U.S. Congressman Byron Donalds speaking with attendees at the 2022 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Image via Gage Skidmore.
Politico reporter and analyst Jonathan Martin thinks that the GOP may see some of its gubernatorial races go down simply because the anti-Republican sentiment is so strong.
"Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough said he's always believed Texas is "fool's gold," but the trend lines have been moving toward the middle.
On the Senate races, Martin said the smartest thing Republicans did last week was to cut and run in North Carolina and instead dump that money into Kansas, where they have a well-liked Democratic candidate going up against a Republican voters fear doesn't even live in the state anymore, the Kansas Reflector reported.
Martin noted that many of the races will be saved because Republicans are dumping buckets of cash into races where Democratic donors long since abandoned.
"And I wrote about this over the weekend, a lot of these races because of money, but they can't save all of them," Martin said. "And some of these races are just going to go down with the cycle. Because when the wind blows, Joe. It just — it takes down some places you wouldn't have otherwise expected. And the wind's blowing."
One of those is David Jolly, a former Republican running for governor in Florida, who Scarborough said is more like the people in Florida than the GOP's own candidate. Scarborough said that everyone, including him, has assumed that no Democrat could ever win statewide again, but Jolly is a real possibility.
"He just, I mean, every ad that's out there is an ad bashing him for some made-up hurricane tax or some other stupid thing, because they can't run against David as a radical because he's a former Republican congressman," Scarborough said. "He's as moderate as the day. As the day is long, he fits Florida voters probably far better than the Republican nominee. And yet Democrats, for some reason, they, you know, they like the exciting races. They like the national races. They like the senate races. They don't understand the importance of having a Florida governor and a Texas governor changes political maps for years to come or at least stops republicans from gerrymandering. Those maps in the biggest sunbelt states."
Martin agreed, noting that Democrats can't be competitive in a lot of these places every four years, but this year they can.
"But they have a shot this year. Joe, and you mentioned it at the top of your comments, which is that 2024 there was a snapback to Trump and the Republicans in Texas, and Florida for that matter. And why was that? Well, because younger and nonwhite voters, and there are lots in both Florida and Texas, came back to the Republican Party. Well, guess what? Because of ICE, because of the economy, because of the Iran war, a lot of those same nonwhite young voters are now up for grabs or leading Democrats."
It's one of many reasons that Democrats now have a shot in those states, but unlike Republicans they simply don't have the money.
"They're getting wildly outspent on the air in the races in those two states, because you just can't get Democratic donors nationally to engage in governors' races. They don't know who the candidates are. They can't understand why it matters to them. And they just see a straightforward question of, if we control the senate, we can block Trump," said Martin.
He called it understandable, but said that Democratic donors don't see the chess moves down the board.
"You can block Donald Trump for two years, or you can control the future. That's how Republicans think," said Scarborough.
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