Republicans are nervous Trump-endorsed candidates won't be able to win in general elections and could wash away the red wave they're hoping for in the fall.
For one, Trump"remains toxic in the suburbs," said Berwood Yost, director of the Center for Opinion Research and the Floyd Institute for Public Policy at Franklin and Marshall College. Yost's polling work suggests that in Pennsylvania, where another critical Senate seat is on the line this year, the number of voters who consider themselves core members of the Trump coalition has diminished since 2020.
Consider also Lisa Scheller, a businesswoman from the Lehigh Valley in eastern Pennsylvania who in 2020 narrowly lost her race for a House seat representing the 7th Congressional District despite having Trump's endorsement. She is back for a rematch against Democratic incumbent Representative Susan Wild, in a year that is expected to be broadly favorable for the GOP nationwide.
In the first Republican primary debate after the endorsement, Oz was asked about 2020, and he responded,"we cannot move on from the 2020 election. I have discussed it with President Trump... Under the cover of Covid, there were draconian changes made to our voting laws by Democratic leadership, and they have blocked appropriate reviews of some of those decisions.