Transcript of The Republican Strategy to Salvage the Midterms

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the Republican strategy to win the midterms and how it's playing out in spending, advertising, televised candidate debates, and personal attacks. I spoke with 3 of my colleagues, political reporters Shane Goldmacher, Lisa Lair and Nate Cohn. It's Thursday, October 15th. Lisa and Shane and Nate, thank you for joining this campaign roundtable. Appreciate it.

Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us.

Woohoo! I appreciate that woohoo, Shane. Big energy. So loyal listeners of The Daily, will recall that we have spent a lot of time on the show in the past few weeks talking about Democratic momentum in these midterm elections, especially in traditionally red states. We've talked about the fact that Democrats are favored, not by a lot, but favored to win both the House and the Senate based on our own polling. But today, we want to focus on the Republican strategy. for winning these midterms and the potential electoral path to a Republican victory. And so, Shane, let me start with you. Can you summarize, based on your reporting, what the Republican strategy for victory is? And I guess just clarify what would even constitute a Republican triumph in this election?

Yeah, I mean, I think that the Republican strategy for victory right now in the House doesn't really look like victory. It looks like keeping their losses to be in the minority, but not by a lot. This week, they made a number of changes to their ad reservations that basically ceded 2 more current Republican-held seats after they ceded one last week.

Hmm. They're ceding sufficient races to let you know that they've given up on the math of winning the House.

You don't give up on your incumbents unless things are looking bad. And people are saying this is to stave off deeper

Got it.

So in the House, victory might mean losing by less, right? It's not actually holding the majority at this moment. And it's a totally different story in the Senate, where Republicans very much have a chance to hold their majority. And they're doing so by competing in a number of traditionally red states. The map has gotten deeper into their territory, but it still is favoring the Republicans such that They can win if they hold states they typically win in.

So the Republican strategy is to protect its majority, really, in the Senate. And I have to imagine that a big way that it does that— we've talked about it in past episodes— is by tapping into this extraordinary financial advantage that the Republican Party has in these midterms over Democrats. And I wonder how it is using that money, Lisa.

Right. Well, part of how they're trying to circle the wagons, as Shane said, is by just dumping money into these races. Texas has seen just an extraordinary influx of Republican money. And they are just hounding the airwaves with ads, largely linking Democrats to the more progressive socialist wing of their party. I think most of it is negative on Democrats. There's some effort also to tout some economic improvements made by President Trump, but most of this is a negative campaign against Democrats and, you know, a focus also on crime and threats to personal safety. But yeah, the main thing Republicans have going for them here, along with the map, is the extreme financial advantage they have over Democrats. And it's really raised the question for Democrats of, can you be outbeat 10 to 1 and still win a race? Can you be outbeat in spending 1,000 to 1? And that's something that this election will help show us the answer to.

Shane, how do you think about that?

I just think about, you know, Lisa brought up Texas. This is the state where you see the biggest disparity in spending so far. Republicans have outspent Democrats by something like $175 million.

In favor of Ken Paxton. Senate Republican candidate over James Tallarico, the Democratic Senate candidate.

And where has that money come from? It's come from Elon Musk. So our colleague Teddy Schlieffer wrote this week that Musk has contributed $276 million to the Republican Party. This is on top of what we already knew was at least a half-billion-dollar Republican financial advantage. We are pressing towards a billion dollars more of Republican money from big super PACs and national parties than Democrats have. And that is playing out nowhere more than Texas, where Musk has his business and where the super PAC he funded has spent $150, $158 million. It's astonishing. So this is one man, the world's richest man, completely changing the dynamics of a key Senate race.

Right. Well, let's ask Nate the question: is he in fact changing the dynamics of the Texas Senate race? What do the polls tell us? And are the polls telling us anything about whether the Republican financial advantage, as evidenced by this circling of the wagons and this onslaught in the final weeks of the race, is really doing anything to tighten these key Senate races where Democrats have had an advantage?

