This week’s Democratic memo that voters want a return to normalcy hasn’t reached the party’s Senate candidates.
Even as several blue-state governors dropped mask mandates — and the chair of the party’s House campaign committee declared on Tuesday it was time to shift their communications on Covid-19 — Democratic senators and candidates don’t seem to want anything to do with the new messaging.
Senate Democrats’ reluctance to embrace a return-to-normal message — one that 70 percent of people support — comes as Republicans continue to seize on the issue. Republican senators and candidates are portraying their Democratic rivals as in lockstep with President Joe Biden, whose administration continues to recommend indoor mask mandates in schools and other public settings.
A spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee declined to comment about the organization’s Covid-19 messaging, a stark contrast with remarks made this week by Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee who said “it’s time to give people their lives back.”
The issue is poised to take on a heightened role in several competitive swing-state Senate races. Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, the exception to Senate Democrats’ refusal to talk about rolling back pandemic restrictions, on Thursday said that Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak’s decision to end mask mandates was “the right call.” She is among the most vulnerable Democrats defending seats this year in a fiercely competitive battleground race.
Adam Laxalt, the Republican frontrunner in the race who had criticized Cortez Masto in recent days for her silence on the issue, tweeted in response to her position that only the “political science” had changed, noting that by the state’s own criteria, Covid-19 transmission is still high in Nevada.
“It’s actually a pretty easy answer: that it should be an individual’s decision,” Democratic strategist Neil Oxman said of how candidates should answer questions about mask requirements. “I don’t know what the DSCC has sent down to its candidates about polling and what’s the safe thing to do.”
Even in a Democratic stronghold like Washington state, Republicans see opportunity in the politics of masking, convinced that Americans are ready to get on with life — beginning with an end to mask mandates. In a contest that some Republicans insist could be competitive in 2022, GOP Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley is zeroing in on Democratic Sen. Patty Murray for blocking legislation that would prohibit mask mandates in schools.
Murray spoke on the Senate floor Wednesday against a bill by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) that would withhold federal funding from schools that require children to wear masks, arguing that local authorities should be able to make the decision on school masking. Indoor and school mask requirements remain in effect in the state, though Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee this week lifted an outdoor mask mandate.
In response to a question from POLITICO about whether she supports rolling back additional pandemic restrictions, Murray provided a statement emphasizing the importance of “listening to public health experts in your own state and community.”
“All of us want to get past this pandemic and while it’s thrown us curveballs every time we turn around, we all know what we need to do, especially if the numbers go up: we need masks, ventilation, and testing so people can make decisions about whether they can to go work or school safely,” Murray said, adding that “as we’re seeing numbers like cases and hospitalizations go down, we can ease some precautions.”
A Crosscut-Elway poll released in early January found Murray had only a 3-point lead against a generic Republican opponent, survey data that Sen. Rick Scott, (R-Fla.), the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has pointed to in recent interviews as a sign of her vulnerability.
Republicans also see promise in Colorado — where Gov. Jared Polis has drawn national attention in recent months as the leading Democrat calling for an end to emergency pandemic policies, declaring in December that the “silent majority” of vaccinated adults could make their own decisions. Up for reelection in a race that until recently wasn’t viewed as potentially competitive, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), has sat out of the conservation.
Bennet, who announced in 2020 he “strongly” supported Polis’ decision to enact a statewide mask mandate, hasn’t publicly backed the governor’s more recent approach. A Bennet spokesperson on Friday said the senator supports “Polis’ efforts to return to normalcy.”
The partisan gap in polling reveals some of the forces driving the Senate Democrats’ reluctance to abandon mask mandates. While a Monmouth University poll released in late January found that 70 percent of Americans overall — and virtually the same figure among independent voters — agreed it is time to “accept that COVID is here to stay” and “get on with our lives,” among Democrats, that number was just 47 percent.
Oxman said he doesn’t believe Democrats championing the rollback of restrictions would convert many voters come November. And candidates would run the risk of upsetting the Democratic base, Oxman said, pointing to recent data showing how differently the issue plays with Democratic voters.
