Why the Senate Republican campaign committee chose Medicare fraudster Scott to handle their cash in the first place is a mystery to me. But they sure seem sorry now.
From The New York Times:
By the end of July, the committee had collected a record $181.5 million — but had already spent more than 95 percent of what it had brought in. The Republican group entered August with just $23.2 million on hand, less than half of what the Senate Democratic committee had ahead of the final intense phase of the midterm elections.
According to the Times' analysis, Scott “installed a new digital team, spearheaded by Trump veterans, and greenlit an enormous wave of spending on digital ads, not to promote candidates but to discover more small contributors.” That gamble “has been a costly financial flop in 2022.”
MacCallum tossed anti-Democratic softballs to Scott during the first half of their Wednesday interview but, in the second half, she began asking about the money.
Citing The New York Times report, MacCallum asked, “Where did all that money go?”
Scott tried to argue that he had “spent early” to shore up candidates, which MacCallum did not challenge.
SCOTT: Here’s the problem with campaigns. If you wait until the last month, there’s too much static, there’s too much noise out there. So what we did, as soon as our candidates got through their primaries, we started helping them. … Early on, we started defining the Democrats. That’s put us in a position right now that we not only can keep our 50 Republican seats, but we also can pick up probably as many – doesn’t mean we’ll get that many – but we’ve got six competitive seats where the Democrats, all the Democrats in our competitive seats are under water.
MacCallum didn’t buy that explanation, though. She pointed out that a lot of the races are tightening, that the candidates need money and “some of them are pointing fingers at your leadership and saying that it’s not working.”
Scott claimed his strategy is working (never mind that FiveThirtyEight now gives Democrats a 70% chance of keeping the Senate majority, up from a 40% chance on June 1).
“Let’s look at the numbers. We’re gonna keep our hardest races to keep,” Scott said, “Ron Johnson’s gonna win. We’ve invested with him early.”
“He’s behind by about five points right now, right?” MacCallum interrupted.
Scott wrongly claimed that Johnson is “either tied or up a little bit or down barely,” ignoring the fact that the last three polls show challenger Mandela Barnes beating Johnson and the Cook Report rates the race a tossup.