In short, the answer is no. There is so far no evidence that the Republican Party's enormous financial advantage has moved the needle in their favor. The Democrats still lead by a wide 9-point margin in the national polls. The key Senate polls still show Democrats faring astonishingly well in red states, including in Texas, where every poll since Labor Day shows James Talarico with a lead over Ken Paxton again in Texas. It's worth emphasizing that there's still 3 weeks to go until the election. This is a midterm, not a presidential year. People are tuning in much later than usual in a midterm election. They don't know these candidates well. So I don't think that precludes a Republican comeback. And it's worth noting that the polls do show something really important.

Which is?

About the Republican opportunity, which is that although they are losing in all of these states, or at least are faring much worse than they should be in all of these states, including Texas, these are still Republican voters that we're talking about. There are more Republicans in all of these states even now than Democrats. The only thing they need to do is get their own people back on their side over the last 3 weeks before the election. Ordinarily, this should be easy. In the end, they may well pull it off. They definitely have the money to do it. But the opening on paper is still there. You can still tell yourself, if you're a Republican strategist, that this is still a voter that you ought to be able to get on board down the stretch.

Lisa, I can see you itching to jump in.

Well, that's part of what I find so fascinating about these midterms. You know, we spend a lot of time in our business talking about swing voters and independent voters and people who are persuadable. And in some ways, those people people are still important in this race. But in this race, it's not just about those voters. It's about whether Republican voters can simply, as Nate pointed out, be motivated to go cast a ballot for a Republican candidate. It's about whether these voters stay home and just don't show up. It's always harder for Republicans to get their people out when Donald Trump is not on the ballot. Right. That's part of why the president has been going all over to these red states and saying, pretend I'm on the ballot. But there's something else going on here, which is that some portion of the Republican electorate is disappointed in the president and are unhappy with sort of the economic situation that people are in right now, the high fuel prices in particular, but also inflation. Some section of them don't like the tariffs. They don't like the war on Iran, and they are disappointed, and they may just stay home.

Right.

One thing that really strikes me in the polling that we have is that in all of the red states that we've been talking about, like Texas, and you know the others, the president is Really unpopular. His approval rating could be in the low 40s or the 30s in these states. This is something that the president's party just hasn't had to deal with since the Bush years. When Donald Trump helped Republicans win red states in the 2018 midterm, he was popular in Texas when Ted Cruz won. He was popular in Missouri when they could bring down a Claire McCaskill. Donald Trump is not popular in these red states today, and as a result, the, the floor underneath Republican candidates is At least right now in the polls, it's not there, and they are falling much farther than you would ordinarily think they could.

So to bring it back to strategy, what you're all saying is that a hugely important part of the Republican strategy here has to be turning out their voters, at least the ones who haven't turned against them or the president. And to return to the money and the ads, I want to understand how Republicans are doing that specifically through this onslaught of TV ads in the final weeks? And I'm curious in particular if you guys are seeing successful examples of this Republican advertising that could do this very thing we're talking about.

Here's an interesting one.

I'm Texas Senator Angela Paxton.

So in Texas, the lead super PAC supporting Senate Republicans is running a spot featuring Angela Paxton.

Let's talk about the elephant in the room.

Now for those, you know, listeners who may not be as deeply familiar with Texas politics as we all have become—

And it's spousal politics.

It's spousal politics. She's a state lawmaker who's separated from Ken Paxton, who's running for the Senate seat in Texas. She announced last year that she was filing for divorce on biblical grounds. There were multiple affairs.

In a general election, it's not as much about the individual players on the team. It's about getting the whole team across the finish line.

And so they are running an ad where Angela Paxton says, without mentioning her ex's name, you need to come out for the team because the alternative here is worse.

Either we hold every Republican seat or we hand the future of Texas to the other team.

And she's saying, you may not like Ken Paxton, you may not like even the president.

Fascinating.

But this is about the Republican agenda. This is about broader Republican priorities. And this is about not electing a Democrat who Republicans have spent, as Shane pointed out earlier, extraordinary amounts of money sort of painting as very far to the left on a number of social issues that resonate very deeply with Texas Republicans.

That's why I'm voting for the Republican ticket on November 3rd. Let's hold the line together.

And clearly what she's saying is, if I can get behind this man who I really don't like, and I know personally—

Who did me wrong.

Who did me wrong. Very wrong. Then so can you. And Nate, you've explained that In this campaign, the successful model for candidates from both parties is to distance themselves from the formal party they're a member of.

