Getty Images Florida Republican Rick Scott, who’s in a tight Senate race with Democrat Bill Nelson, is among those brawling over health care this midterm election season.
President Donald Trump has dominated every political conversation since he took the White House but one: the midterm elections.
With some Republicans reluctant to be seen with him and Democrats shying away from impeachment talk, issues like preexisting medical conditions are animating the pitches of congressional candidates and their supporters more than the controversial president himself.
“During the heat of the 2018 midterms, issues are taking center stage and Trump references are much more rare,” said a recent report by the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political advertising and is housed at Wesleyan University.
Mentions of Trump in congressional ads have fallen off since the summer; disapproving mentions outweigh positive ones over past month. References to immigration, Russia and Mueller remain low https://t.co/VW066LbDrZ @wesleyan_u pic.twitter.com/EOI13RrjOk
— WesleyanMediaProject (@wesmediaproject) October 19, 2018
In advertising as well as mentions by candidates on their campaign web sites, health care is a standout issue of Campaign 2018. During the primaries, about 80% of House Democratic candidates took a stance on health care or Obamacare on their sites, according to a Brookings Institution report by Elaine Kamarck and Alexander Podkul. Health care was also the top issue for Democratic Senate candidates, with 68% of them featuring it.
See: Republicans alarmed that Obamacare attacks could cost them the House.
Health care also ranked in the top five issues mentioned by Republican candidates, but immigration was the top issue discussed by GOP Senate candidates and federal tax policy took the No. 1 spot for House hopefuls during the March-September primary season, according to the Brookings report.
Health care has featured prominently in West Virginia’s Senate race, among others, with Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin airing an ad in which he shoots a copy of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare. Manchin’s Republican opponent Patrick Morrisey, who is West Virginia’s attorney general and has joined the suit, says he supports protecting pre-existing conditions. The lawsuit would end such protections.
The $1.5 trillion tax cut Trump signed last year is a theme in campaigns — but not always in the way the GOP had hoped. Trump backers like Pennsylvania Rep. Lou Barletta tout the tax cut, along with the president’s deregulatory efforts. Yet as polling shows the law to be unpopular, Democrats have seized on it. One such example is an ad hitting Rep. Peter Roskam, an Illinois Republican who helped craft the legislation when he served as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s subcommittee on tax policy.
Read: ‘The 1% never had it so good’: What key midterm candidates are saying about the economy now.
“There’s no disputing Peter Roskam’s link to Donald Trump as the author of Trump’s tax plan that gave $1 trillion in tax breaks to big corporations and the top one percent, adding nearly $2 trillion to the deficit,” said an ad from Democrat Sean Casten. Roskam, reported Talking Points Memo, has argued his district is saving “a billion dollars a year” but hasn’t run his own ads on the tax law.
Republicans are using immigration to fire up voters as a caravan of Central American migrants has made its way toward the U.S. border. A recent ad by South Carolina Republican Katie Arrington labels her Democratic opponent “Open Borders Joe Cunningham,” and evokes the caravan.
Still, immigration can’t compare to health care when it comes to campaign advertising. Between Sept. 18 and Oct. 15, only about 8% of ads in federal races overall referenced immigration, according to the Wesleyan Media Project. Pro-Republican ads were more than twice as likely to discuss it than ads for Democrats. That includes ads by the candidates themselves as well as super PACs and party committees.
Also read: Trump Today: President says he’s preparing order to end birthright citizenship.
By contrast, in the same period, about 46% of airings in federal races mentioned health care. Both parties are discussing health care, but the topic is most prominent in ads supporting Democrats, appearing in 54.5% of pro-Democratic airings, the Wesleyan Media Project said.
With some Democrats supporting “Medicare for all,” Republicans have sharpened attacks against their opponents. A September tweet by Gov. Rick Scott, who’s running against Democrat Bill Nelson in a close Senate race in Florida, said “If you want a socialist experiment with Medicare, by all means vote Democrat.” Nelson told the Tampa Bay Times he doesn’t support Medicare for all, and that he’s got “enough trouble just trying to save Obamacare.”
If you want to protect Medicare, vote Republican. If you want a socialist experiment with Medicare, by all means vote Democrat.
— Rick Scott (@ScottforFlorida) September 6, 2018
One more key issue that Republicans are running on this campaign season comes in the form of a person: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Trump, wrote the Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter last month, may want to make the midterms a referendum on “open borders,” but between Sept. 1 and Oct. 15, Republican candidates ran more anti-Pelosi ads and more health-care ads than immigration ads.
Walter wrote that Republicans aren’t trying to show their independence from Trump, but instead are “trying to win back their formerly committed GOP voters by stressing the loyalty their Democratic opponent shows to Pelosi.”
Read: Here’s Nancy Pelosi’s to-do list if Democrats win back the House.
