Democratic Senate candidates in key “blue wall” states crucial to the 2024 election are distancing themselves from Vice President Harris in an effort to appeal to former President Trump’s supporters and secure their seats.
During high-stakes debates, these candidates have avoided direct criticism of Trump, instead focusing on policy issues and their own accomplishments. Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, for example, has embraced Trump’s tariff policies and presented himself as an independent candidate who has stood up against the Biden administration on issues like fracking and NAFTA.
Casey’s campaign strategy includes employing populist messaging similar to Trump’s to appeal to working-class voters and differentiate himself from his Republican opponent, David McCormick. In Wisconsin, Senator Tammy Baldwin has also avoided aligning herself too closely with the Biden-Harris administration, choosing to focus on policy issues and attacking her opponent’s record.
Both Casey and Baldwin have faced criticism from the National Republican Senatorial Committee for attempting to align themselves with Trump after clashing with him in the past. However, both candidates defend their actions as necessary for protecting American jobs and advancing bipartisan legislation.
Despite these tactics, Baldwin and other Democratic candidates in these key states are facing tough battles as Trump gains ground in the polls. The upcoming election will be crucial in determining the balance of power in the Senate and shaping the political landscape for years to come.
And she participated in Harris’s first campaign rally in Milwukee after becoming the Democratic Party’s likely nominee in July.
In Michigan, Democratic Senate candidate Elissa Slotkin, currently wrapping her third term representing the state in the House of Representatives, has sounded like a Republican at times, talking about her home on a “dirt road” where no electric vehicle would dare went. She has flashed Trumpian rhetoric about how Japan and South Korea “ate our lunch” in the 1980s by being a step ahead of U.S. automakers in promoting fuel-efficient vehicles.
Slotkin warned donors in a video call earlier this month that Harris was struggling against Trump in Michigan.
“I’m not feeling my best right now about where we are on Kamala in a place like Michigan right now. We have her underwater in our polling,” Slotkin told supporters in a clip viewed by The Hill.
David Dulio, a political science professor at Oakland University, located outside of Detroit, said Slotkin is cautiously keeping her distance from the Biden-Harris administration’s record.
“Slotkin isn’t talking about Biden simply because some of the issues where voters are judging performance are not in the Democrats’ favor,” he said, alluding to voters’ dissatisfaction over the economy, inflation, and mass migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Slotkin is somebody who touts her bipartisan work across the aisle proclivities,” he added.
She’s also soft-pedaling attacks on Trump in a state where he has many supporters.
Slotkin, who represents Michigan’s moderate 7th Congressional District, didn’t mention Trump at her last debate with her Republican opponent, former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, until the end of the hour, when she tagged Rogers for sitting by idly while Trump spreads “misinformation and disinformation.”
Rogers repeatedly accused Slotkin of voting “100 percent” with Biden and Harris.
The outcome of the presidential race heavily determined the outcome of Senate races in 2016 and 2020, the last two times President Trump was on the ballot.
Earlier this year, polls consistently showed Democratic candidates in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin outperforming Biden, and later Harris — something that was also true in Republican-leaning Montana and Ohio.
But the separation between Democratic candidates and the Harris in these battlegrounds are starting to narrow as Election Day approaches.
The Cook Political Report earlier this month shifted the Wisconsin Senate race from lean-Democrat to “toss-up.”
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