EXCLUSIVE — The National Republican Senatorial Committee is targeting five Democratic Senate candidates with new messaging guidance over their alleged opposition to corruption despite their own mounting ethics questions and ties to corporate special interests.
According to a memo obtained by the Washington Examiner, the NRSC is targeting Democrats who “claim the moral high ground on corruption while engaging in the same behavior they condemn—proving their supposed crackdown is nothing more than a campaign talking point.”
The guidance previews one of the ways the committee and Republican candidates plan to ding their Democratic opponents in the weeks leading up to the midterm elections.
The NRSC is going after Maine Democrat Troy Jackson, Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH), former Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), and Texas Democrat James Talarico. All five races are crucial for the GOP to block Democrats from retaking the Senate during the November midterm elections. The Cook Political Report rated the Maine and Ohio Senate races as toss-ups while the Texas Senate race leans Republican. The New Hampshire and Georgia races lean Democratic.
The NRSC is going after Jackson as a “political shapeshifter who has spent decades abandoning his principles” in his race against Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). Despite Jackson’s opposition to lobbyists and his attacks on corporate greed, his son Chace Jackson reportedly charged $200,000 to lobby the Maine Legislature while Troy Jackson was serving in his final year as president of the state Senate.
The strategy also calls out Jackson for switching party affiliation from “running first as a Republican, then Independent, and now a Democratic socialist” as well as his shift from a pro-gun, National Rifle Association-backed rural Democrat to a supporter of gun-safety laws. The Resurgam Group, founded by B.J. McCollister, a former chief of staff for Jackson, and where the younger Jackson works, was hired by an anti-gun advocacy group.
In the New Hampshire race between Pappas and former Republican Sen. John Sununu, the committee claimed the Democratic nominee “has a troubling history of conflicts of interests,” referring to his previous denial of a personal relationship with Vann Bentley, a former lobbyist for Amazon whom he is married to. In 2020, Republican Matt Mowers’s campaign for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District accused Pappas of voting in favor of 10 Amazon-related issues, although, for at least four of them, Bentley had left Amazon.
One Nation, the issue advocacy arm of the Senate Republican super PAC Senate Leadership Fund, is already running $6 million in advertisements criticizing Pappas for lying about the relationship. The ads went up in July.
Earlier this year, Pappas also voted in favor of advancing legislation that would prohibit sexual assault victims from suing rideshare companies for harm that drivers have caused; Bentley is a policy executive at Uber. Financial disclosures show the couple holds between $150,000 and $350,000 in Uber stock.
In Ohio, the NRSC is hitting Brown, who is up against Republican Sen. Jon Husted, for claiming to represent blue-collar workers while reportedly raking in nearly $5 million from Wall Street, billionaires, and investment firms, as well as collecting $400,000 in donations from lobbyists and corporate political action committees from health insurance companies while he was still in office.
“Sherrod Brown spent 32 years in Washington selling out Ohio families, collecting millions in taxpayer-funded paychecks, and building a D.C. political machine to enrich himself,” the guidance states.
The NRSC is also attacking Senate Democrats over their connections to billionaire donors such as Reid Hoffman, who is linked to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“Democrats like Sherrod Brown, Jon Ossoff and James Talarico have taken hypocrisy to new heights by trying to weaponize the Epstein files while accepting campaign cash from individuals named in them,” the guidance states.
Both the Brown and Husted campaigns have released attack ads accusing their opponent of accepting donations from associates of Epstein.
Hoffman, a LinkedIn co-founder, reportedly donated $11.5 million to the Talarico-aligned super PAC Lone Star Rising and gave $7,000, the legal limit, to Ossoff’s campaign for the 2025-2026 cycle. Hoffman also remained in contact with Epstein after he had pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor in 2008 and visited Epstein’s private Caribbean island in 2014.
Talarico has also faced criticism for the timeline of his personal relationship with Brianna Menard, a healthcare lobbyist and his former chief of staff, whom he has dated for about four years. The campaign claims the relationship started after Menard left his office, although a four-year relationship could have overlapped with her time as Talarico’s chief of staff before she left in early 2023.
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Separately from the NRSC guidance, Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed is facing questions over his father-in-law, Jukaku Tayeb, being a major donor to Fighting for Michigan PAC. El Sayed has pushed to get money out of politics, but Tayeb gave $300,000 to the PAC through June, making him the largest donor to the pro-el Sayed super PAC.
The Washington Examiner reached out to all five Democratic campaigns the NRSC is targeting for comment.