I spoke to Sam Brodey of the Daily Beast about Susan Collins’ tricky path through Maine and the attitudes of Trump voters in a politically schizophrenic state where the path to victory requires majority support.

The larger challenge for Collins, however, is that the GOP coming home may not save her from defeat.

The senator has two bigger problems, said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist who’s worked on races in the state: Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s clear statewide advantage on the presidential ticket, and Maine’s ranked choice voting system, in which candidates who get a plurality, but not a majority, of votes do not win outright.

“It matters less what the marginal Trump voter thinks and more about, are there enough Trump voters,” Donovan said. “That’s Collins’ fundamental problem: she doesn’t make her own wake anymore. She’s surfing his, and at the end of the day, he’s not doing well enough for that marginal Trump voter to matter.”

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This is where the Trump tweet comes back into play. Some local Republicans believe that Trump, in his way, was strategically trying to help Collins—giving her a “maverick” appeal by attacking her in a state where he is less popular, Winter theorized.

But many more have a hard time buying that Trump, who is on record predicting he will win Maine, was actually trying to help Collins in a roundabout way. A “three-dimensional chess move,” said Donovan, “is not what this is. It’s not helpful, it’s a distraction.”

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to James Oliphant of Reuters about the final Presidential debate and whether the President’s performance will move the race.

Thursday’s debate in Nashville, Tennessee, was the last time for both candidates to share a stage before a large television audience, and Trump engaged in a more civil discourse with far fewer interruptions than at their first debate in September.

“Trump was fine tonight. Might even give it to him on points. It’s just not the game-changer he needs,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist in Virginia who has worked on U.S. Senate campaigns.

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Trump’s vulnerability on the pandemic has forced him to turn to other stratagems to try to get back in the race, including aiming to brand Biden as a corrupt politician in the same manner he attempted to do with Democrat Hillary Clinton four years ago before he edged out a narrow victory.

Donovan said the gambit would yield diminishing returns in an election where voters have far greater concerns.

“It just feels like a ham-fisted attempt to reprise 2016, which worked – barely – because a dozen things went exactly right, and people had nothing else to worry about,” he said.

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to Jeff Stein of the Washington Post about Congressional Republicans’ reservations over the ongoing Covid stimulus negotiations being led by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

Liam Donovan, a Republican political strategist, said that there is “broad frustration” among GOP lawmakers over the emerging package. “There are zero policy wins in here for [Republicans], just swallowing slightly watered-down Heroes,” Donovan said, citing provisions related to taxpayer-funded abortions as well as the potential expansion of ACA credits. The Heroes Act is the multi-trillion-dollar relief bill passed by the House.

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to POLITICO‘s James Arkin about Senate Democrats’ monster Q3 fundraising haul and the implications for the GOP’s eroding fortunes in the upper chamber.

For some Republicans, the money is exacerbating broader issues as the party battles to hold the majority: Trump’s sagging poll numbers, an environment tilted against them, and a map with more and more incumbents under duress and only two legitimate offensive opportunities.

“It’s red alert at this point,” said Liam Donovan, a lobbyist who said Republicans are “spooked” by the current environment. “I don’t think anyone has written off the Senate, but everyone knows the snapshot in time is pretty bleak and things need to stabilize pretty quickly.”

Read the full piece here.