EXCLUSIVE – The Senate GOP’s campaign committee is targeting three Democratic senators from red-leaning states that likely face bruising reelections in 2024.
The ad campaign from the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), titled ‘Retire or Get Fired,’ takes aim at Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio over what the NRSC calls their ‘liberal records’ and ties the senators to President Joe Biden.
The digital spots, which the NRSC says it’s spending five figures to run online, was shared first with Fox News.
‘When it mattered most, Joe sold West Virginia out. Joe Manchin’s lost his way. It’s time to bring him home,’ the narrator in the ad running in West Virginia argues.
The narrator in the Montana spot emphasizes that ‘Tester votes with Biden 91% of the time’ and that ‘he’s changed.’
And in the Ohio ad, the narrator claims that Brown’s ‘a radical liberal. Backed by Biden and Kamala, he votes with D.C. liberals against Ohio almost every time.’
Democrats flipped a GOP Senate seat in Pennsylvania in November’s midterm elections, and they currently hold a 51-49 majority in the chamber — which includes three independent senators who caucus with the Democratic conference.
But Republicans are looking at a very favorable Senate map in 2024, with Democrats defending 23 of the 33 seats up for grabs. Three of those seats are in red states Trump carried over Biden in 2020: West Virginia (where Trump won by nearly 39 points), Montana (which Trump won by 16 points) and Ohio (which Trump carried by eight points). Five other Democratic seats are in key swing states narrowly carried by Biden in the 2020 presidential election: Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
‘These red-state Democrats have a choice to make: retire or face a brutal two years in which they will be held accountable for backing Biden’s disastrous agenda,’ new NRSC Chair Sen. Steve Daines of Montana told Fox News in a statement. ‘Their liberal policies are hurting their constituents.’
And Daines pledged that ‘the NRSC is going to make sure voters back home know it.’