That's right. If you can distance yourself from your own party, and if you're a Republican, from the president, that is political gold this cycle. It is understandable that the president's unpopular and that that's dragging down Republicans. But if you're a Republican pollster or campaign strategist, it is just not acceptable to you that the Democratic candidate for Senate is popular. In Texas, Kansas, Iowa, and Alaska according to the polls. And I just don't think at this stage that they have managed to land a direct hit on them yet. That is essential because again, if you're the Republicans, there's just not that much you can do about Trump, but you only have yourself to blame if at this stage the Democratic nominees are uniformly popular across these red states where again, these are Republican voters you have to convince not to like Democrats. This is not supposed to be hard.

In other words, that ad with Angela Paxton did nothing to tell you what's wrong with James Talarico.

I mean, yes, but in that case, they are running ads constantly and telling—

Somebody else is doing that.

Somebody else is doing that. I think the issue—

But it's not working yet.

It's not working yet. And I think Nate makes a good point. But I also think there's another point, which is that it is really hard for these Republicans to distance themselves from President Trump. They spent most of this congressional session not dissenting from the president in any way, shape, or form, basically pushing through his agenda, pushing his few priorities. And they spent just about a decade at this point really being very cautious about publicly separating themselves from President Trump. But one place where I think you're seeing it really interestingly is in Maine, where Susan Collins, who does have this reputation as this independent Republican, kind of the last of her breed, who dissents with Trump, when she needs to and voted against the tariffs. Even she in Maine is having a difficult time making that case against a Democratic candidate who comes after a whole bunch of shenanigans that we covered in this show and who isn't all that strong. So if Susan Collins is struggling to separate herself from Trump, it really does make you wonder how well and how effectively any other Republican in the country is going to be able to do it.

Well, since we're talking about Trump, I want to end the first half of our conversation by talking about his role in this Republican strategy, his personal role in it, because he's now hitting the campaign trail kind of hard, especially for him in this cycle. He's been reluctant to do these events. He's now doing them in the final stretch of the campaign. Shane, where has he been focusing his time briefly, and what has so far been the benefit of him showing up, given his profound unpopularity?

I think you can see the strategy in what we're talking about, which is they need Republicans to realize there's an election and come out. And so they're sending him to red places. He was in Alaska. That is not typically where you see a presidential rally. It's a very long trip to get to Alaska. He was in Montana. He is touching some other places that are a little bit swingier. He's going to Georgia in the coming days. But in general, he has been confined to red places. He and the Vice President have repeatedly been to Texas. They just need people to put on their red partisan jerseys in that state. And Ken Paxton is not a person that's getting every Republican to put on that jersey.

And more specifically, what they're trying to do is engage and turn out, like, low-propensity voters, which is our fancy way of saying that people who don't vote very often in midterms and maybe not even presidentials. It's what they did successfully in 2024 to build this coalition that elected Trump into office, of course, but it's a lot harder in a midterm. Their turnout is always lower in midterm elections, and it's just a harder goal to set.

I do think We should think about President Trump's role here as an X factor. We have seen where he has physically gone has, in the past, increased turnout, and their ability to target those voters with text messages and phone calls has increased turnout. They've looked at past special elections and past primaries as test runs for this fall's general election. Can they put him in a place and blitz people's phones? And convince them to vote, and they've seen it happen.

Wow. It works.

It has worked.

Nate, could that be enough? Is there enough Trump to go around to enough red states between now and the election for that to make a difference?

You know, look, this is a midterm election, so the turnout's going to be reasonably high, and base MAGA voters alone don't necessarily get you to victory, even in red states. That doesn't mean that the president can't help Republicans by targeting low-propensity voters on their cell phones, but probably isn't sufficient. But again, the thing that is still so striking to me is that in all of these states, the president is much less popular than even these unpopular Republican Senate candidates. I mean, Ken Paxton, we're just talking about his biblical divorce. He's been indicted and impeached and so on, and he is meaningfully more popular among Texas voters than the president right now. It's a different kind of unpopularity, perhaps, but this is a really big problem for a party running in the midterm election.