“I think because it’s kind of split in some of these places, Democrats might be avoiding it,” he said. “There are a lot of Democrats who would think, ‘Wait a second, what is this guy? Trump?’ I don’t think you stand up there and start screaming about how Fauci is wrong.”
Zack Roday, a Republican strategist who also works for N2 America, a center-right group targeting suburban voters, said it’s a major misstep for Democrats to ignore public sentiment on pandemic restrictions.
In a tough election year for Democrats, Cortez Masto and Sisolak — who are running in a battleground state — were “savvy” to take the positions that they did this week, Roday said.
The firm earlier this month released an ad that showed children watching a packed football game and a red carpet event on television, contrasted with students sitting spaced apart and masked in classrooms and waiting in line to have their temperatures taken. The group made a small ad buy last week to run the spot in a handful of television markets during The View, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning and the Olympic games.
“It’s the most defining issue of the last several years, and you’re speaking to your base and only your base,” Roday said of Democrats’ messaging on restrictive Covid-19 policies. “K-12 parents, combined with the center of the electorate, are only getting spoken to by one political party. It makes for a really bad recipe for Democrats trying to hold the Senate, House, statehouses and so on.”
” One can always tell when a Democrat is lying….. Their lips are moving”.
Apparently these Democrats are trying to hide the fact that their lips are moving.
In the construction industry, Mask ditching Political flip floppers like Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto would be called a Ditch Witch. The cost to rent a Ditch Witch varies from $130-$600 per day, but it can be significantly cheaper when renting by the week $400-$1,200. Only Billionaires like Soros can afford to buy one outright.
Even if that “memo’ reached them, they WOULDN’T CARE…
Isn’t it amazing, when the polls shift against the communist Democrats, all of the, “we have to follow the science of Dr. Fauci Democrats (you must wear a mask) all of a sudden, no longer require masks in their states.
“This week’s Democratic memo that voters want a return to normalcy hasn’t reached the party’s Senate candidates.”
They’re holding out hope that the next more-serious-than-ever variant will emerge.
The next variant of CCP virus will be coming in that mass mailing of Mail- in Ballots the Socialist Democrats plan on sending out.
I’m sure Fauci is working on the new virus right now.
AND You can bet, they’re working overtime in GENERATING UP that new version, JUST TO COME OUT before the election…
They ditch the masks not because it is the right thing to do for THE PEOPLE, but the only thing left for the Party they see going down the drain of the Biden Tidy Bowl maelstrom of COVID failure and lies. Leading from the behind where finger is stuck into the air to see which way the wind blows, places them in the uncomfortable mode of REACTION, which takes them out of the damaging posture of failed social experiment ACTION, and is indicative of their own realization that their political end is nearing, their ship of fools is sinking and its “women and children last” while their politicians stampede over each other trying to reach and fill the lifeboats first.
“Congressional Campaign Committee who said “it’s time to give people their lives back.”,,,is just indication of how they believe they have the arrogant ability and right to take them in the first place,,,WHICH THEY DID! This party has managed to kill more American life force in debt, lockdowns, small business destruction, abortion, social government controls and interference, than any external enemy without, proving all along they are the enemy within and should be treated as such by all.
IT still makes me wanna puke, when i hear so-called Conservative political pundits, STILL claim ‘masking and vaccines work’…
Rep. Sean Patric Maloney, D-new york, states “it is time we give people their lives back.”. Little does he realize that by saying this, he implies that our lives were taken from us, by the democraps, to begin with. He also fails to recognize that they are NOT giving us our lives back. We are TAKING our lives back, and will continue to do so at the ballot box. If they rig the ballot box so we can’t win there, we will take our lives back, by whatever means necessary. DEATH TO TYRANTS.
I certainly wonder, if he will get ‘chastised’ by his Commucrat colleagues, RE “Telling the truth”..
He didn’t “tell the truth”. democraps are INCAPABLE of telling the truth. Even if they knew the truth, and wanted to tell the truth, they couldn’t do it. The truth is never a part of their narrative.
And if by a miracle the democrats maintain control of America in November we all will be forced back into masks with vaccine mandates, automatic weapons will be targeted again and life as we knew it will be gone forever with no chance of recovery.
YOU just know their fraud machine is HARD AT WORK, ensuring they hopefully don’t lose any seats…