Dem
47
GOP
53
In past election cycles, no matter how much the Turtle-in-chief tried, Republicans kept nominating Senate candidates with "candidate quality" problems. Think: Kari Lake, Kelly Loeffler, Roy Moore, Blake Masters, Christine "I am not a witch" O'Donnell, Dr. Oz, Herschel Walker, Matt Rosendale, and on and on. They all lost, often to newbies who might not have been able to beat a stronger candidate. Once in a while, one of them won in a one-party state—ahem, Sen. Football (R-AL)—but it is rare. Deep-red states generally have plenty of ambitious conservative politicians for the voters to choose from and they aren't forced to go with a complete turkey.
So far, there don't appear to be any races where the Republicans have a "candidate quality" problem. The cycle is still young, so one could yet pop up, but so far, so good for the red team. As far as close observers can see, Republicans are not about to throw away any winnable seats by nominating a fire-breathing wacko who can't win a general election. A lot of the credit goes to Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), who is quietly working behind the scenes to prevent wacko candidates from getting any traction in Republican primaries. Roy Moore's loss in Alabama shows that no state, no matter how conservative, is immune to having a truly awful candidate be dispatched.
This time, it is the Democrats who may have a "candidate quality" problem. Fortunately for them, it is for Virginia AG, not the Senate. The problem candidate is Jay Jones. His problem is that a string of text messages from him musing about political violence toward a political rival has come to light. This is an especially bad time for a candidate to be the top cop of a state to be talking about shooting the then-speaker of the Virginia House, Todd Gilbert. One of the messages read: "Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, Hitler, and Pol Pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head." That is a clumsy version of an old joke about how person one is so horrible, you'd rather make absolutely sure they end up dead (two bullets) as opposed to getting rid of two horrible people (one bullet each).
Jones' problem has become the problem of gubernatorial candidate Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA). Republicans up and down the line are demanding that she call for his ouster from the ticket. Yesterday, Donald Trump joined them in demanding that Jones exit the ticket. So far, Spanberger has condemned the messages but not called for Jones to quit. This ought to be a no-brainer for the Democrats. Every Democrat from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on down should be screaming that political violence is totally unacceptable and Jones must leave the race immediately. The Virginia Democratic Party can surely find a replacement. Besides, this one race isn't so important.
The (unspoken) problem is that Jones is Black, and the Democrats don't want to aggravate Black voters. They are going to need those votes in November. Spanberger's refusal to demand that Jones quit the race could hurt her. Her luck is that she has a weak opponent, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R-VA). Roughly 100% of Earle-Sears' ads attack Spanberger for refusing to toss trans people under the bus and then run the bus back and forth over them three or four times. This is apparently working, since Earle-Sears has managed to come back from being down by double digits to being down by mid-single digits. Maybe this will be a magic bullet for Republicans for years to come.
The 2024 Trump campaign spent $65 million on a single ad about how in 2019 when Kamala Harris ran for president she said she was fine with prisoners getting gender reassignment surgery at taxpayers' expense. The tag line was: She's for they/them. He's for you. Susie Wiles is smart enough to have run polls out the gazoo before spending $65 million on one ad. We have to assume the ad worked for Trump and is working for Earle-Sears. Democrats don't know what to do. What do you do when a sizable majority of voters intensely hate something you support? Henry Clay famously said: "I'd rather be right than be president." He may have been right but he was never president. (V)