To Take the Senate, Democratic Group Will Spend Big in Red States

A heavily funded Democratic group will spend tens of millions of dollars to mobilize voters in the Republican-leaning states where control of the Senate is likely to be decided this November, stepping in to fill a void left by years of decay in Democratic infrastructure at the state and local level.

Senate Majority PAC, the principal super PAC supporting Democratic efforts to capture the chamber, intends to steer at least $20 million into the voter-mobilization campaign before the midterm elections, officials with the group confirmed. The program, which follows a similar — successful — Democratic effort in Alabama last year, underscores the degree to which outside groups that can take massive donations have supplanted the traditional role of political parties.

The initiative by Senate Majority PAC will span more than a dozen states where Senate seats are at stake, but it is to focus on four states above all: Missouri and Indiana, where endangered Democrats are seeking re-election, and Arizona and Tennessee, where strong Democratic challengers are running for open seats currently held by Republicans.

Those four races are among the country’s most competitive. And for Democrats to take control of the Senate, they would likely have to win at least three of them, or perhaps all four, depending on the outcome of races in other states.

Republicans currently hold the Senate by a slim majority, with 51 seats, but Democrats are largely on defense this year because so many of their senators in red states are running for new terms.

Paul Dunn, a strategist for Senate Majority PAC, said that in those four states, Democrats need both to drive up turnout among left-leaning voters and to make inroads in more conservative communities.

“These are states that you need to do everything to win,” Dunn said. “You have to have close margins in areas that are harder for Democrats, but we also need to increase participation in areas where we are strong.”

The turnout program, officials said, would mimic a narrower effort mounted by Senate Majority PAC in Alabama last year, during a special election for the seat Jeff Sessions vacated to become attorney general. Sen. Doug Jones, a Democrat, won the seat with the help of $6 million from Senate Majority PAC, which funded both heavy advertising and get-out-the-vote operations.

Because groups like super PACs can take contributions of unlimited size, they are not allowed to coordinate their activities with candidates. As a result, they have tended to dedicate most or all of their money to advertising — on television, radio and the internet — while leaving voter turnout to conventional political parties and campaigns.

But Senate Majority PAC took a different course in Alabama, sensing political opportunity for Jones but recognizing that the Democratic Party in Alabama had been hollowed out over years of defeat. So the group spent about a third of its special-election budget on mobilizing Democratic-leaning voters, especially African-Americans.

J.B. Poersch, president of Senate Majority PAC, said the group had set up field offices for the first time in its existence, training volunteers and deploying them across Alabama. He said the operation ultimately knocked on more than half a million doors and reached out to African-American voters on college campuses and at popular businesses. Jones won the race by about 21,000 votes.

“This was clearly part of the difference maker,” Poersch said of the Alabama program. “And we wanted to carry it forward.” The Senate Majority PAC program mirrors, in some respects, a field effort that Republicans have designed to help them compete in House races: the Congressional Leadership Fund. The group, which is well funded and aligned with Republican leaders in the House, has opened 38 field offices around the country as the party seeks to defend its 23-seat majority.

Much as many Senate Democrats are competing in red states where their party is weak, House Republicans are defending dozens of seats in Democratic-leaning areas where there is limited party infrastructure to help them.

Both parties are also expected to benefit from field programs deployed by other groups on the left and right, including Americans for Prosperity, the conservative political network funded in part by the billionaire Koch brothers, and For Our Future, a coalition of Democratic-leaning groups backed by organized labor. On Wednesday, CNN reported that For Our Future was partnering with two other pro-Democratic groups, House Majority PAC and Priorities USA Action, to fund a field operation in a special election for Congress in Ohio.

While many of the Senate races that Democrats must win are in largely rural and white states, the four states Senate Majority PAC will pursue most aggressively also include significant minority communities that do not always vote enthusiastically in midterms: mainly black voters in Tennessee, Missouri and Indiana, and Hispanic voters in Arizona.

In addition to those four states, the Senate Majority PAC field operation will also cover nine others, including North Dakota, Wisconsin and Montana, where Democratic senators are defending their seats in states President Donald Trump won, and Nevada, where Sen. Dean Heller appears to be the lone Republican incumbent at grave risk of losing his seat.

The $20 million dedicated for turnout represents a major chunk of the group’s entire budget for 2018. The organization announced separately last month that it had reserved $80 million in airtime for television ads across the country.

Poersch suggested the outcome in at least one historically Republican state could hold omens for the 2020 presidential election.

“It’s hard for me to believe the presidential map doesn’t go through Arizona in 2020,” Poersch said. “It’s growing too quickly not to, and Democrats have been improving from cycle to cycle.”