Who Ran The Worst Senate Campaign in 2020?

[kapak44]

Hello everyone. So now that the 2020 Senate races are finally resolved, I felt that it was time to start a new rendition of an exercise that I carried out in this forum back in 2019, which produced some interesting and informative discussions. I did a similar evaluation for the U.S. House of Representatives campaigns that were held in the 2020 cycle, so I wanted do one for the U.S. Senate to make it fair, especially since the Senate has more of an impact than the House of Representatives. So the question I ask here is this: Who do you think ran the worst U.S. Senate Campaign in 2020? As with my previous threads, I chose three contenders from each of the Democratic and Republican parties to provide an equal analysis for the two factions, and provided the reasons why I think these candidates were selected for running the worst campaigns. Without further ado:

Democratic:

Sara Gideon. Her debate performance was honestly atrocious, particularly in her first debate against Susan Collins. None of her attacks on Susan Collins landed, and Susan Collins was able to distinguish herself as the more professional candidate. She let Susan Collins run right over her and get away with untruths all over the place. Meanwhile, Susan Collins actually gave prepared remarks and was able to dodge the tough questions. Susan Collins asked Sara Gideon if she would have supported John Roberts for SCOTUS, and Gideon literally stumbled and looked like a complete mess. Her TV ads, which were mainly anti-Susan Collins and without a clear direction in policy, were also not as good as Susan Collins’ was, which were actually smart and talked about the money that she brought home to Maine. This substandard messaging caused quite a few voters from Lewiston and Auburn to break for Susan Collins in the end. Sara Gideon also did not sufficiently detail her Maine roots to voters, as quite a few of them, especially from the rural areas, were distrustful of her Rhode Island background and her wealthy lifestyle. Mainers are very tribal and do not trust anyone whose background does not go back generations. Finally, Sara Gideon did not properly address Susan Collins’ attack ads stating that Sara Gideon was going to raise heating fuel costs, which further put the rural voters away from Sara Gideon. Underperforming Joe Biden by over 17 points in this polarized era definitely earns a high place in the Worst Senate Campaign list.

Cal Cunningham. The decision to exchange sexual texts with a married woman was beyond stupid, given how sex scandals have brought down prominent North Carolina politicians like John Edwards. His sexting stupidity completely stopped his momentum, since it gave Republican voters there a cast iron excuse not to vote for him and revert back to their partisan corners. Public surveys showed that Cal Cunningham’s public image shattered after the revelations, which was especially damaging since Cal Cunningham ran heavily on character and integrity. He was also overperforming Biden before the sexting scandal in the polls, and he ended up underperforming Biden in the end by tens of thousands of votes because of his inexcusable mistake. His platform also suffered the same problems of Sara Gideon’s campaign of having terrible messaging that did not have any clear policies to focus on and was focused on a windowless basement fundraising strategy. Yes, I know that North Carolina went for Trump in the end and ticket splitting was rare. But given the fact that he had serious potential to overtake Thom Tillis, who was pretty damn vulnerable and unpopular, not to mention that Cooper won re-election at the same time, I firmly believe that Cal Cunningham threw away a very winnable race by his poor campaigning skills and judgment. Jeff Jackson would have been a much better candidate to run for this state.

Amy McGrath. Her campaign was a disaster from start to finish. Two days after she announced her campaign against Mitch McConnell, she committed the Kavanaugh flip-flop gaffe, which quickly killed any momentum that she gained from her announcement. From then on, she engaged in mistake after mistake in her interviews, ads, and other campaign decisions to the level that both Democratic and Republican groups concluded this race as a safe Mitch McConnell win. Yea, I know that this is Kentucky that we are talking about, but so many of Amy McGrath’s moves were cringeworthy that it is beyond embarrassing that she was even considered for a U.S. Senate campaign after losing a competitive House race in 2018. As a special note, Mark Nickolas, Amy McGrath’s campaign manager, should not be anywhere near a federal campaign. If a sequel to the movie “Dumb and Dumber” is ever filmed, Mark Nickolas would have a featuring role.

Republican:

Kelly Loeffler. And it is not even close when it comes to the GOP side. To put it frankly, she was a complete disaster, and she demonstrated this almost immediately after she was sworn in on January 2020 after getting the appointment from Brian Kemp. Brian Kemp’s choice of Kelly Loeffler as the appointee was perhaps one of the dumbest mistakes that he has made in his political career. Where the hell do I begin with her? Well, I guess when she and her husband got themselves into the Senate briefing and stock sales mess. She handled this in the most pathetic manner, by selling off all of her stocks while denying any wrongdoing and using socialism accusations. A lot of Fox News conservatives in Georgia despised her for her complete incompetence, and she lost a lot of ground to Doug Collins in the early months of 2020. How did she resolve this? By going hard to the right and negating the political reasons why Brian Kemp appointed Kelly Loeffler. Some of her most cringeworthy actions were running the “Attila the Hun” ad, saying there were no issues where she and Donald Trump agreed, and blasting WNBA for honoring Black Lives Matter. Oh, and her debate performance back in December was absolutely TERRIBLE. In all of the videos that I have seen from her, she just sounded robotic and spoke like she was reading from a teleprompter. She also was not coherent in her arguments, and kept repeating “socialism”, “radical”, and “left” in senseless manner. It is just shocking to see how she imploded with virtually every type of voter in Georgia. Kelly Loeffler’s loss amounted to a very slow, obvious, and painful death by a thousand political cuts.

