Senate Democrats say Hillary Clinton needs to share the wealth with down-ballot candidates, as she’s sitting on millions of dollars in contributions while Democrats in battleground states get pummeled by outside groups.
The Clinton-controlled Democratic National Committee (DNC) has given only $2.5 million to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), well short of the $10 million requested by Senate Democrats, according to several sources.
{mosads}Senate Democrats are starting to complain to Clinton allies that they need to pay more attention to their races, especially if she wants to have the power to nominate a liberal judge to the Supreme Court if she wins the White House.
“The truth is there wasn’t enough given to the DSCC. They wanted the DNC to do more. The hope is that will come. If the second [presidential] debate goes as well as the first one, the hope is she’ll start campaigning a lot more for candidates in Florida, Pennsylvania and other states,” the source added.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee started the fall with more money than its Republican counterpart, but outside groups funded by Charles and David Koch and other super wealthy donors have flooded Senate races with millions of dollars.
Democrats have had to cancel advertising in Ohio and Florida, two expensive media markets where they had high hopes earlier this year, to focus on less-expensive contests in North Carolina and Missouri.
Clinton, meanwhile, has blown away Donald Trump on the airwaves, outspending the Republican 4 to 1, according Advertising Analytics, a firm that tracks media buys.
Her campaign reported $68 million in cash on hand at the end of August and allied outside groups reported $41 million in reserves in mid-September, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Trump reported $50 million in cash on hand and pro-Republican groups backing him reported $12 million.
Senate Democrats urged the Clinton campaign in August “to please turn the spigots on for us” when she was enjoying a comfortable lead in the polls, according to one source familiar with internal party discussions.
But the Clinton campaign said no, predicting the race would tighten, as it did after Clinton suffered a spate of bad press because of a bout with pneumonia.
The tightening of the presidential race in September quieted the grumbling, but now that Clinton has moved ahead in the polls, Senate Democrats are pressing her for more help.
The Clinton campaign pointed to an array of recent examples where she has campaign for Senate candidates.
She urged voters in Charlotte, N.C., in mid-September to “come together” and elect Democratic candidate Deborah Ross to the Senate.
Later that month in Raleigh, she praised Ross’s “intensity and incredible passion.”
She urged voters in Durham, N.H., on Sept. 29 to send Gov. Maggie Hassan (D), who is running against GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte, to Washington, and did the same for Pennsylvania candidate Katie McGinty (D) in early October.
She gave a boost to Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.) last month by telling voters in Coral Springs, Fla., that they deserve a full-time senator, a reference to Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) frequent absences during the GOP presidential primary.
But Clinton hasn’t made much of an effort to smack down Republican candidates in Democratic-leaning states, such as New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, where Democrats are trying to tie them to Trump.
For the most part, Clinton has refrained from mentioning specific races. At times in recent weeks, she has given a nod to down-ballot races without going into specifics.
“Now one thing you can do about that is change your governor in November and while you’re at it, change one of your senators,” she said at a voter registration event in North Carolina, last month. “We’re going to need reinforcements up in Washington. We got a big agenda.”
And in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, she also gave a brief mention, saying, “Well, I hope to have a Democratic Congress next January.”
“But no matter what, on my first day in office, I will reach out to Republicans and say, ‘This is your chance to help millions of families and show that your party, the party of Lincoln, is better than Donald Trump.”
Clinton drew a sharp distinction between Trump and the rest of the Republican Party by arguing in August that he does not represent the values of the GOP.
“This is not conservatism as we have known it. This is not Republicanism as we have known it,” she said.
Senate Democrats, by contrast, for months have described vulnerable Senate Republican incumbents as loyal foot soldiers in Trump’s army. And they upped the pressure over the weekend, as Democrats pushed their opponents to denounce Trump’s candidacy in light of the lewd comments that surfaced on Friday.
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) says the values of the GOP have given rise to Trump.
“Trump is no anomaly. He is the monster the Republicans built. He is their Frankenstein monster,” Reid said on the Senate floor shortly before Congress recessed for the election. “They own him. All you have to do to see that the Republicans are the party of Trump is to look at the way they’ve treated him.”
Reid argued during a speech at the Center for American Progress in March that Republicans sowed the seeds for Trump’s rise by constantly questioning President Obama’s legitimacy, “fear-mongering” against Muslims, and stoking anti-immigrant sentiment over the previous eight years.
Jim Manley, a Clinton surrogate and former aide to Reid, said the Clinton campaign needs to not only focus on hitting Trump, but also attacking the Republican Senate candidates on the ballot.
“As a Senate guy, they need to try and figure [it] out. The Senate races have tightened up and she’s only going to be successful if the Senate flips, so I hope they spend some time and attention focused on those races and tie the candidates to Trump as much as possible,” he said.
Clinton, who is likely to face a Republican-controlled House if she is elected president, has taken a softer approach with the GOP.
When she called on Congress last month to reconvene to pass legislation to fight the spread of the Zika virus, she declined to single out Republicans for failing to act, as Senate Democrats had.
Clinton said she was “very disappointed” but did not hammer Republican leaders for taking a seven-week recess in the midst of the crisis. Instead, she urged both parties to, “pass the bipartisan bill in the Senate or come up with a new compromise that does the same.”
Clinton campaign officials instructed the DNC not to link Republican candidates to Trump because it would make her opponent seem more mainstream. Her strategy has been to paint him as a loose cannon unfit for office.
According to emails released by WikiLeaks, Luis Miranda, who was the DNC communications director at the time, sent an email to then DNC chief executive Amy Dacey reporting that the Clinton campaign “didn’t want us to tie Trump to other Republicans because they think it makes him look normal.”
Clinton’s laser-like focus on Trump, to the exclusion of other Republican candidates, have given GOP incumbents in swing states, such as Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey (R), valuable breathing room.
Toomey is hoping to squeak by to victory by running as an independent Republican. He told Bloomberg News last month that he’d stand up to Trump.
Late last month, Toomey released a television ad touting his endorsement by former Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords (Ariz.), a prominent anti-gun advocate, and zinging his Democratic opponent, Katie McGinty, as a partisan extremist.
“The messaging thing is a little annoying. We’re seeing so many ads saying that Pat Toomey is a different kind of Republican,” said a second Senate Democratic strategist, who added that “by saying Trump is unique and doesn’t represent the Republican Party” undercuts the message of Senate candidates.
Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons said Clinton could label Trump like Obama did in 2012, where he not only mentioned his rival Mitt Romney but Republicans as well.
“Making Donald Trump out to be so extreme has a byproduct of making Pat Toomey, Kelly Ayotte and other Republicans seem reasonable,” Simmons said. “It allows people like Ayotte and Toomey to have distance from him.”
Still, Simmons added, “If you’re in the position that the Clinton camp has found itself in, having a Democratic Senate is tomorrow’s problem. Today’s problem is beating Donald Trump.”