Democrats are interfering in Republican primaries

In the final days of an extremely crowded Republican Senate primary in Ohio, a conservative candidate is receiving an unusual boost from Democrats.

As my colleague Michael Bender reported last week, Democratic groups spent $2.7 million on ads highlighting the conservative credentials of Bernie Moreno, a Cleveland-area businessman backed by former President Donald Trump. There is.

The ad says Moreno is “too conservative for Ohio” and a “MAGA Republican,” describing him in terms likely to be more appealing to conservative Ohio primary voters. There is. Party strategists believe Moreno will be an easy opponent for incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in the general election.

Interfering in Republican primaries has become a common tactic for Democrats in recent years. But the situation has become even more ideologically complicated as President Biden speaks of the need to protect democracy from Trump-aligned Republicans like Moreno.

In his Senate campaign, Moreno condoned Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, echoing the former president’s disbelief that it was a “stolen” election and calling those charged in the Capitol attack “political prisoners.” called.

The risk of such a major intervention is that Democrats could undermine Biden’s message about the threat to democracy and further undermine confidence in the election. Of course, it goes without saying that Moreno could win in November.

history of interference

One of the earliest instances of Democrats interfering in Republican primaries occurred in 2012, when incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri helped conservative Republican Todd Akin win the party’s nomination. Posted an ad.

McCaskill knew that Missouri was trending to the right and that President Obama’s unpopularity in the state would hurt his approval ratings. Her best chance of getting re-elected was to portray herself as a “reasonable moderate” in her campaign. To do that, he needed an extreme Republican opponent.

Her team spent $1.7 million on ads for the Republican primary, casting Akin as “Missouri’s most conservative lawmaker” and “Missouri’s true conservative.”

The operation was successful. After Akin won the Republican nomination, McCaskill defeated him in the general election.

support the far right

This strategy has grown in popularity in recent years, especially as the Republican primary race has shifted to the right.

According to the Washington Post, Democrats spent about $53 million in 2022 fielding far-right and Republican candidates who questioned or rejected the 2020 election results, primarily in Democratic-leaning states.

Most of that spending was in Illinois, where the party successfully fielded Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey, and where Republicans want Trump to concede in the 2020 election. It’s amazing.” (Mr. Bailey is currently running for Congress and was the subject of Friday’s newsletter.)

This tactic continues this cycle as well. Earlier this month, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, who is running for the California Senate, spent $10 million to boost the ranks of former Republican baseball star Steve Garvey. Garvey finished second in the state’s “jungle” primary, where the top two candidates advance to the general election, regardless of his party affiliation. Mr. Schiff is widely believed to be on track for the Senate.

This approach is also being implemented in some battleground states. Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate for Pennsylvania’s 2022 gubernatorial race, ran an ad during the Republican primary highlighting the conservative credentials of right-wing candidate Doug Mastriano. Mr. Mastriano won the primary, giving Mr. Shapiro a landslide victory.

dangerous area

Some Democrats argue the tactic risks undermining the campaign’s central message about the dangers to democracy if Trump regains power.

“It is dangerous and unethical to endorse a candidate whose campaign is based on undermining confidence in our elections,” nearly 30 former Democratic House members and senators wrote in 2022. Ta. “Our democracy is too fragile to tolerate a party that tries to support us.” We should run candidates whose messages undermine our commitment to fair elections. ”

There’s also a big difference between meddling in a blue state or battleground state and meddling in a state like Ohio that has gone reliably Republican in recent elections. In 2020, Trump won the state by 8 points over Biden. Two years later, Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance won by six points.

Ohio’s conservative topography poses a real danger to this intervention strategy. If Democrats help Moreno win the Republican nomination, Brown could have an advantage. But Democrats could similarly end up helping elect the very kinds of candidates they most vocally oppose.

Donald Trump’s financial crisis

Donald Trump’s lawyers said Monday that he was unable to secure nearly $500 million in bail in a civil fraud case in New York, with the state freezing some of his bank accounts and The prospect of seizing some of the company’s major assets has been raised. .

The court filing, filed a week before the bond was due, suggested the former president could soon face financial crisis. President Trump asked the appeals court to suspend the $454 million judgment a New York judge imposed on him last month in the fraud case, or to accept bail of only $100 million.

His lawyers said that despite “diligent efforts” they were unable to secure the full bond, which they said was “practically impossible”. Lawyers said he approached about 30 companies offering appeal bonds, but faced “insurmountable difficulties.”

The companies are essentially pledging to compensate Trump for his judgment if he loses his appeal and fails to pay. In return, he would post his collateral and pay the company a fee of as much as 3 percent on his bonds.

They seem hesitant about important issues. The idea is that President Trump doesn’t have enough liquid assets to buy the bonds. To offer a bond of this size, a company would require President Trump to pledge more than $550 million in cash, stock, and bonds, an amount that Trump does not have at all. .

A recent New York Times analysis found that President Trump has more than $350 million in cash, far short of what he needs. Although the former president boasts large amounts of wealth, his net worth is derived primarily from the value of real estate, which bond companies rarely accept as collateral.

The looming deadline could not come at a worse time for President Trump. Just last week, he completed posting $91.6 million bail in a defamation lawsuit he recently lost against author E. Jean Carroll.

— Ben Protess, Kate Christbeck and Maggie Haberman

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