Daily Beast: How the Senate GOP’s Infighting Could Hurt Herschel Walker

I spoke to Sam Brodey of the Daily Beast for a piece on post-midterm feuding among GOP senators and what it says about the Georgia run-off.

It all may seem like Beltway gossip, but the impact of the GOP’s food fight was being felt in Georgia.

Asked by The Daily Beast what the view of the pre-runoff squabbling was in the state, one Georgia-based GOP operative was ready with a quip: “Mom, Dad, can we at least finish dinner before y’all scream and yell at each other?”

Liam Donovan, a GOP lobbyist and former NRSC staffer, forecast that the fighting was “bad for morale on the ground, on top of everything else.”

“Just unnecessary distraction after unnecessary distraction,” he said.

The fact that Republicans fared poorer than expected in November—making the runoff not decisive for the Senate majority and making Walker a slight underdog—is a root cause of the fighting.

“A public spat like this isn’t helpful to anybody, including Herschel, but at some level it reflects frustration that a runoff election under these circumstances is a tougher hill to climb,” said Donovan. “Beltway feuding is incidental to the outcome, but it probably wouldn’t be happening if things looked more promising.”

Read the full piece here.

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POLITICO: GOP to DeSantis: Thanks for helping us flip the House

I spoke to POLITICO‘s Matt Dixon about the integral role Florida redistricting and over-performance played in the slim GOP House majority.

Groups trying to get the current maps tossed for future election cycles say that the DeSantis-drawn political lines were always designed with a political endgame in mind.

But Liam Donovan, a GOP lobbyist, said that if Tallahassee Republicans had their way, Democrats would have the inside track to take the House at this point.

“McCarthy needs to send DeSantis and [Lee] Zeldin fruit baskets,” he said.

Read the full piece here.

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