Trump-Endorsed Candidates Close In on Opponents in Key Senate Races

News Analysis

New York Attorney General Letitia James’s lawsuit targeting former President Donald Trump and three of his grown children for alleged fraudulent business practices has had little noticeable impact on the closely-watched Senate races in which Trump-endorsed outsiders hope to best Democrat incumbents and candidates, analysts say.

Voters in the states where these races play out tend to consider the lawsuit, like other recent legal troubles faced by Trump such as the Department of Justice investigations and the Jan. 6 hearings, as distractions from crime that has risen precipitously in cities and a border crisis that has flooded “sanctuary” communities from coast to coast with more migrants than the cities’ social services are equipped to handle, according to one political strategist.

The latest polls of the states with contested Senate seats show that GOP nominees derided in the mainstream media in recent months for their alleged weakness as candidates and for their association with the former president are, in fact, much more competitive than supposed and that the outcome of the races is likely to be extremely close.

Former NFL player Herschel Walker speaks by video feed during the largely virtual 2020 Republican National Convention broadcast from Washington, on Aug. 24, 2020. Walker has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump for the U.S. Senate. (2020 Republican National Convention/Handout via Reuters) Running Neck and Neck

A Sept. 12 op-ed on The Daily Beast disparaged Georgia’s Trump-endorsed Senate candidate, Herschel Walker, as “an unqualified, lying buffoon” and stated that his campaign “is increasingly a train wreck,” while acknowledging that polls have shown Walker running neck-in-neck with the incumbent Democrat, Sen. Raphael Warnock.

While some might have expected the calculus to change significantly with the announcement of a new lawsuit spelling further trouble for the powerful GOP figure who endorsed Walker,