This cycle, Senate Republicans set out to avoid the kind of bruising primaries that led to damaged nominees in 2022. In Pennsylvania, Montana and Wisconsin they have avoided contentious primaries, though their all-but-certain nominees still carry some liabilities. A heated GOP contest in Ohio was settled in March. A potentially thorny race in Michigan still looms in August.
National Republicans hope to avoid that fate next week in Nevada. They believe their favored candidate, Army veteran Sam Brown, should easily win the nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen despite a late spending burst from a controversial challenger arguing he’s the true MAGA stalwart.
Polls from Brown’s campaign and other private polling show Brown in the driver’s seat despite his chief primary opponent, former Trump ambassador to Iceland Jeffrey Gunter, putting $2.5 million of his own money into an ad campaign attacking Brown’s conservative bona fides.
Gunter — who polls worse against Rosen than Brown — had a controversial tenure as ambassador, with an inspector general finding that he had created a “threatening and intimidating environment” in Reykjavik. He berated
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