David Perdue. It may not be fair to have Georgia take two races in the GOP column, but oh baby, did David Perdue epically screw up several times over the past several months to deserve a spot on this list. His insider trading controversies were front and center among his mistakes that he made in his campaign. Buying bank stocks after meeting federal officials? Getting creamed in the October debate for trading medical stocks and dumping casino shares while playing down COVID's severity? Yeah, that did not play well for David Perdue. It also did not help that he deliberately mispronounced Kamala Harris’ name at an October rally and gave Jon Ossoff even more momentum in his campaign. David Perdue might have been able to avoid a January runoff had he tried to appear to be more moderate or provided a better response to his insider trading problems. And yet, he still didn’t course correct in the runoff race, by skipping another debate in December, which further turned public opinion against him. He seriously had no business losing to a Democrat who failed to win GA-06 in the 2017 special election despite having ungodly amounts of cash at his disposal back then. It is just stunning to see how much of a swing that David Perdue suffered from the November elections to the runoff elections.  

Martha McSally. It takes a very horrible candidate to make this list twice, but she did everything to drive away swing voters in Arizona and put this race in the Democratic victory column. From her “You’re a liberal hack” stunt to suggesting to supporters that they could “fast a meal” to donate to her campaign to her repeated attempts to frame herself as a mini-Trump, she absolutely crashed and burned with the moderate voters of Arizona. There is also the fact that she already had some baggage from her 2018 loss to Krysten Sinema, which put her already on the back foot when it comes to connecting with Arizona electorate. So it was very obvious that she needed to separate herself from Donald Trump in order to stand a chance of actually winning a Senate election there. In conclusion, Martha McSally was a dreadful appointee choice by Doug Ducey, as she ended up underperforming Donald Trump by over 2 points. Given that many Republicans down the ballot actually outran Donald Trump in November, that is an ignominious accomplishment to achieve in a state that is considered to be moderately Republican in nature.

So that's my take for the 2020 Senate races, which may or may not be horribly wrong. I am curious to hear what you guys think and who would be your choices.

[kapak44]

Dems: Bullock, for trying to have his cake and eat it too by first nationalizing the very insular and loose sphere of Montana politics with his quixotic presidential bid and then trying desperately to backpedal to the guy who'd massively outrun the Democratic topline with his homespun appeal as the Senate candidate, after initially denying that he was seeking the seat at all, massively nationalizing the race with the position he attempted to stake in the presidential race and the resistance money and bland one-size-fits-all politicking he invited from the Democratic establishment and thus preventing him from outrunning Biden by nearly enough to make the race as competitive as folk thought it would be. While this year was bound to have a lot of downballot realignment either way, he seems to have brought the Dems running for Governor and MT-AL down with him a fair bit by tearing open the veneer that once kept his state's politics isolated enough from the outside world to give him a career there in the first place.

GOP: Tied between Loeffler and McSally for all the aforementioned reasons

Steve Bullock is definitely a Dishonorable Mention. While Montana went heavily for Donald Trump again, Steve Bullock's pointless presidential bid really killed his chances of winning the Senate race. He really needed to run against Steve Daines in the first goddamned place in order to have a real shot at winning. By only entering in the last minute in March 2020, it was far too easy for the GOP to nationalize the race and secure this race as a hold.

Agreed overall!

Unhonorable mentions for candidates who never stood a chance, but were an utter embarrassment: Chris Janicek (for refusing to drop out after a sexting scandal) in NE and Lauren Witzke (QAnon nut) in DE.

Might as well add Jo Rae Perkins in Oregon. Another QAnon loon.

All of these three candidates were running in unwinnable races, but only Chris Janicek deserves to be a Dishonorable Mention, as his handling of his sexting scandal was just uniquely bad.

I really can’t imagine a world where Biden loses NC and Cunningham wins, even without the scandal. He held up fine despite it. So not him, IMO.

McGrath is terrible but I don’t know if her campaign was uniquely bad. She’s just a horrendous fit for KY. Like why this butch faux folksy woman who flip flops without any clear policy positions? It’s a miracle she even cleared the primary, so I guess points to her for that.

Gideon is uniquely horrible and I think that race was obviously the most winnable so her on the D side.

For the GOP, I want to give a shout-out to Corky Messner in NH. To lose by almost 20 points as a Republican in this environment is mind blowing. With any decent candidate they should have at least matched or outperformed Trump here.

The New Hampshire Senate race was just a recruitment failure on the NRSC's part. Bill O'Brien's decision to drop out of the race, as well as the wise choice for Chris Sununu to pass on a run meant that the GOP was never going to have a chance in that state during a presidential year.

[kapak44]

What about Jaime Harrison?

Jaime Harrison ran the strongest race that he honestly could have done in this environment. While I agree that he was also the recipient of far too much money like Amy McGrath was, he at least ran a competent campaign and wasn't prone to stupid mistakes or tone-deaf messaging like Amy McGrath constantly engaged herself in.