Mediaboss Marketing

Democrats were riding high this summer. The Supreme Courts decision overturning Roe v. Wade energized the partys base, and the economic woes that had been plaguing the Biden administration began to subside as gas prices dropped. The party had finally scored several legislative wins with the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act. Former President Donald Trump was under investigation by the Department of Justice for potentially violating the Espionage Act, and the generic congressional polls began to tilt in their favor. Suddenly, predictions of certain midterm disaster for the party gave way to cautious optimism.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, however, the pendulum never swings in one direction forever. Bidens soul of the nation speech, in which he declared "MAGA Republicans" to be semi-fascists who posed a threat to our democracy, didnt exactly help his partys candidates. And although gas prices have dipped below their peak, the rising costs of necessities such as groceries and housing have outpaced those reductions. Moreover, the Labor Departments report on Tuesday showing year-over-year inflation at 8.3%, higher than expected, almost certainly solidified a voter backlash against Democratic candidates who have voted for all the needless overspending that triggered it.

While its highly expected that Republicans will win back the House in November, control of the Senate remains far less certain. The GOP is optimistic, but so too are the Democrats. The night before the release of the inflation report that sent the stock market into a death plunge, for example, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was reportedly overheard in a Washington, D.C., restaurant telling colleagues Democrats have a 60% chance of holding the Senate, according to a Punchbowl News report.

All else remaining the same, Republicans need to win five of the eight Senate races rated as toss-ups by RealClearPolitics: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

RCP projects the Republicans will hold onto Senate seats in Ohio, North Carolina, and Wisconsin and will pick up seats in Nevada and Georgia.

In Ohio, Trump-backed candidate J.D. Vance leads Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan by 2.7 percentage points for the open seat held by Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), who is retiring.

In North Carolina, Republican Rep. Ted Budd is ahead of his opponent, Cheri Beasley, a former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, by 1.3 points. They are vying for the open seat being vacated by the retiring Republican Sen. Richard Burr.

In Wisconsin, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson is in a tough fight against progressive challenger Mandela Barnes, who is ahead by 1.7 points. However, the race has tightened. A Marquette poll released this week shows Johnson ahead by 1 point. A Marquette poll conducted last month gave Barnes a 7-point advantage.

Its worth noting that right up until the 2016 election, Johnson trailed his opponent, longtime former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) by 2.7 points, but won the race by 3.4 points. Polling isnt all its cracked up to be, it seems.

In Nevada, Republican challenger Adam Laxalt could easily unseat Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto. Laxalt currently prevails by just 1 point, but he has momentum on his side.

And in Georgia, football legend and Republican Herschel Walker might just pull off an upset against Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock. Trump-endorsed Walker got hammered in the polls this summer when revelations of his illegitimate children and history of mental health problems surfaced, but he has rebounded strongly over the past month. Though the RCP average of polls is currently tied, summer polls showed him trailing Warnock by as much as 10 points. Walker has made significant gains, and strong voter support for Republican Gov. Brian Kemp might be enough to pull Walker across the finish line.

The three remaining races in the toss-up column are ranked by RCP as Democratic holds. In Arizona, Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly remains stubbornly ahead of Republican Blake Masters by 4 points, although the polls have tightened in recent weeks. In New Hampshire, Democratic incumbent Maggie Hassan leads Republican challenger Gen. Don Bolduc by 4 points. And in Pennsylvania, far-left John Fetterman, the states lieutenant governor, has held onto an early lead against the Trump-backed Dr. Mehmet Oz. I wrote about this race earlier this week.

Recall the overly optimistic polls in the 2020 election. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) was projected to lose her reelection bid by 6.5 points. Instead, she won by 8.6 points. Although less dramatic, the story was the same for Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Steve Daines (R-MT).

There is reason to believe that pollsters are once again overestimating Democrats' chances and underestimating those of the Republicans. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned as much this week when he predicted Masters would win over Kelly, arguing Kelly's small lead makes him vulnerable.

