Republicans are spending the final week ahead of the midterm elections defending historically red Senate seats that have suddenly become competitive, according to federal filings and sources familiar with the matter.
A significant focus is now on four Senate races in Kansas, South Carolina, Nebraska, and even Mississippi, all traditionally red seats, in what’s an ominous development for Republicans in their effort to at least keep control of the upper chamber.
Trump operatives tell Inner Loop that they do not expect Democrats to win those Senate seats and that they have mainly directed GOP outside groups to spend there to help boost incumbents that only have a narrow lead.
But the operatives also concede that they are having to divert an increasing amount of resources to those states—states that president Donald Trump carried by double digits in 2024 and where Republicans never dreamed of having to spend tens of millions of dollars.
In total, in the penultimate week of the campaign, the Senate Republican–aligned Senate Leadership Fund spent $14 million across those four states, according to a WIRED review of federal filings. The biggest spend has been in Kansas, where SLF has abruptly dumped more than $5 million.
Trump operatives say Kansas has been a major headache since the start of October, when Trafalgar Group, a GOP pollster, found Democratic candidate Adam Hamilton one point ahead of incumbent GOP senator Roger Marshall.
Marshall, a doctor, has had an unusually tough race following a slew of negative stories about how he pursued legal action against his patients with unpaid bills and how much time he spends in Florida. Some political operatives have also complained that he has not taken his race seriously, sources say.
But the last-minute spending is also coming in places like South Carolina, where SLF spent another roughly $5 million to help incumbent Darline Graham, who has struggled to galvanize Trump’s base despite having the president’s endorsement that propelled her to victory in the primary.
SLF also spent nearly $3 million in Nebraska to help Republican incumbent senator Pete Ricketts, who has been behind in some polls, and in Mississippi, the fund put just under $1 million toward Republican incumbent senator Cindy Hyde-Smith.
The final sprint has highlighted the fraught predicament for Republicans, who are having to patch a seemingly ever-growing number of vulnerabilities.
Trump’s campaign schedule has also added several deep-red states that are flashing warning signs, in addition to the expected campaign stops in battleground states. Last week, Trump went to Kansas and South Carolina. This week, he has been in Mississippi and will return to Kansas and South Carolina, as well.
Still, several Trump operatives tell Inner Loop they have been encouraged by the fact that Democratic candidates lately have not expanded their leads in several key Senate races—a concern that has cropped up among some Senate Democratic leadership aides.
Chief among their concerns is Michigan, the best GOP pickup opportunity. Many of the most viable paths to Democrats taking the Senate majority pass through the state, but Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed has suffered lingering issues with key voting blocs.
Black voters turned out in droves to help Barack Obama carry the state in 2008 and 2012, and the conventional wisdom in Washington is that El-Sayed will need similar support in order to keep the seat blue, one of the Democratic aides tells Inner Loop.
But the trouble for El-Sayed, they add, has been the decades-long animosity between Arab and Black communities in Michigan, a divide that was further strained during the primary when supporters of his challenger, Haley Stevens, ran ads featuring Barack Obama praising her earlier work during the financial crisis.
In an effort to rebuild at least part of that coalition, Obama held a joint rally with El-Sayed in Detroit over the weekend, which aides are hoping could persuade some voters. Operatives aren’t sure if it’ll be enough.
We will have to see how it pans out. See you next week, on the other side!