Okay, well, we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, we're gonna talk about the homework assignment that I gave you all related to these midterms, and I'm gonna ask you to deliver on that assignment. We'll be right back. Lisa, Nate, Shane, welcome back. So onto this homework assignment I gave you. We're at this moment in the midterm campaign where televised candidate debates are in full bloom, these live dramatic confrontations that play on local TV and sometimes go viral in national clips. And I asked you to find moments from these debates among the Senate candidates in these key states that will determine the midterms that really reflect the Republican strategy we're talking about here and its limitations. And Lisa, because you've been such an A student this whole—

Always an A student.

—conversation, I'm going to start with you. What moment from these debates has stood out to you?

So in Iowa, Representative Ashley Hinson, who's the Republican, she's running against Josh Turek, a state lawmaker For

the Senate seat in Iowa.

Right. Very close, red state, exactly the kind of race we've been talking about in this— in the beginning of this episode. She took the moment on the debate stage to separate herself from a Trump administration policy to buy diesel from Russia.

Ms. Hinson, do you support buying Russian diesel to lower costs for Iowans, even if those purchases help Putin finance his war against Ukraine? Yes or no? And please explain. You have 60 seconds.

We need to— we need to lower gas prices in this country. We need to lower diesel prices. But I don't think we need to be making a deal with Russia to do it. I think we should—

And, you know, the goal of that policy was to lower prices. And she stood up and said that she disagrees with that plan. And part of what this reflects is this deep unhappiness with President Trump in rural states like Iowa. Right. I mean, these farmers and ranchers— I was just in eastern Colorado and they are just getting killed on everything from diesel prices to the price of hay. I learned, is up because it has to be shipped in large— hay is very bulky. You have to ship it. It takes a lot of diesel to move hay around the country. Right. If you don't have hay, you can't feed your animals, particularly in the winter if there's snow covering the ground. So she's under a lot of pressure in Iowa to show independence from the president, and particularly on these economic policies and on these costs. So we'll see if she's able to give herself that separation. I think Republicans do feel that she's a strong candidate. But I think that little moment in the debate really illustrates that balancing act that a lot of Republican Senate candidates in particular are trying to pull off right now.

Right. And we should say that what you're describing was really underscored on Wednesday by news on our homepage here at The Times about new inflation numbers. And gas price alone in the last month was up 34%.

I mean, all the things that normal people are paying attention to as indicators of the economy are bad right now. You have those inflation numbers, you have gas prices, you have interest rates, right? For all the people who might want to be buying or selling a home are setting new records for recent times. All of these things that President Trump had promised to tame, they're going in the wrong direction. And what you see is the White House scrambling to come up with ways to literally send people money ahead of the midterms. They've come up with plans to send people money who are on Medicare. They've come up with a whole different set of proposals to solve this immediate crisis because the day-to-day economic news is bad and keeps getting worse.

Nate, if it's okay, I want to ask you for a debate moment that reflects the Republican strategy to win these Senate races despite all these economic travails that we're talking about. So show us your homework.

One, maybe the most memorable moment from these debates for me was when Susan Collins, Republican senator from Maine, attacked Democrat Troy Jackson, on not where he stood on the issues, but instead his effectiveness as president of the Maine State Senate.

My opponent, by contrast, struggled to get his bills passed in his 20 years in the legislature.

She alleged that he simply couldn't get things done and couldn't get concrete legislative accomplishments.

He couldn't work work with a Democratic governor nor a Republican governor.

He couldn't get his own Democratic colleagues to co-sponsor and ultimately pass his legislation. And what it did was it both highlighted Susan Collins's purported or argued strength in this race, which is that she can be an effective lawmaker for Maine, that she can bring home pork in the form of appropriations, that she can lobby the president to make exceptions for tariffs, and that Troy Jackson, while you may agree with him more on the issues, he's not capable of actually getting concrete, practical things done for voters in Maine.

Right. This is what you said Republicans need to be doing to win these races. They have to knock down their Democratic rivals. And you've said several times that Troy Jackson is almost inexplicably poorly performing. Yeah.

And honestly, I kind of came away from the debate understanding that a little bit better in some way. I mean, for starters, I thought that Susan Collins did a good job of highlighting the shortcomings of his record, and that's been a part of the advertisements that her campaign has been running in Maine over the last few months, and also her campaign's allies. But I also thought that Troy Jackson's performance left something to be desired. I mean, to take maybe the most juvenile thing I could say, he was on mic burping. During the debate.

