A Senate Republican super PAC aligned with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is pouring $67.5 million into close races in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan to tear down Democrats’ “blue wall.”
With less than 35 days until the election, the Senate Republican Leadership Fund is shelling out for TV, radio and digital ads targeting Sens. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) as well as an open seat left by retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.).
The largest sum, $28 million, will be funneled into Pennsylvania, where GOP Senate candidate Dave McCormick has closed the polling gap to within the margin of error against Casey in a recent Washington Post poll.
That’s on top of $24 million already spent on ads starting in June.
Another $22.5 million will help Senate Republican candidate Mike Rogers take on Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), and $17 million will go toward GOP Senate hopeful Eric Hovde in his bid to unseat Baldwin.
The cash infusion to defeat Democrats’ current 51-49 majority in the Senate was first reported Monday by the Wall Street Journal.
Republicans in the 2024 election have at least 50 likely or safe Senate seats, as Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV) is leaving a vacancy that is expected to be easily filled by GOP Mountain State Gov. Jim Justice, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
Senate Republican candidate Tim Sheehy is also expected to beat Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and the race between Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Republican challenger Bernie Moreno is ranked as a toss-up, Cook Political Report ratings show.
The Senate Leadership Fund and its affiliated PAC American Crossroads already pitched in $47.9 million to the Montana race and $77.5 million to the Ohio race earlier this year.
Winning either race would secure the Republican Senate majority.
But internal polling from the Senate Leadership Fund is showing the contests in the blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan are also tightening up — at the Senate level and for the presidential matchup between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“We’re able to expand the Senate map because we have quality candidates who are keeping their races competitive,” Senate Leadership Fund president and CEO Steven Law said in a statement.
Trump won all three states in 2016, but lost them to Joe Biden in 2020. The former president’s surging polling numbers, however, make it more likely that he could boost down-ballot Republican candidates.
The Senate Majority PAC, aligned with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), has still been outspending Republican candidates across the board, with $239 million in ad spending announced in March on close races — $100 million of which went just to holding seats in Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to the Washington Post.
McConnell (R-Ky.), who will step down as Senate minority leader after this election, told Semafor in an interview last week he was concerned Democrats would do away with historic precedents, such as the 60-vote filibuster, to ram through their agenda should they keep the upper chamber and the White House.
At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this summer, Schumer suggested if his party wins a Democratic trifecta — the House, Senate and White House — he would push through bills to codify a federal right to abortion and to exert more federal control over the elections process.
Republicans won back the House in the 2022 midterms, making it difficult for President Biden to pass the rest of his agenda without bipartisan cooperation.
Law told the Journal that his PAC is not planning to bankroll ads for three other races ranked as likely Republican victories for Sen. Rick Scott in Florida, Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas and Sen. Deb Fischer in Nebraska.
