Senate Dem candidates in blue states move away from Kamala as she tanks in polls

Democrats running for Senate in the critical "blue wall" states for Democrats have reportedly been running away from Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign for the presidency. This comes as the Democratic nominee has seen a drop in the polls in several swing states and Donald Trump has been gaining ground with voters.

According to The Hill, Democratic candidates have even gone so far as being careful in how they criticize Trump in states such as Pennsylvania and have instead focused on policies without taking many shots at the GOP nominee. 

The incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) has even gone as far as endorsing Trump's tariff policies in recent weeks. The Casey campaign posted an advertisement just last week that called him "independent" and bragged about him bucking against the Biden-Harris White House on the issue of fracking and "sid[ing] with Trump to end NAFTA." 

Berwood Yost, the director of the Center for Public Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College told the outlet, “There’s no party affiliation in Casey ads. I don’t recall seeing any that say ‘Democrat’ or anything like that. He’s running as an incumbent on his own record." 

“He’s trying to distance himself a little bit from an administration that is viewed negatively by the most part. He doesn’t want to be tied to that either through Biden or Harris," he added. Trump has been outpolling multiple Senate Republican candidates.  

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) is also reportedly feeling the heat of the race in Wisconsin, she ignored Biden and Harris in her debate with GOP opponent Eric Hovde and made one mention of Trump in her debate last Friday, per the outlet. In contrast, Hovde tied Baldwin to the Biden-Harris White House, a messaging approach that Republicans have been doing in Pennsylvania as well as Michigan.   

Baldwin, like Casey, has also tried to tangentially connect herself to the GOP presidential nominee, “Tammy Baldwin got President Trump to sign her Made in America bill, then she got President Biden to make it permanent," an advertisement says about the Wisconsin senator.  

Senate candidate Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) as well, has sounded like a Republican at times, per The Hill. Her third term as a House member is coming to an end, and she made a pitch for the Senate. Slotkin previously said, “I’m not feeling my best right now about where we are on Kamala in a place like Michigan right now. We have her underwater in our polling," per the outlet.  

The Democratic Senate candidate has been sure to keep her distance from Harris as well as Biden. As the election gets closer and if Harris drops in polling among swing state voters, similar messaging may be seen among more Democrats in races. Private polling from the Baldwin campagin itself has shown that Harris is underwater in the state.