With Senate majority at risk, Republicans lean on ‘tough on China’ message

Sen. Steve Daines of Montana is inviting people to sign a petition supporting an investigation into the Chinese Communist Party for allegedly covering up its role in the pandemic.

Since the pandemic began, leading to lockdowns and social distancing measures, Republican lawmakers, conservative pundits, and President Trump have made it a point to tie the coronavirus outbreak to where it originated: China. A handful of Republican senators introduced a bill last month to allow U.S. citizens to sue China in federal court for damages over its handling of the pandemic.

“Their decision to cover up the virus led to thousands of needless deaths and untold economic harm,” Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton said in a statement. “It’s only appropriate that we hold the Chinese government accountable for the damage it has caused.”

Republicans are at risk of losing their Senate majority in the chamber as well as the White House at a time of a health crisis mixed with a wave of social unrest with less than 100 days until Election Day. They appear to be rallying around the strategy of painting China as a nefarious adversary responsible for all the misery and hardship going around.

A leaked 57-page memo, drafted by O’Donnell & Associates and shared with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, encouraged GOP candidates to focus on vilifying China and blaming the Chinese Communist Party for the outbreak.

Though the NRSC told the Washington Examiner the “tough on China” memo was not a strategy endorsed by the committee, some Senate candidates picked up on the message.

Jesse Hunt, the communications director for the NRSC, said Senate Republicans are working to draw a contrast from their opponents’ “reluctance” to criticize China’s role in the pandemic. “A lot of this could have been far less severe had China acted appropriately and not tried to cover [their role in the pandemic] up,” Hunt said. “That’s the bottom line, and that’s what a lot of these Republican senators are talking about.”

Campaigns use China as attack point

In Tillis’s 18-point plan, the North Carolina Republican laid out detailed steps to hold China “accountable” for the pandemic as well as how the U.S. can break away from Chinese dependence, bring jobs back, and expand a military presence in Southeast Asia. Tillis campaign spokesman Andrew Romeo told the Washington Examiner that tough talk on China isn’t a new refrain for the senator but that the pandemic heightens the relevancy of the message.

“Sen. Tillis has been fighting to hold China accountable for years on trade, military matters, human rights, and intellectual property and has a plan to ramp up those efforts in the wake of COVID-19,” Romeo said in an emailed statement.

But Cal Cunningham, the Democrat and former state legislator challenging Tillis in a race currently rated as a “toss-up” by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, has dismissed Tillis’s tough talk about China as “election-year chest-thumping.”

“Mitch McConnell told him to put this plan out, and that’s exactly what he’s doing,” Cunningham told the News & Observer in June, referring to the Senate majority leader.

Cunningham has voiced support for an investigation into the timeline of when China knew about the virus, possible sanctions on the country, and looking at supply chain issues, not unlike points listed in Tillis’s plan.

The Democrat argued he’s in a better position to counter China, particularly when it comes to standing up to Trump, who he said escalated underlying trade problems with the country without addressing Beijing’s subsidizing of its industries and state-owned businesses.

“We precipitated a trade conflict with China that never did anything to resolve this incredibly critical underlying problem,” Cunningham said.

In Montana, Democrats have talked about China to attack incumbent Sen. Steve Daines’s business ties to the country in another race labeled a toss-up.

The Montana Democratic Party labeled Daines a “cheerleader” for China in Congress, accusing him of switching up his message in the wake of the 2020 election. Daines’s China connections working in management overseas for Procter & Gamble in the 1990s were used as an attack point when he first ran for the Senate in 2014.

“It is pretty staggering how quickly and starkly his flip-flop has been even in the matter of a month or a few weeks,” a Montana Democratic Party aide told the Washington Examiner. “I do think it distinguishes him from some of these other Republicans who are running tough on China campaigns.”

In response to the pandemic, Daines called for sanctions on China, pushing for legislation to reduce U.S. reliance on the country for drug and medical equipment and to bring back jobs that are overseas.

Daines’s campaign has pushed back on messaging by Democrats claiming he was responsible for domestic job cuts while he was in China working for Procter & Gamble.

“The senator was growing an American business by selling American products,” Julia Doyle, the communications director for the Daines campaign, said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “He was competing against Chinese companies, and he beat them — on their own turf … these claims being made by the Democrats are false.”

Will China resonate with voters in November?

Pollsters have painted a grim picture for Republicans in November. In addition to losing control of the Senate, as the Cook Political Report recently predicted, election forecasters see possibly tightened races in vulnerable GOP-controlled districts, giving Democrats the opportunity to snag more seats in the House after they flipped 41 of them in 2018 and took control of the chamber.

The White House is in Republican control, but most national polls show presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden with a lead over Trump as he contends with fallout from the coronavirus and social unrest stemming from the death of George Floyd.

With Biden and his new running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, already pushing stricter public health measures, such as a national mask mandate, Trump and his allies have focused on calling the former vice president soft on China.

“If I don’t win the election, China will own the United States,” Trump said. “You’re going to have to learn to speak Chinese, you want to know the truth.”

The Republican strategy of blaming China for the U.S.’s woes stemming from the coronavirus could be a politically potent one.

According to a Morning Consult poll released in May, 73% of U.S. adults said the Chinese government bears at least some responsibility for the deaths associated with COVID-19. Of the 12 “groups and organizations” listed in the survey, China was the most blamed among Republicans and the fourth-most among Democrats.

A separate survey from the Pew Research Center found that 73% of U.S. adults have developed an unfavorable view of China. Two-thirds, or 64% of adults, believe China did a poor job of dealing with the outbreak, and 78% blame the Chinese government for the global spread of the virus.

Jacob Neiheisel, an associate professor of political science at the University of Buffalo, said tough-on-China campaigns could draw less enthusiastic Trump supporters to the polls but may not appeal much to undecided voters.

“I’m not sure if that’s necessarily a winning strategy among those (undecided voter) folks but certainly among the base,” Neiheisel told the Washington Examiner.

“I think (the China messaging) that’s already out there might resonate in particular with voters who might be on the fence, who might be struggling economically but looking for reasons to shore up their original position, which was to be a pro-Trump voter again,” he added.