The Sweep: How the Pennsylvania GOP Senate Primary Is Shaping Up

Campaign Quick Hits

Helpful Link for Politics Junkies: If you’re watching this year’s midterm cycle as closely as we are, you may want to bookmark this helpful primary election calendar compiled by the New York Times’ Taylor Johnston. 

Ohio’s GOP Primary for U.S. Senate Gets Ugly: Watch this heated exchange that occurred on Friday between Mike Gibbons and Josh Mandel, the two Republican frontrunners in the race to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman in Ohio. In the video, someone can be seen physically separating the two after one of the candidates can be heard saying an expletive (that we will not print in this newsletter!). Neither candidate apologized for the confrontation.

Missouri Senate Candidate’s Ex-Wife Accuses Him of Abuse: The former wife of Eric Greitens, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri and the state’s former governor, signed an affidavit accusing him of abusing her and one of their children. “In early June 2018, I became afraid for my safety and that of our children at our home, which was fairly isolated, due to Eric’s unstable and coercive behavior,” Sheena Greitens said in court documents. “This behavior included physical violence toward our children, such as cuffing our then three-year-old son across the face at the dinner table in front of me and yanking him around by his hair.” Greitens denied the allegations.

The court documents were filed on Monday, roughly four years after Greitens resigned as governor of Missouri amid allegations of sexual misconduct with his hairdresser.

Democratic Oppo Firm Targets Local Races: With the 2022 midterms fast approaching, one of the biggest opposition research firms, American Bridge (which is mentioned in another item below), is investing millions to dig up dirt on “Stop the Steal” GOP candidates running for state and local offices running for state and local offices responsible for administering elections. “The Democratic organization American Bridge, known primarily for its opposition research into Republicans, has launched what it says is a $10 million campaign to influence the races for election administration in a dozen key states,” New York Times reporter Reid J. Epstein wrote last month. 

We’ve already seen fundraising numbers triple in some of these secretary of state races, so this isn’t a big surprise. If the money is there, so is the oppo. The question is whether voters have become so used to oppo dumps that they’ve tuned them out. American Bridge might be more successful flanking some of these candidates from the right—pointing out negative things they had said about Trump previously, moderate stances they had taken on past issues, etc.—rather than trying to argue that they’re too far to the right. But even though it would be more likely to succeed, it would be harder to explain to their left-wing donors. So it’s unlikely.

Virginia’s Silver Surge: The narrative around 2021 is that Glenn Youngkin mobilzed parents—outraged about COVID closures, mask mandates, and curriculum fights—to turn royal blue Virginia red. But as I’ve long suspected given that New Jersey had a larger swing with no particular focus on education issues, the data just don’t bear it out. 

From Tom Bonier at Democratic political data firm, TargetSmart:

Turnout among voters age 75 or older increased by 59%, relative to 2017 while turnout among voters under age 30 only increased by just 18%. Notably, turnout of all other age groups combined (18-74), which would likely include parents of school-aged children, only increased by 9% compared to 2017.

These are massive changes in the electorate in an election that was far from a blowout: Youngkin won by just 2%.

• Voters age 65 and older are an estimated 15.9% of Virginia’s population according to the census, yet accounted for 31.9% of all ballots cast in 2021.

• 348,314 more seniors (ages 65+) voted in Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial election than in the 2016 presidential election.

• The Virginia market with the largest increase in senior vote share (ages 65+) from 2017 to was Charlottesville (67% increase), followed by the spill Raleigh-Durham market (48% increase).

• Notably, turnout among voters of color also surged in 2021 compared to 2017: African-American turnout surged 771%, Hispanic turnout by 559% and Asian-American turnout by 486%.

So what does this all mean? Did outraged parents swing the election? While it’s certainly possible that education motivated large swaths of the voter mobilization, there was not a surge in parent-age voters compared to seniors. 

Another Flag on the Polling Field: YouGov is a strong and well-regarded pollster. But recently, Republican operative Logan Dobson noted that it asked 161(!) questions in its most recent poll.