Even the New York Times appeared to agree in a piece published this week, which compared recent polling results with those from 2020 and 2016 and found that Democratic Senate candidates are outrunning expectations in the same places where the polls overestimated Mr. Biden in 2020 and Mrs. Clinton in 2016. He concluded there is a consistent link between Democratic strength today and polling error two years ago. The most glaring errors in 2020 occurred in Wisconsin, where polls overestimated Bidens strength by 9 points, and in Ohio, where polls underestimated Trumps strength by 8 points.

In other words, Republicans have good reason to be optimistic about taking back the Senate. As of right now, they have a very plausible path to victory.

Elizabeth Stauffer is a contributor tothe Washington Examiner andthe Western Journal. Her articles have appeared on many websites, including MSN,RedState,Newsmax, theFederalist, andRealClearPolitics. Follow her onTwitterorLinkedIn.

More here:
Despite the spin, Republicans do have a path to win the Senate - Washington Examiner

Carolyn Thomsons letter MAGA Republicans not extremists (Sept. 8, TribLIVE) implores readers not to portray MAGA Republicans as extremists, terrorists or neo-fascists. I find this hard to do given 1,000 or so MAGA Republicans stormed the Capitol in the hope of overturning a free and fair election, but OK if they arent extremists, what are they?

Thomson says she is anti-crime, but what about the messiah of her political cult? The FBI search of Mar-A-Lago proved President Donald Trump had documents belonging to the American people (regardless of how the Trump-appointed judge has seen fit to run interference for him). Thomson later invokes the ghosts of the Holocaust to defend her position. Strange, I seem to remember a group of privileged white men , marching through Charlottesville, Va., shouting Jews will not replace us. Trump later called them good people.

How about I call MAGA supporters hypocrites then? Is that politically correct enough for you?

Kris Weinschenker

Youngstown

Read the original post:
Letter to the editor: If not 'extremists,' what are MAGA Republicans? - TribLIVE

As the national debate on immigration continues to heat up, a new poll shows that a slim majority of voters, 51 percent, agree with the Republican party when it comes to undocumented immigration.

The New York Times/Siena College poll that was released Friday found that a lesser 37 percent of respondents said that they agreed with Democrats when it comes to illegal immigration. Another 5 percent of respondents said that they didn't agree with either party, while 1 percent said that they agreed with both.

Republicans have repeatedly criticized the Biden administration on what they describe as its "open border" policies, though President Joe Biden said Thursday that his administration was committed to upholding a safe, orderly and humane immigration policy, Newsweek previously reported. Vice President Kamala Harris also said in an interview with NBC's Meet the Press Sunday that the border is "secure," though she added that the U.S. has a "broken immigration system" that needs fixing.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics, there have been more than 1.9 million encounters at the Southwest land border by U.S. Border Patrol and the CBP Office of Field Operations in the current fiscal year, which runs from October 1, 2021, through September 30, 2022. The current data only reflects encounters from October through July, so the actual number is likely to be higher.

The CBP wrote in its July update that it was continuing to enforce U.S. immigration law and "apply consequences to those without a legal basis to remain in the U.S."

"Current restrictions at the U.S. border have not changed; single adults and families encountered at the southwest border will continue to be expelled, where appropriate, under CDC's Title 42 Order. Those who are not expelled will be processed under the long-standing Title 8 authority and placed into removal proceedings," the update read.

Still, more than one million undocumented immigrants, many of whom are seeking asylum, have been allowed into the U.S. temporarily during Biden's time as president, The New York Times reported last week. This total is separate from any migrants who may have entered the U.S. undetected.

Another survey released this month, this time from the Pew Research Center, provided insight into where Democrat and Republican views differ when it comes to the U.S. immigration system.

The survey found that while Republicans place an importance on border security and deporting immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally, Democrats place an importance on providing those who entered the country illegally with a path to reach legal status.

Republican Governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Ducey of Arizona have confirmed that they've been sending buses of migrants to cities D.C. Buses have also been sent to Chicago and New York City, according to Abbott, who announced Thursday that two buses of migrants had arrived at Harris' residence in D.C.

