stand. But let’s not put the cart before our racing horses and stick to May, beginning with the high-octane Senate primaries that will start unfolding three weeks from tonight.
3 WEEKS AWAY: OHIO REPUBLICAN SENATE PRIMARY ON MAY 3
It’s a muddle, which is just an incentive for the most contentious GOP primary in the country to get messier as it darts toward a close. Donald Trump’s leading campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio dropped a survey last week showing a 3-way tie between Mike Gibbons, Josh Mandel and J.D. Vance. Each had 18%, hardly an insurmountable figure. Most tellingly is the 29% that remain undecided and will determine the victor. Jane Timken’s campaign obviously didn’t like her being excluded from the front-running narrative, so they countered with the release of an early April IVR survey — which uses prerecorded automated messages rather than live calls to voters — and had her statistically tied for second place with Mandel. Gibbons was ahead.
The Trump Factor: He hasn’t endorsed — yet. But watch more internal polls to pop in the coming weeks, either by candidates who want to avoid being counted out or someone showing the ability to pull away. Trump could be tempted by the scent of an emerging winner.
Dave’s Take: In these two separate sets of data, the numbers are still marginally best for one candidate: Gibbons, who counts as a leader in both. So look for the knives to come out for the wealthy investment banker. Tim Ryan’s team thinks their general election opponent will be Gibbons or Mandel, the party’s unsuccessful Senate nominee in 2012. Mandel would be an unwieldy, bombastic nominee — veering far from the staid, low-key temperaments of Rob Portman, George Voinovich and Mike DeWine. If Mandel wins, it signals the trend toward a more rambunctious GOP. While Gibbons has made his own share of tone-deaf comments, he appears to be less of a wild card than Mandel and would probably run closer to the right-tilted mainstream of the party, a la Portman and Mitch McConnell. Unfailingly conservative yes, but not burning masks on your front porch. There’s plenty of room for fluidity in these final 21 days, so Timken & Vance can’t be entirely discounted. The upside: A muddle is fun to watch and this contingent has shown little reticence in tearing each other’s faces off.
5 WEEKS AWAY: PENNSYLVANIA REPUBLICAN SENATE PRIMARY ON MAY 17
You might’ve heard by now that former President Trump delivered his endorsement to Dr. Mehmet Oz over the weekend, on Saturday evening, enroute to a rally in North Carolina. If one can still be surprised by 45, this counts as a genuinely eye-opening development, given the parade of Trump-linked officials who are on board with Dave McCormick, the husband of Dina Powell, a former national security adviser to Trump. Though a Republican strategist who used to work for Trump reminds me: “There’s a lot of difference between Melania Trump and Sean Hannity and people he used to pay.” Melanie and Hannity are with Oz, which probably weighed heaviest for Trump. Plus, Trump has known Oz longer and is clearly drawn to his success as a talk show host. Now Oz has about a month to covert the GOP’s most valuable endorsement into a polling advantage that secures a victory, which means relentlessly plugging the Trump endorsement in advertising. An Oz loss would immediately blemish Trump’s magic touch and probably make him second guess other calls.
The Trump Factor: We just did that, lol. But here’s more: He’s with Oz, but how far does he go in his backing? A rally in Pittsburgh? An attack on “Dishonest Dave”? Or does he stay quiet and keep things positive. The extension of Trump’s endorsement will be an A-grade factor, as well as the actual dollars Oz places behind promoting the Trump imprint. Remember, most primary voters aren’t waiting for this type of news to drop into their inbox like the rest of us nerds. You need to force feed it to them over and over, like a bad fad diet.
Dave’s Take: McCormick looked to have edged ahead of Oz prior to the Trump endorsement. The first post-Trump poll of this primary will drop with the weight of DJ Khaled and measure the force of the earthquake.
5 WEEKS AWAY: PENNSYLVANIA DEMOCRATIC SENATE PRIMARY, MAY 17
John Fetterman remains ahead of Rep. Conor Lamb by double-digits and no one I’ve talked to sees a real reason for this changing over the final month, barring an unforeseen Fetterman implosion or an appreciable cash infusion on behalf of Lamb by his super PAC. Lamb has gotten more aggressive in his attacks of Fetterman as a flawed general election nominee who isn’t willing to answer for his vulnerabilities, like his decision to pull a gun on an unarmed Black man. But through this primary Fetterman has shown discipline and populist instincts, which have protected his status as the quasi incumbent, having run for statewide office twice prior. For him the final five weeks are about sitting on a lead and doing little harm
The Trump Factor: In Lamb’s pitch for electability, he often refers to his success in defeating three Trump-backed opponents. Fetterman has tried to juice his own prolific fundraising by warning that Trump’s backing of Oz will juice the Republican’s super PACs. How much either would want to make Trump a factor in the fall is a different calculation.
Dave’s Take: Fetterman wins in a walk and Lamb, begrudgingly gets on board, warning that the future of Senate control hangs in the balance. At 37-years-young, Lamb will protect his opportunity to run for statewide office again.
5 WEEKS AWAY: NORTH CAROLINA SENATE PRIMARY, MAY 17
An Emerson College poll of the race at the top of the month finally showed what most were waiting for: A Trump-backed candidate beginning to surge. Trump endorsed Rep. Ted Budd’s campaign more than 10 months ago, but Budd had little to show for it until boom, Emerson’s April survey found him with a 16-point lead over former Gov. Pat McCrory, 38% to 22%. Former Rep. Mark Walker looks like the longshot in third at 9%. But perhaps even more important for Republicans is that the poll showed Budd cruising against presumptive nominee Cheri Beasley, 50% to 43% in the general. This 7-point margin raises the question of whether North Carolina is really a bonafide battleground state this cycle.
The Trump Factor: It took some time to fester — (Politico one month ago: Budd “is struggling to gain traction”) — but if Budd cruises against a former governor, Trump will genuinely deserve a large share of the credit. Especially since at the time, Budd was seen as a bit of a perplexing pick.
Dave’s Take: While Trump will relish and soak up credit for a Budd W, the actual credit probably belongs to the Club for Growth, the fiscally obsessed conservative outlet in D.C., which has poured more money into North Carolina propping up Budd, than in any other state thus far.