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WASHINGTON — Republican groups have spent more than $40 million on TV ads to defend just a handful of congressional seats in their own turf over the past two years in special elections.
What happens Tuesday in the final special election of the year may determine whether it was worth the cost.
The GOP has scrambled to prevent a potential embarrassing loss in Ohio’s 12th congressional district, a Columbus-area seat the party has held for 35 years and which they would win in a cakewalk in a normal election.
“It’s very close,” Republican candidate Troy Balderson, a state legislator, told reporters Monday. “It has brought so much enthusiasm out to have both the vice president of the United States and the president of the United States here within six days of each other. It’s just huge.”
In his corner, Balderson also has Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who hasn’t seen eye to eye with Trump on almost anything else. In the other corner, Democrat Danny O’Connor, a 31-year-old county official, has Democratic enthusiasm going for him in a district Trump won by 11 percentage points in 2016.
“It’s really kind of shocking because this should be just a slam dunk (for Republicans) and it’s not,” Kasich said Sunday on ABC’s This Week, adding that he worried Trump’s visit to the district last weekend could backfire.
“The chaos that seems to surround Donald Trump has unnerved a lot of people,” Kasich added. “Suburban women in particular here are the ones that are really turned off.”
The district includes two kinds of voters the parties have been fighting over in the Trump era: Historically Republican suburbanites, who have been trending Democratic, and traditionally Democratic blue-collar whites who have been wooed by Trump to the GOP side.
Polls show a tight race, so the results could be be a bellwether of Trump’s political power, as well as the raw partisan dynamic underlying the broader battle for control the House.
O’Connor, who has made a point of saying he would not vote for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as Speaker if the Democrats take control, has tried to contrast his low-key demeanor and focus on pocketbook issues.
“I hope people go out and talk about bread and butter issues that matter to working families because working families don’t have anyone’s who’s fighting for them right now in know in Washington, DC,” O’Connor told MSNBC’s Garrett Haake when asked what Democrats could learn from his campaign.
Republicans have won five out of seven competitive House and Senate special elections this cycle, but it’s come at a price.
Democrats outperformed historical benchmarks in every case, even though they only managed to notch wins in the Alabama Senate race and a Pennsylvania special election.
Still, the string of races confirmed the enthusiasm gap opposition parties often enjoy in the first midterm of a new president’s tenure. And they forced Washington Republicans to prop up candidates who had difficulty raising money or building momentum on their own.
In Ohio, the biggest spender has been the Congressional Leadership Fund, a major conservative super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, which has run $2.7 million in TV ads, according to Advertising Analytics. By contrast, Balderson’s campaign itself has spent only $515,000 on TV.
O’Connor’s campaign, meanwhile, has spent $2.3 million on ads, which have likely had a bigger impact than the super PACs’, thanks to discounted rates only available to candidates.
All told, five of the biggest GOP outside groups — the Republican National Committee, the party’s official House and Senate campaign arms, plus the Congressional and Senate Leadership Fund super PACs — spent $36.95 million on TV ads in the seven special elections before Ohio, Advertising Analytics. And they’ve dropped close to $5 million more in Tuesday’s race.
That’s compared to just $11.5 million from their five Democratic counterparts, who have had to spend less since their candidates have been able to raise more money on their own and needed less help.