GOP Abandons Oz, Pulls $10.5 Million From Pennsylvania & Other Key Senate Races

While midterm elections are typically a time when the party out of power makes gains and takes control of the houses of Congress, this year’s crop of GOP candidates are struggling – especially with fundraising.

In response, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is canceling millions of dollars in ad buys in several key states, with the largest cuts coming in Pennsylvania, where the NRSC has cut a whopping $7.5 million in advertising, essentially abandoning the Oz campaign at its lowest moment.

NRSC Spokesman Chris Hartline claimed that the cuts do not in any way reflect a change in the GOP’s assessment of their chances. “Nothing has changed about our commitment to winning in all of our target states.”

One interesting dynamic among all the cuts is that the NRSC has made no cuts in New Hampshire, even though they won’t have a candidate there until mid-September, meaning that GOP candidates seem to be better investments in areas where they do not yet exist.

The NRSC is run by Florida Senator Rick Scott, author of the GOP’s “11 Point Plan to Save America,” which calls for massive tax hikes on working-class Americans, which he explains as a step necessary to make sure working families have “skin in the game” as Scott puts it. The GOP plan also calls for the reauthorization of every piece of federal legislation every five years.

Critics of the plan correctly call it a scheme to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, for that is the goal, and it has been for quite some time. Rick Scott just finally said the quiet part out loud, and his massively unpopular plan is an anchor on GOP Senate campaigns across the country.

But the decline and fall of the GOP’s Senate hopes are not Rick Scott’s fault alone. The GOP has been on the wrong side of so many popular issues in America over the past two years that voters may simply be souring on the “Party of No” and its out of touch positions on everything from climate to infrastructure to reshoring manufacturing to women’s rights and beyond.

With extremists galore on the ballot across the country, and funding sources drying up, expect the GOP to turn to big donor money and PACs to make up the difference.

The Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has committed to $150 million in ads in the coming months, filling the hole left by the NRSC with dark money.

Ads begin airing this Friday in Pennsylvania.