GOP hits stumbling block in midterms

| 11:00 pm EST March 6, 2022
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While the party not occupying the White House tends to be more emboldened during midterm election years, the GOP doesn’t quite know what to do with itself. A number of its voters are demanding magical solutions to their problems, like signing a petition to get President Biden removed from the White House, which isn’t exactly how things work. To make things harder, they haven’t exactly been able to find the most inspiring candidates to run. Gov. Larry Hogan – probably one of the most prominent anti-Trump Republicans – has refused to run for a Senate seat in Maryland, and Gov. Phil Scott has refused to run for Sen. Patrick Leahy’s seat in Vermont, but those are two seats that can be rated as safely Democratic.

The trouble is the GOP is having roughly the same luck finding good candidates for more competitive seats such as New Hampshire, where they tried recruiting Gov. Chris Sununu who publicly declined running for the seat – giving strong odds that Sen. Maggie Hassan will hold onto her seat there. The latest failure to recruit a strong candidate with name recognition just happened this week in Arizona, as both Mitch McConnell and the former guy begged current Gov. Doug Ducey to run against incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly, as key endorsements have yet to be made in that race.

Despite knowing he’d have the endorsements of the two key players of the GOP and being able to put up a united front for his party, Ducey turned them both down, saying he intends to serve out his term and keep his role in the Republican Governors Association. Fortunately, the Democrats have two solid candidates in Secretary of State Katie Hobbs for governor and Mark Kelly who is up for re-election to a full term as senator and they can win if we put in the work.