Senate Majority PAC, an independent group affiliated with Majority Leader Charles E. is spending $2.7 million to increase its chances of winning. The aim is to support candidate Bernie Moreno, a former luxury car dealer, who would be the Republican candidate incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) is most likely to defeat in the fall.
This is a repeat of the cynical tactics Democrats employed in the 2022 midterm elections. Later, to support far-right Republican House candidates and pro-MAGA gubernatorial candidates in Maryland and Pennsylvania who have questioned or denied the legitimacy of Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election. spent more than $53 million in nine state primaries. Illinois.
There is no doubt that it worked. Democrats retained several House seats they might not have otherwise won and won all three gubernatorial races. There is also no doubt that it reeked strongly and persistently of hypocrisy. No one knows why so many Americans continue to support Trump, even though he clearly lied about 2020. But perhaps a small part of the reason is that Democratic operatives continue to manipulate the issue for short-term political gain.
Moreno hasn't always been an election denier. He urged his social media followers:accept the results” he tweeted at the end of 2020, and on January 6, 2021, Trump tweeted that it was a given.There's a lot of responsibility for this” But then he decided to run for office. “President Trump says the election was stolen, and he's right,” Moreno said in a commercial during his short-term 2022 Senate run. More recently, he has referred to those charged in the Capitol attack as “political prisoners.”
Editorial board opinions that follow this author
The Democratic commercial doesn't mention anything about it. Nominally, the ad is an attack ad because it calls Moreno “too conservative” and references his support for a national abortion ban and repealing Obamacare. But these points are appealing to Republican voters. “Mr. Moreno will be at the forefront of enacting President Trump's MAGA policy,” the narrator says. According to the spot, the former president called Moreno “exactly the type of MAGA warrior we need.” A spokesperson for the Senate Majority PAC said in a statement that Ohioans “have a right to know the truth about Bernie Moreno.”
In the Ohio race, state Sen. Matt Dolan will be the leading Republican candidate to challenge Brown in November. He is a governance-oriented conservative, following in the footsteps of former Sen. Rob Portman and Gov. Mike DeWine, who support his candidacy. (Mr. Dolan's father owns the Cleveland Guardians. One of the reasons Mr. Trump attacked his son was because the baseball team changed its name from the Indians.) Mr. Dolan supports Ukraine likely to vote in the Senate. Despite Ohio's large-scale diaspora, Moreno is critical of sending more money. The Democratic Party's push for Moreno therefore also runs counter to the party's position on this important issue.
Polls show the Republican primary race within the margin of error, with Dolan holding a slight lead and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose in a distant third place. Brown has a lead over Moreno in the general election, but is behind Dolan.
Again, the Senate Majority PAC's only job is to win elections, so it makes sense for it to intervene in Moreno's favor. The $2.7 million purchase price is a drop in the ocean of what is expected to be the most expensive Senate race spending this cycle. The group plans to air $65 million in television ads in Ohio during the general election period, while its Republican rival, the Senate Leadership Fund, plans to spend $57.5 million.
But Senate Majority PAC's tactics clash grotesquely with President Biden's depiction of the 2024 concession in this month's State of the Union address. “Not since the Civil War,” he declared. Biden said those who stormed the Capitol “held a dagger to the throat of American democracy,” adding: “The threat remains and our democracy must be protected.” The president called on lawmakers to “respect free and fair elections, restore faith in our institutions, and make clear that there is no place for political violence in America.”
Trump has twice led Ohio by eight points. Moreno's campaign points out that many Democrats thought Trump was Hillary Clinton's best bet in 2016. Whoever wins Tuesday's primary, even Moreno, has a real chance of becoming a senator a year from now. Democrats should be careful what they wish for.