Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.
In the 2012 Missouri Senate race, incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill ran ads during the GOP primary campaign saying that Todd Akin was "too conservative." The idea of the "attack ad" was to drive GOP voters to Akin, her weakest potential foe. It worked. Other campaigns have tried variations of the "pick your opponent" ploy. And it has happened in 2025 and 2026. (See the LA Mayor race.)
Kellen Browning at NYT:
A super PAC tied to Republicans is spending $2.2 million on television advertisements that appear to be aimed at boosting the chances of Francesca Hong, a Democratic candidate for governor in Wisconsin.
Some Democrats in the state have fretted over the prospect that Ms. Hong, a democratic socialist with unabashedly left-wing views in a distinctly purple state, might advance out of a crowded August primary — and then deliver the governor’s mansion to Representative Tom Tiffany, the likely Republican nominee, in November.
Republicans appear to agree. The PAC running a new ad about Ms. Hong, Right Direction Wisconsin, is tied to the Republican Governors Association. The 30-second ad, which will begin airing on Thursday in liberal parts of the state, including Madison and Milwaukee, criticizes Ms. Hong for being too liberal, in what appears to be a counterintuitive strategy to grow her appeal among Democratic primary voters.
Both parties have used similarly misleading tactics in the opposing party’s primaries around the country this year, seeking to boost candidates they perceive as weak in general-election matchups.