I have proven time and time again that I deliver for the state of Maine.

Now, look, burping is not disqualifying. I know that you've done it many times on the show, Michael, and they've edited it out. But, but, you know, there are many superficial elements of being an effective candidate and they're hard to talk about. We don't get to ask in a poll question, you know, whether you're the kind of person that looks like they're capable of being an effective senator based on the gravitas of their voice, or whether they can command the room, or whether they look professional. Those are hard things to talk about in politics. And I just don't think that Troy Jackson necessarily checks all of those boxes for voters.

But I mean, what does it say about the national environment for Republicans that Susan Collins, a very established senator with a strong brand— voters in the surveys say they like her character. She has a long history of serving her state, and she is not running away with a race against a burper. I think it tells us something, right? Absolutely. Doesn't that tell us something about how difficult the national environment is?

Shane, your debate performance standout moment?

I mean, I think I would point to the Michigan race where Mike Rogers made a pretty full-throated and aggressive case against Abdul El-Sayed.

We cannot afford Abdul, and we cannot risk his ideology. Think about what he's proposing. The largest, most massive tax increase in history, taking over your private health insurance and giving it to the government. Huge increases in your energy costs. That 30%—

And one of the lines was that we can't afford your ideology. And it's very clear that Mike Rogers was trying to cast him as outside the mainstream of acceptable candidates to such an extent that he was floating and raising the possibility of ties of family If you have

someone in your family that might be on the

watch list—

Are you going to go ahead and say that I'm a— go ahead and say it. No, I'm going to say, did you not have family— You've been tiptoeing around the whole time. Just say it. No, I haven't been tiptoeing around it.

Go ahead and say it. El-Sayed basically almost accused him of calling him a terrorist, and he stops himself short in that moment. He said, are you trying to call me a— and he paused like he didn't want to give him that debate clip. And I think all of their exchanges over El-Sayed's record and his positions. It's what feeling you can evoke from voters. And it's very clear that the Rogers campaign is trying to evoke a feeling of fear, that this is the kind of person who you can't trust on a wide spectrum of reasons.

I'm really glad you used the word fear, Shane, because I do think so far we've been talking about the mainstream advertising, the mainstream messaging. But I do think we've started to see in the final stretch of this race the kind of unofficial element and form of the Republican strategy. And it involves some kind of classic dark arts politicking and some fearmongering. And here I'm thinking specifically about what unfolded in Texas over the past few days. And I wonder which one of the 3 of you wants to take that on, Lisa.

So James Talarico, the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas, was off the trail for more than a week, quite a while. in the final stretch of the campaign. His campaign said he had the flu. He has diabetes, so a flu can be more complicated for him. The recovery can be longer. And Republicans, largely online, started pushing a theory that he didn't have the flu at all, that he had been checked into a mental health facility, a hospital, and it was in Ohio, and it was this specific hospital. And they were pushing this narrative that he had some kind of mental health crisis or breakdown, and that's why he was off the trail.

And they pushed this, we should say, in an extremely prolific and coordinated way. I believe at one point, someone posted an AI-generated message from this alleged mental institute suggesting that Talarico was there. He was not.

Right. And then finally, the facility in Ohio made a public statement on social media saying, he was not here. He's never been here. And Talarico himself said, I'd never been to Ohio at all. So the thing sort of crashed, although some concerned was online still said they had questions and things like that. But it was just an illustration. This was a botched attempt of how Republicans are really going after his character. They're trying to make him look like he's out of the mainstream. There's been not-so-subtle attacks on his sexuality. Look, he's straight. He had a big reveal of his girlfriend in the New York Post early in this general election campaign. But the attacks have gone beyond insinuations about his sexuality to Republicans in the highest level of the party really accusing him of sexual perversions.

I just want to pause you because Vice President Vance, within the last day, went even further and doubled down on a previous insinuation about James Talarico. Vance had, quite a while ago, suggested that, you know, if you were to find James Talarico's search history online, something would be amiss and untoward. He was asked about this as he was going to Texas. And the vice president said pretty much, I stand by that. And we should just say there's no evidence of that. That's some pretty old-school, outright character assassination from the vice president of the United States weeks before the election.

