QUALITY CONTROL — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made headlines last month when he threw cold water on his party's chances of flipping the Senate, citing "candidate quality" as an obstacle to winning back the majority. It's become a midterm buzzword — a shorthand used by elected officials and political operatives alike when describing candidates who may be too flawed or too extreme to win. In other words, candidates with serious electability issues. At the moment, it's perhaps the GOP's most serious stumbling block this fall as the party enters the homestretch of the Senate election campaign with a handful of first-time candidates who have struggled with some of the basics of running for office, whether it's stringing together coherent thoughts on policy, raising enough money to compete or embracing positions that are acceptable to the mainstream. You'll be hearing a lot more about it tonight as the nation's last primaries unfold. If retired Army General Don Bolduc — who has championed Donald Trump's 2020 election conspiracies and referred to GOP Gov. Chris Sununu as a "Chinese communist sympathizer" — is victorious in New Hampshire's GOP Senate primary against state Senate President Chuck Morse, he'll be added to the list of candidates viewed as a threat to Republicans' chances of a once-reachable Senate majority. To break down what the term really means and how to watch these contenders in the final weeks of the fall campaign, Nightly chatted with POLITICO's Natalie Allison, who covers Senate campaigns. What are people talking about when they say "candidate quality"? The term — which refers to how strong of a candidate someone will be in a general election — was notably used by McConnell last month as he tried to temper expectations about how Republicans might perform this fall, suggesting the party's slate of Senate candidates left something to be desired. ( Much ink has been spilled, including by this publication, on how they got there.) The conventional thinking by consultants this cycle is that candidates who are prone to embarrassing gaffes, who lack any experience in politics or, in some cases, who have major scandals in their past, are going to be a liability for Republicans in the general election. The names most associated with "candidate quality" concerns this year are Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz, Blake Masters, J.D. Vance and, if he emerges tonight as the nominee in New Hampshire, Don Bolduc. With the exception of Bolduc, all are first-time candidates with extensive oppo research books on them. Have we seen a cycle like this before, where the type of candidates threatened a party's prospects? 2010 and 2012 are the election cycles strategists point to when talking about why candidate quality matters. Despite a massive red wave in 2010 when Republicans took back the House, they still didn't manage to win the Senate. In multiple cases, Tea Party candidates won GOP primaries in competitive states, but cost the party those seats in the general. Christine "I am not a witch" O'Donnell beat out a former governor in Delaware's GOP Senate primary, only to be mocked by both parties throughout the fall and lose the election. The Senate race in Nevada that year was also seen as a prime pickup opportunity for the GOP, but Sharron Angle beat out a much more establishment candidate in the primary, and lost the race [to Sen. Harry Reid] following a pretty dysfunctional campaign. In 2012, Republican Todd Akin was leading the polls until he said there were legitimate forms of rape. Republicans then lost the Missouri Senate race, a seat they had been confident in flipping. So why does candidate quality matter so much this year, and how important do your sources see candidate quality when compared with other headwinds Republicans face in the run-up to November? The Missouri Republican primary was a clear example of the GOP panic about candidate quality. Republican money poured in during the final weeks to stop former Gov. Eric Greitens from winning the nomination. In that case, there were multiple polls showing Greitens losing or coming close to losing a general election. But for the most part this cycle, there isn't a lot of solid data to prove that Republicans would be faring better with a different set of candidates on the ballot. Pre-primary polling in Arizona, for example, showed Blake Masters and Jim Lamon performing about the same in an hypothetical matchup against Sen. Mark Kelly. And when it comes to tonight's New Hampshire race, I've still not seen polling that shows the establishment candidate, Chuck Morse, performing better in the general than Don Bolduc. But plenty of GOP operatives insist that Democrats' approval issues this year are enough to cover a multitude of Republican missteps. In Georgia, Herschel Walker has been running neck-and-neck with Raphael Warnock, despite ads on the air about him abusing his ex-wife and lying about all facets of his life. Do these candidates tell us anything about the state of the Republican Party, and what we should expect to see in future elections? Most of the Republicans on the ballot in competitive Senate races this fall got there because of their loyalty to Trump. We can debate how crucial Trump's endorsement was for each of them to clinch the nomination, but it's pretty clear none were going to survive a GOP primary this year by distancing themselves from him. So, to no one's surprise, the slate of Republican candidates running in major Senate contests in 2022 (with the exception of Joe O'Dea in Colorado) are Trump loyalists, and some are still attending rallies with him. I don't know if that tells us much about future elections, though. These same candidates are also out there campaigning with some of Trump's possible 2024 presidential primary opponents, chiefly Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, so the Trump effect in 2024 Senate primaries could be much different. When it comes to these candidates, what are you watching for in the final weeks of the fall campaign? How they're going to answer more questions that will arise about abortion and their policy positions on it. Today, we saw several campaigns dodge answering questions from our Congress team about whether their candidate would support Sen. Lindsey Graham's new abortion ban bill. Regardless of how important abortion will prove to be in driving turnout, Republicans in these tight races know they can't afford to say the wrong thing and piss off women in the weeks leading up to Election Day (such as Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, who — during a debate for Indiana Senate in 2012 — said pregnancies that result from rape are what God intended to happen). And besides, many of them have spent the last several weeks trying to moderate their anti-abortion comments from the primary — and seeking to assure general-election voters they aren't interested in a nationwide ban. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight's author at mward@politico.com or on Twitter @MyahWard.
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