Republicans’ Cash Blitz Meets a $5-Gas Election

Republican polling has so deteriorated this month that the only uncertainty remaining ahead of the midterms is the depth of the party’s losses. With early or mail ballot voting beginning in nearly half the country this week, that question will mainly be determined by which money matters more: the massive cash infusion from GOP groups into every competitive race or the price of gasoline soaring toward $5 a gallon.

The spending advantage could mitigate Republican losses, especially in suddenly vulnerable precincts of red-state America. Yet those advertising dollars may be effectively nullified if the price of unleaded and diesel continues rising and grips the public’s attention more than any commercial.

What’s clear is that GOP candidates are in a race against time.

That urgency was on vivid display Monday when Mike Rogers of Michigan and Ashley Hinson of Iowa, Republicans running in two of the country’s most crucial Senate races, each said it was time to end the war.

Multiple Republican lawmakers and strategists told me that their fate will be determined between now and early next month, by which point they’ll know if their onslaught of spending arrested the Democrats’ gains.

“If there’s movement by the second week of October, we’ll know we’re in good shape,” said Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), who’s locked in one of the tightest races in the country. “Republicans always outperform their polling.”

The cavalry can’t come soon enough for many Republicans. And, in fact, the money from President Donald Trump’s super PAC may have arrived too late. The high cost of living and a deepening fatigue with Trump’s self-obsession were cementing opinions about the midterms at the worst possible time for the GOP — in the critical weeks after Labor Day.

“The bottom’s beginning to fall out,” one House Republican from a blood-red district told me. Trump is even underwater in this lawmaker’s seat, which the president carried overwhelmingly two years ago. “We have money that we’ve never had before, but they have every strategic advantage in their direction, and the president’s made it worse — nobody in my district cares about the Kennedy Center, arches or the Reflecting Pool, all this nonsense,” said this GOP member.

The unpopular war and its impact on gas prices are the biggest drivers of voter dissatisfaction; the national average for regular unleaded was $4.48 a gallon as of Monday, according to GasBuddy. Yet not far behind is a recognition, even among the most loyal Republicans, that Trump is more focused on himself than voters. His unceasing fixation on naming buildings for himself and renovation projects is in plain view, and he makes no effort to conceal it’s what he cares about.

So for all the MAGA Inc. money finally flowing from Trump, GOP strategists are confronting a political triage that grows worse each week. Particularly in the Senate, where a favorable map once seemed to be a bulwark protecting the Republican majority, Democratic incursions into red states are hastening difficult decisions about the few purple states on the map.

GOP operatives are already eyeing cutbacks in their spending against Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), I’m told by well-placed GOP sources, and by October may have to cede North Carolina entirely and hand over a Republican-held seat. Internal Republican polls show former Gov. Roy Cooper leading that race by double digits, a margin that can perhaps be halved but not erased.

In both Southern states, Republican officials increasingly believe they’re wasting their money, and it would be better spent on flipping Democratic Senate seats in Michigan and New Hampshire, where their candidates are stronger and Democrats are more vulnerable.

Fittingly. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) hosted a fundraiser at a private home in Dallas Monday night, featuring former president George W. Bush, that included Rogers and John Sununu — the GOP nominees in Michigan and New Hampshire — but not the party’s nominees in North Carolina and Georgia. According to the invitation, which I obtained, the event was to also include Sens. Jon Husted (Ohio), Dan Sullivan (Alaska) and Hinson, as well as Michele Tafoya, the GOP long shot in Minnesota. Perhaps most notably, if least surprisingly given the hosts, Ken Paxton was also not included.

Yet even the most hopeful GOP strategist doesn’t believe they’ll pick up those states if this Category 4 storm grows into a Cat 5 wipeout.

Iowa, as I wrote last month, is the decisive state. Twice carried by Barack Obama and then three elections in a row by Trump, Iowa will test whether the political environment supersedes Republican money and near-calcified voter polarization.