And, you know, one example that really stood out to me is in Kansas, which is a state we haven't talked about specifically yet, but it's a— you know, it's a real red state that's now sort of a surprise addition to the map of competitive states. And the vice president went after Adam Hamilton, who's the Democratic running there, who is the head of one of the largest churches, not only in Kansas, but in the country, and said that he wasn't practicing Christianity. And he called his views left-wing radicalism dressed in the skin suit of our religion, is what Vance said about Hamilton, who has quite a large flock. So these attacks are, they're character-driven, they're personal, and they're a desire to cast Democrats as, you know, really out of the mainstream of everything from Christian faith to

I mean, I think it is actually partly a surround sound message in Texas. One of the most aired ads in the country this year features a person from the Human Rights Campaign talking about transgender rights, and then cutting into James Talarico and reviving the line from the 2024 campaign is, James Talarico is for they/them, not you. And more than $20 million has been spent on that single ad in that one state. But I think that it fits a broad strokes raising questions of why James Talarico has the positions on transgender issues that he has had in the past. And they're raising it repeatedly in a whole series of ads. And sometimes they're stretching what that represents. Sometimes they're just on the facts of what his positions have been. It is a huge part of the Republican campaign there. And I think one of the questions of the effectiveness is what made that ad so good for Republicans against Kamala Harris is it spoke to the fact that people didn't feel like she was focused and the Democrats were focused on economic issues that they actually cared most about. And if you listen to the surround sound of what Democrats are talking about this year, Tallulah Rico and everyone else, it's on economic issues.

And so, I think that some of these Republican attacks are going to land differently, even if they're touching the exact same issues they were touching 2 years ago.

Right. I was going to add, it gets us back to this fundamental question of these midterm elections, which is, do voters care what Tallarico thinks about transgender kids, or do they even care about his sex life at all if they can't afford to pay for gas to get to and from work, or they're struggling, they're cutting back at the grocery store, or they're facing costs that are having real and direct impacts on their life and changing their financial plans. And they feel extremely bleak about their economic future.

Mm-hmm. It really does feel that this race boils down to the Democratic momentum born of all this economic frustration versus this Republican money and what it can do to take down and in some cases demonize these Democratic candidates and protect these Republican seats. And I wonder if that really is the right framework for these midterm elections.

I think it is a good framing. And I think that, you know, at risk of repeating myself, I think that the key person to think about right now is a Republican-leaning voter who doesn't like the president. For the Republicans, the first thing they have to pull off is at least make it that this voter doesn't like the Democrat. And right now, a lot of them in the polls say they do. They at least need to make that person not like the Democrat anymore. If they can at least make it so that these voters don't like the Democrat, then we'll just find out what they do. What's the choice that a voter in that position makes? Do they stay home or do they vote for the Republicans? But right now, they're at risk of losing in states that they have no business losing because so many of their own supporters are dissatisfied with their own party.

Well, Nate and Shane, Lisa, Thank you very much.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you.

Thanks for having us.

You can read more from Times political reporters on the New York Times app. If you don't already have the app, we wanted to let you know that if you download it right now, you'll get access to all of our journalism free for 1 month. So give it a try. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Ukraine's government said that without warning, It had lost access to the satellite internet network at the heart of its military and blamed the Trump administration, which pays for and controls that system. President Trump is currently locked in his latest feud with Ukraine's leaders, who have defied his request to stop attacking Russia's oil refineries. Those attacks have set back Trump's plan to use Russian Russian oil to lower US gas prices ahead of the midterm elections. The White House has declined to comment on whether it turned off the satellite internet system in Ukraine, but the outage has left Ukraine vulnerable to a massive barrage of Russian airstrikes, which arrived on Wednesday and left Ukraine's energy grid in tatters. Today's episode was produced by Diana Nguyen, Carlos Prieto, and Alex Stern. It was edited by Mark George and Rachael Quester, contains music by Diane Wong, Dan Powell, and Rohini Misto, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley.

Our theme music is by Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow. See you tomorrow.