Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
The closing days of the 2022 midterms have offered Republican political action committees flush with cash an opportunity too good to pass up: owning the libs by making them spend money in otherwise reliably blue seats.
“We are able to play in districts that Biden won by 10-plus points, showing just how fucked Democrats are in two weeks,” a GOP strategist told The Daily Beast.
It’s not without strategic advantage. Republicans insist that upset voters in places like New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Oregon—normally reliably liberal strongholds—are trending in their direction. Inflation, gas prices, and crime have been the driving forces behind multi-million dollar ad buys in districts where total outside spending used to not even cross into six figures, a sign of the GOP’s bullishness and last-minute embrace of expanding the map in the midterms.