A series of recent moves by GOP candidates there suggest a recognition that their 10-foot seawall isn’t high enough for the coming blue wave.

Hinson, who’s running for Iowa’s open Senate seat, has started broadcasting an ad trumpeting her work with Democrats and recently skipped appearing with Vice President JD Vance when he came to campaign in Council Bluffs.

At the same time, two of Iowa’s GOP House members facing difficult re-elections — Reps. Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks — last week voted for the first time to limit Trump’s war-making power in Iran. Their “nays” amounted to a vote of disapproval on the conflict, which has pulled down Trump’s approval in diesel-reliant farm states. Nunn’s vote was especially striking given that he just campaigned last month near Des Moines with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, ostensibly an architect of the war.

Then, last weekend, the state’s 93-year-old senior senator let fly a plea to the president.

“W diesel $6.57 in Iowa why doesn’t Pres Trump put an embargo on diesel exports like presidents in the 70s put embargoes on ag products bc food prices were inflated,” Grassley posted online. “High diesel prices ARE KILLING FARMERS INCOME #cornwatch #soybeanwatch”

By Monday afternoon, three of the four members of Iowa’s all-Republican delegation were echoing Grassley’s call on diesel exports, and Miller-Meeks, as well as Hinson, were calling for an end to the war.

This all comes in a state Trump won by more than 13 points just two years ago and which has not elected a Democratic governor or senator in this decade nor the previous one.

Should conditions erode further for Republicans, though, Iowa won’t be the worst of their problems. They’ll have to plow more money into Senate races in Kansas and Nebraska, where GOP outside groups are already spending seven-figure sums to protect typically safe seats, and move to shore up Mississippi and South Carolina, states that could grow precarious with motivated Black voters and any further slippage among Republican-leaning whites.

It has gained scant national attention, because of the state’s dramatic political realignment, but even Sen. Tom Cotton has been bombarding his Democratic opponent with negative ads, a precautionary move surely inspired by Trump’s drag on the Arkansas Republican.

The most determinative GOP money advantage may be in races where MAGA Inc. is not involved at all — gubernatorial contests. Democrats are leading or closing in on Republicans in a handful of expensive, right-leaning governor’s races, but the vast spending gap between the two parties in Ohio, Florida and Texas may prove too much for Democrats to overcome.

Still, it’s a sign of how detached Trump is from the immediate needs of his party that he’s not done more to aid their prospects. His main contribution this month was to blindside GOP congressional leaders by vowing to give every American $5,000 on the condition they kept Republicans in power. It was an election season gimmick so absurd that most embattled lawmakers ran from it, and Speaker Mike Johnson found it irritating enough that he complained about having to repeatedly talk about the checks on “Meet the Press.”

More striking was the dog that never barked, namely the lack of any push to suspend the federal gas tax, an old reliable when gas prices rise. But without Trump pushing Congress to at least hold a vote on the levy — which would give vulnerable lawmakers something to hold up back home — it never came to the floor of either chamber.

Much to the chagrin of some GOP lawmakers, the Senate returned to take up bills on crypto regulation and college sports, not exactly pressing issues for those voters left with too much month at the end of the money. (In fairness, Senate Republicans did try to move a data center bill, but it was blocked by Democrats not interested in letting their counterparts score any wins).

Even more fitting was the House’s brief, pre-election return.

Neatly capturing the zeitgeist, Johnson sent lawmakers back to their districts early to avert a revenge plot by a GOP member who Trump helped defeat in a primary earlier this year. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) rolled a political grenade in his own conference by introducing impeachment articles against Hegseth, a measure that by House rules would have to be quickly taken up (and may have even had the votes to pass, longtime GOP House members told me).

The only way out of a roll call vote on the embattled defense secretary was to go into recess, which is what Johnson decided to do, sending members limping home to meet their fate.

Not that Trump necessarily noticed.

The same day Massie introduced his impeachment resolution, the president’s hand-picked appointees were closing the Kennedy Center after a federal judge ruled that Trump couldn’t emblazon his name on the building.

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