WASHINGTON — When Senator Martha McSally, one of the most politically endangered Republicans, was asked last month about reports that President Trump had brushed away warnings from his own aides about the looming threat of the coronavirus, she promptly pivoted.
“I learned the day I entered the military, never trust a communist,” Ms. McSally answered. “China is to blame for this pandemic and the death of thousands of Americans.”
Her campaign went further, turning the sound bite into a television advertisement that has blanketed airwaves across Arizona, where polls show her badly trailing her Democratic challenger, Mark Kelly. And the Senate Republican campaign arm has sought to portray Mr. Kelly as beholden to Beijing, broadcasting a commercial that features an announcer saying the Mandarin transliteration of his name as Chinese characters flash across the screen.
Fighting for their political lives amid twin domestic crises — a pandemic that has battered the economy — vulnerable Republican senators running for re-election are working to divert voters’ gazes half a world away and make their races a referendum on China. The tactic, party strategists say, is a way for Republicans to avoid defending the president’s handling of the virus, which has been met with widespread public disapproval, and instead offer up an alternative issue that already inspires fear and skepticism among voters.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/13/us/politics/faced-with-crisis-and-re-election-senate-republicans-blame-china.html