Nearly 50 migrants were also flown into Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, this week under a program sponsored by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a move that has drawn sharp criticism from Biden and other Democrats.

"Republicans are playing politics with human beings, using them as props," Biden said Thursday at a Washington, D.C., gala for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.

"We have a process in place to manage migrants at the border," he added. "Republican officials should not interfere with that process by waging these political stunts."

More:
Slim Majority of Voters Agree With Republicans on Undocumented Immigration - Newsweek

In a year of fiercely fought elections in battleground states across the country, some might have questioned why Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel spent her Wednesday night in a deep-blue pocket of Connecticut that Joe Biden won by nearly 33 points just two years earlier.

Leora Levy, the party's nominee against incumbent U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, trailed in the polls by double digits and by millions of dollars in fundraising, and was in need of significant help to stay competitive. Bob Stefanowski, their candidate for governor, trailed incumbent Democrat Ned Lamont in the polls by double digits in a campaign many observers initially felt would be a replica of their contentious head-to-head matchup in 2018.

But in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly two-to-one in the Statehouse, one candidate in New Britain Wednesday nightformer state Senator George Loganmight have been the main attraction.

Logan, the party's nominee for Connecticut's 5th Congressional District this year, is one of the strongest candidates the party has ever run for the solidly blue congressional seat once held by current U.S. Senator Chris Murphy. He has a history of winning competitive races against a diverse field of liberal candidates. He is a relative moderate on policy and has come out against national Republicans' efforts to curb abortion rights. He is also a Black conservative, an anomalous breed of politician rarely seen on the federal stage. (Logan could not be reached for comment.)

Since the days of Reconstruction, just 30 Black Republicans have ever been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and just four to the Senate. Most were elected immediately after the end of the Civil War. Today, there are just three Black Republicans congressmen Byron Donalds of Florida and Burgess Owens of Utah, as well as South Carolina Senator Tim Scottout of the 66 total Black members of Congress.

Republicans hope to change that, as more Black candidates are running for state and federal office as part of the GOP. The National Republican Congressional Committee counted 81 Black candidates running as Republicans in 2022 in 72 congressional districts, more than a 50 percent increase over 2020.

Last weekend, the Congressional Leadership Funda super PAC with ties to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthydropped significant sums in support of Black Republican candidates it believes could be competitive in several traditionally Democratic districts this year.

The list includes Indiana Republican Jennifer-Ruth Greenwhose Gary-based district has been trending toward Republican presidential candidates in recent cyclesas well as the campaign of Michigan Republican John James, a proven candidate who nearly won a seat in the U.S. Senate two years ago and who is now running in a Republican-leaning House district outside of Detroit.

Other candidates, including Logan and Texas Republican Wesley Hunt, who appears to be a clear favorite in the newly redrawn 38th Congressional District, have also attracted substantial financial support from national Republicans, a show of confidence strategists say is not just circumstantial.

"We're running candidates who look like members of the communities they want to serve in Congress," Congressional Leadership Fund spokesperson Calvin Moore told Newsweek.

The change in strategy, Moore said, came after Republican failures in 2018 and the recognized need for a more diverse candidate poola lesson they apparently learned from in the following election.

"In 2020, every single seat that Republicans flipped from Democrat to Republican was won by a woman or a minority candidate," said Moore. "The biggest lesson we learned was that if you want to win, you need to recruit and support compelling candidates with unique stories that fit and look like the districts they are trying to represent."

But it also comes during a period of significant demographic change among the Black electorate. In 2020, Republican President Donald Trump won 20 percent of the vote among Black men, compared to 13 percent just four years earlier.

The Democratic Party still has a virtual monopoly on Black voters, particularly in the South, where the Republican Party notably campaigned on white voters' racial anxieties in the 1980s to win seats. However, the GOP is beginning to earn converts among more socially conservative members of the Black community, even as some argue the party continues to adopt policies and rhetoric that are actually antithetical to the rights of Black citizens.

