Is another Trump novelty Senate candidate in trouble?

In 2016, Donald Trump was a novelty candidate. He was a non-military celebrity who had never run for public office before and who said things other candidates weren’t saying.

Trump’s success gave rise to other novelty candidates. Trump has supported many of them, and some are now Republican nominees for important positions in this year’s elections.

In this post, written in May, I discussed three of them — Herschel Walker, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and J.D Vance. They are running for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, respectively.

I consider all three to be novelty candidates in the same way Trump was. Each is a celebrity — a football legend, a wildly successful television doctor, and a best-selling author whose autobiography became a movie. To my knowledge, none has ever run for office before. All three say Trumpy things to one degree or another.

In May, it seemed to me that the fate of the GOP’s effort to reclaim a Senate majority depends to a significant degree on the success of these candidates. I thought that if all three win, it’s very likely that Republicans will gain control of the Senate. If two out of the three lose, the Democrats have a good chance at maintaining control. If all three lose, the Dems’ prospects are even brighter.

I still think that’s the case.

If the polls are at all reliable, Dr. Oz is in big trouble. He trails by 8.7 points in the Real Clear Politics average.

Walker also trails, according to the polls included by RCP in its average. He’s behind by 4.4 points. The last poll in RCP’s compilation to show Walker leading was from very early April.

What about Vance? Back in May, I liked his chances. Ohio has become a Red state, more or less. And unlike with Oz and Walker, nothing about Vance alarmed me from the standpoint of electability.

Yet, now Vance’s race against Rep. Tim Ryan seems up for grabs. RCP has no recent polls on its site. The last one, from May, had Vance up by three points.

However, Politico says it obtained an internal poll from the Ryan campaign that has the Democrat three points ahead. I take this news with a grain of salt, but even the three point lead Vance had in the May survey, which polled only 500 likely voters, is within the margin of error. (Ryan’s alleged lead in his internal poll is just inside its margin of error.)

Politico notes that if Ryan actually is ahead, it’s probably due to “a lopsided campaign” in which he has spent more than $8 million on advertisements, including $6.5 million on television since May, whereas “Vance’s campaign had been AWOL from the airwaves for that entire time.” Vance is set to begin advertising aggressively and his fundraising has picked up.

If all of Ryan’s spending couldn’t put him ahead by more than the margin of error (i.e. not really ahead), Vance’s prospects don’t seem dim now that he’s set to hit the airwaves. It may also be worth noting that Vance has scheduled events with Josh Mandel, who finished second in the Republican primary, and with Mike Gibbons, who finished fourth. The bruising GOP primary hurt Vance. Events with his defeated opponents may help him.

Ryan, meanwhile, has picked up the endorsement of John Bridgeland, former chief of staff to outgoing Republican Senator Rob Portman. Bridgeland says:

Tim [Ryan] is spending time in every county in Ohio, including heavily Republican counties in Southwest Ohio. He’s really listening to people, wants to know what their concerns are.

Right. And if he’s elected to the Senate, Ryan will really listen to Chuck Schumer and vote with his fellow Democrats — as he has with remarkable consistency since he entered the House in 2003.

Vance calls Ryan a “fake,” and he’s right. Let’s hope Vance can pound that message home and carry Ohio. But even if he does, losses in Pennsylvania and Georgia, if they occur, might well cost Republicans control of the Senate.

Nate Silver believes it’s hard to win s Senate race if you have never won an election before. I don’t know whether that’s true, but the three Trump novelty candidates for the Senate — Oz, Walker, and Vance — all seem to be making hard work of it in what should be a good year for their party.