Luckily, Kristen Soltis Anderson tackled this issue in her own newsletter, Codebook:

This is a lot. Too many. The longer a survey is to take, the more people are going to drop out because they’re busy and can’t be bothered. I’m a pollster and I’ve bailed out of over-long questionnaires before. And these aren’t 161 cupcake questions either. Question 37 is whether you think Ukraine’s President Zelensky will still be president in [a] year. Question 61D is whether you think Ukraine should be able to join NATO. Question 76 is a fav/unfav of Alexander Lukashenko. (Do you not know who Alexander Lukashenko is? That’s ok!) You’ve got a few dozen COVID questions, a question about whether the Boston Marathon bomber should get the death penalty, one question about whether you like Chuck Schumer followed by another question a few dozen down the list about whether you approve of the job Schumer is doing.

I once had a prominent household name pollster tell me that he’d run an experiment once to see how long he could keep people on the phone. He mentioned a survey where people were polled about their opinions on every single team in the National Football League. Most people are not interested in answering questions about this and find it tedious after a certain point, but NFL die-hards were happy to stay on the line almost indefinitely talking about the topic. The longer your poll is, the more you are effectively pushing out the normal people who just don’t care that much.

You could definitely keep me on the phone for an hour asking me questions about Formula 1 or chili pepper growing. But you would not end up with a representative sample if that was your research design. 

Just another thing to consider as we head into midterm polling season, friends!

Leadership PACs Without the Leadership

American Bridge, a Democratic super PAC, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commision last week against Donald Trump. The group claims that Trump is spending his leadership PAC money to further his 2024 bid without declaring himself as a candidate. So let’s spend a minute on why he would do this.

First of all, the purpose of a leadership PAC is to allow “members of Congress and other political leaders … to support candidates for federal and nonfederal offices” without using their own campaign money, according to the FEC. And since these rules were set up by members of Congress, they let themselves raise a lot more federal money in a leadership PAC (or what the FEC is calling a “nonconnected PAC” in the chart). An individual can give only $2,900 to a candidate’s PAC that supports their campaign, but can give $5,000 to that person’s leadership PAC. 

Second, and more importantly, the difference between a campaign committee and a leadership PAC is how the candidate can spend the money. A campaign committee can’t fund a candidate’s personal expenses, but a leadership PAC can. The reverse, however, is also supposed to be true—a leadership PAC can’t spend money to help Trump build his 2024 campaign. If Trump announced his candidacy tomorrow, his Save America leadership PAC could donate only $5,000 to his campaign committee and that would be that. Leadership PACs were intended to allow federal office holders to support each other’s campaigns, but the reality is that they are slush funds that can spend money on almost anything that isn’t related to the candidate’s own future campaign.

So where does that leave us? Save America has more than $100 million in the bank. Since July, that PAC has donated $350,500 to candidates, which, again, is the ostensible purpose of a leadership PAC. According to Bloomberg, the PAC’s candidate contributions for the second half of last year are less than half of the $838,000 the PAC spent on event staging and related expenses in January alone—a lot of which goes back into Trump’s bank account when events are held at his properties or office rent is paid to Trump Tower.

For his part, Trump has been a little too clear on his motives. As the New York Times pointed out, Trump told Sean Hannity last year that he had made up his mind about whether to run but later said that “unbelievably stupid” campaign finance laws prevented him from announcing his decision. “Let me put it this way: I think you’ll be happy, and I think that a lot of our friends will be very happy,” he said, “But I’m not actually allowed to answer it. It makes it very difficult if I do.” And then just a few weeks ago at CPAC, he said more bluntly, “We did it twice and we’ll do it again.” 

But the truth is that there’s no real downside for Trump and in that sense the laws in question are unbelievably stupid. The FEC is going to do exactly nothing about this. It’s deadlocked between Republicans and Democrats serving on the committee, and it’s notoriously slow even when it does move forward. As Shane Goldmacher from the New York Times noted, “A complaint to the commission related to the pre-candidacy activities of Jeb Bush, who announced his run for president in 2015, was still in court as recently as December 2021.”

And now over to Audrey, who made a quick trip to Pennsylvania last week to check in on the crowded GOP Senate primary field. Here’s an excerpt from a piece we published on the site today: 

A GOP Frontrunner Walks Into a Bar …

HOMESTEAD, Pa.—Former Army Ranger and New York Times bestselling author Sean Parnell flashes a toothy smile as he greets prospective Pennsylvania voters in Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery. 

