Republicans have a message for Donald Trump: If you're going
to lose, don't drag down other Republicans with you.
In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Sen. Lindsey Graham chided
Trump for his recent decision not to endorse House
Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. John McCain in their primary battles
with Republican challengers, noting Trump's sinking poll numbers
following the Democratic National Convention.
"If you really focused on Hillary Clinton's weaknesses and the
Obama economy's weaknesses, you could change these numbers,"
Graham said. "That means you have to focus on your opponent. And
your opponent is not John McCain or Paul Ryan or Kelly Ayotte.
Your opponent is yourself."
For months, Democrats have
attempted to tie Trump to other candidates running
down-ballot from Trump in House and Senate races.
Groups like Emily's List, which backs pro-choice, female
Democratic candidates, have tried to link Trump to incumbent
Republican candidates,
creating digital campaign stunts and pouring money into
advertisements linking Republicans with their party's
nominee.
For their part, many major Republican donors like Charles
and David Koch have chosen to sit out the presidential race,
instead focusing their energies on preserving Senate and House
majorities.
But polling seems to be
bearing out Republicans' worst fears.
While the aggregate polls show
a tight race in New Hampshire between Republican Sen. Kelly
Ayotte and Democratic senate candidate Gov. Maggie Hassan, a new
WBUR poll conducted after the Democratic National
Convention showed Hassan with a ten-point edge over Ayotte.
And in Pennsylvania, where Clinton experienced a bump in the
polls following the DNC, Democratic Senate candidate
Katie McGinty appeared to gain a slight edge this
week over incumbent Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.
Evan Siegfried, author of "GOP
GPS: How to Find the Millennials and Urban Voters the Republican
Party Needs to Survive," told Business Insider that he's not
surprised if Trump's slew of controversies are sticking to
Republicans, particularly those who have endorsed the
presidential nominee.
"Somebody who isn't paying attention to the intricacies of every
single candidate isn't seeing that somebody like Ben Sasse is
different than a Donald Trump, they're seeing that Donald Trump
is the leader of that party, and therefore they must believe it
too, because it falls under that particular
brand," Siegfried said.
Siegfried predicted that if Trump keeps up his controversial
comments about veterans and other member of the party, GOP
candidates could shift their messaging towards opposing a Hillary
Clinton presidency.
"You're going to see a lot of Republicans shift the tone of their
ads," he said. "While they might not be coming out and
un-endorsing or slamming Trump, they're certainly going to be
saying 'You're going to need me to fight against Hillary
Clinton.'"
Still, some Democrats caution against getting optimistic too
early. A lack of public polling makes it difficult to
predict whether Trump's poor performance will have a concrete
impact on the race, and many voters remain
un-engaged in down-ballot races.
"People won’t really start tuning in in any definitive way to
these races until a couple or three weeks out," McGinty told
Business Insider during an interview on Wednesday.
"I certainly am intending to — and will — be out there
every day between now and November 8 and fighting for
every single vote."
But when a poll released a day later found the Democratic
senate candidate with a one-point lead over Toomey, the McGinty
campaign was quick to link the senator's drop in the polls
to Trump's deficit in Pennsylvania.
"The campaign season hasn't even really started, and Pennsylvania
is already saying, loudly and clearly, that the Trump-Toomey
ticket is completely unacceptable," McGinty Communications
Director Sean Coit said.
"It probably doesn't help that Donald Trump, just in the last
week, said that Pennsylvania is 'rusting and rotting' and that
Harrisburg looks like a 'war zone.' That's the guy Pat Toomey
wants to be our President, so his poll numbers are just going to
get worse."
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