One example is Harriet Holman, a South Carolina county commissioner who, earlier this year, made national headlines after publicly switching her affiliation from Democrat to Republican. In an interview, Holman said she noticed some of her views, namely around the economy and on abortion, were no longer compatible with the Democratic Party platform.

Other issues, including national rhetoric around defunding the police, she said, also prompted her to switch parties.

Though she said she always felt some pressure to be a Democrat throughout her life, she called the Republican Party "the future," with ideals she says no longer represent those of the days of South Carolina resident Lee Atwater leading the national party. Democrats, she said, have lost sight of "kitchen table issues" like public safety and inflation that truly matter to people. Meanwhile, the GOP, she said, has made those policies its centerpiece.

"I'm running an election in 2022, dealing with 2022 issues," she told Newsweek. "The Republican Party has accepted me. I am loved within the Republican Party. I'm not going to keep reaching back for negative stuff. I'm moving forward."

Read the original post:
Fundraising Gives Black Republicans Reason to Believe They'll Win Elections - Newsweek

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

EXCLUSIVE: Heritage Foundations' political advocacy group is making a big investment in the upcoming midterms and pouring money into states where congressional Republicans have raised concerns about candidate quality.

Heritage Action for America's super PAC, the Sentinel Action Fund, is spending $5 million in Arizona and $1 million in Georgia to boost the candidacy of two candidates who have fallen out of favor with nationally elected Republicans.

That spending is being supplemented by Heritage Action itself, which exclusively told Fox News Digital that it has spent $1.8 million on voter engagement in Nevada and New Hampshire. Both of states have high-profile Senate and House races this year that could determine which party holds power in Congress.

"There are conservative candidates and conservative polices on the line," said Jessica Anderson, Heritage Action's executive director. "Let's go and get this done and win back a [congressional] majority for the right reasons and frankly with the right people."

ARIZONA'S BLAKE MASTERS SAYS VOTERS QUESTION WHY WASHINGTON REPUBLICANS ARE NOT INVESTING MORE IN HIS RACE

"There are conservative candidates and conservative polices on the line," said Anderson. (Aesthetic Images Photography.)

Arizona is where Heritage's super PAC has made its biggest investment. It is spending more than $5 million to bolster Blake Masters, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate.

INDEPENDENTS IN KEY BATTLE GROUND STATES FAR MORE ALIGNED WITH REPUBLICANS THAN DEMOCRATS

In contrast, the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC closely aligned with Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced last month it was cutting nearly $8 million in ads that it had reserved in Arizona throughout Election Day.

"We think he's got a real shot. We think that this race is winnable," Anderson said of Masters. "We think that other conservative and Republican establishment groups should come back to Arizona, they should take a second look at the state and realize everything that's at stake."

In Arizona, Heritage Action's linked super PAC is spending more than $5 million to bolster Blake Masters. (Joseph A. Wulfsohn/Fox News Digital)

Masters, who trails his Democratic opponent in fundraising, told Fox News Digital that conservative voters in Arizona were beginning to question why national Republican were not more involved in his race.

Outside of Arizona, Sentinel is spending $1 million to boost GOP Senate nominee Herschel Walker in Georgia. The super PAC is also running nearly $1 million worth of negative ads against Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire over high gasoline prices.

"I think there's probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate," Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell told an audience last month. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

In each of those states, national Republicans have raised concerns in recent months about their chances for success. Candidates like Walker and Masters trail incumbent Democrats in polling and fundraising.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

As of July, Masters had raised $4.8 million to Kelly's more than $52 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Walker has raised nearly $20 million compared to Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock's more than $60 million.

"I think there's probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate," Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell told an audience last month in his home state of Kentucky. "Senate races are just different, they're statewide. Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome."

Haris Alic covers Congress and politics for Fox News Digital. You can contact him at haris.alic@fox.com or follow him on Twitter at @realharisalic.

Continued here:
Heritage Action spending heavy to boost GOP candidates spurned by congressional Republicans - Fox News