Tonight, though, Parnell is just the opening act. The former Trump-endorsed candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania dropped out of the race in November after losing a custody battle over his children to his estranged wife, who had accused him of domestic abuse. With his political ambitions on the backburner, at least for now, Parnell takes the stage to introduce the current Republican frontrunner in the battle for retiring GOP Sen. Pat Toomey’s seat: Dave McCormick.

On the Republican side, McCormick faces a tough primary challenge from heart surgeon and celebrity television host Dr. Mehmet Oz, who, alongside several other Republican candidates in a GOP primary on May 17, will go head to head with McCormick. In November’s general election, the winner of the primary contest will likely face Democratic frontrunner and Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a 6-foot-7-inch former mayor of a steel town.

Parnell recites McCormick’s impressive resume, reminding voters that the former Bridgewater Associates CEO, George W. Bush administration Treasury official, and combat veteran received his Ph.D. in international relations from Princeton University, “although in this day and age, getting a Ph.D. from Princeton doesn’t mean much to me.” 

Out comes McCormick: “How many of you have ever applied for a job where you get less money and your reputation’s gonna be less the day after you take the job?” he tells the crowd, inciting laughter. “The reason you apply to that job is because you think the country is headed in such a terrible direction, you want to do your part.”

His focus on the Biden administration’s failures is an effective campaign pitch during a midterm cycle already favorable to Republicans: American voters are so unsatisfied with the way things are going that President Joe Biden’s approval ratings still hover in the low 40s, as they have since last fall. 

But McCormick’s also running for a seat being vacated by a Republican senator who voted to convict former President Donald Trump during his second impeachment trial. To win the GOP nomination, McCormick will have to appeal to moderates, independents, and middle-class voters—no easy feat for a former CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund. 

McCormick’s campaign strategy is similar to that of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the millionaire former investment executive who flipped Virginia red in November by keeping the focus on pocketbook issues—and reminding voters of his humble roots flipping eggs at a local diner and attending college on a basketball scholarship.

Like Youngkin, McCormick is also hoping to win over swing voters by harping on issues that hit close to home, like rising prices and K-12 curriculum in public schools. “It’s not the America I recognize to teach our kids to be ashamed of who they are and where they came from,” McCormick said last Wednesday. 

But there’s one area in particular where McCormick veers from the Youngkin playbook: his willingness to invoke former President Donald Trump, under whose administration McCormick’s wife, Dina Powell McCormick, served as a national security official. He mentioned Trump’s name four times Wednesday evening, praising his “America First energy policies” and his hawkish approach toward China. 

It’s unclear how a Trump endorsement might play in Pennsylvania—he won the state in 2016 but lost it in 2020. As it stands, McCormick is the frontrunner among Pennsylvania Republicans: A Fox News poll released earlier this month shows McCormick with a 9-point lead over Oz (24 percent to 15 percent). But large swaths of both candidates’ supporters say they could change their minds: 77 percent of McCormick’s and 59 percent of Oz’s, with 31 percent unsure who they will support.

Institutionally speaking, the Republican primary is still an open field, considering the state GOP declined to endorse a primary candidate. “It’s not that surprising, especially in crowded primaries where there’s no obvious frontrunner there,” Toomey, the retiring Republican U.S. senator, said in a brief interview with The Dispatch last month. He said he hasn’t decided whether he will make an endorsement.

As it stands, the Republican nominee will likely go head-to-head in the general election with Fetterman, who is leading the Democratic primary in both fundraising and voter surveys.  FEC filings show that Fetterman raised an astonishing $12 million in 2021 and ended the year with $5.3 million on hand, lightyears ahead of Dr. Oz, the second-highest fundraiser who raked in $5.8 million and ended the year with $1 million on hand.

Last year’s money race excluded McCormick, who waited until after the January 1 FEC campaign filing deadline to announce his candidacy. McCormick’s personal fundraising numbers won’t  become public until the next FEC filing deadline in April, weeks before the Republican primary.

Read the rest of Audrey’s piece here.