Florida, Texas ‘increasingly in play,’ but Senate Dems not ready to spend more yet

Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), indicated the party is not yet committed to devoting financial resources to Texas or Florida despite its claims that it is in striking distance to flip the two GOP-held seats.

Peters told reporters Tuesday morning that while the pair of seats, now held by Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Rick Scott (Fla.), are moving closer in the direction of Democrats, they are not yet committed to spending big on a media buy in either state.

“Those states are increasingly in play. Decisions as to what resources are going to go in are going to be made [in] real time and are likely to evolve,” Peters said during a breakfast hosted by The Christian Science Monitor.

“If you continue to see what’s happening in those two states, I think you’re likely to see more resources to go in. Democrats are going to put more resources into those states,” Peters said of outside groups more broadly. “So if the momentum we see today continues, I’m certainly very encouraged. We’ll have to see how it goes.”

The decisions the committee and allied groups must make on the pair of red states are important, as they could reverberate in other key contests.

Democrats are trying to defend seats in Montana and Ohio, which will likely decide the Senate majority, and a handful of seats in battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and Michigan.

For them, those are the priority, with Texas and Florida on the back burner, for now.

“You need to be on TV in a big way, but across all electronic media,” Peters said. “You need a bigger media buy, and that media buy would be across all the different channels that you have to be a part of.”

“If you’re in a highly polarized world … and you’ve got voters fairly entrenched, the segment of voters you need at the very end is a lot smaller. That’s the good news,” he continued. “The bad news is they’re a lot harder to reach and they’re a lot harder to talk to, and you’ve got to be really smart how you’re focusing those resources.”

Cruz is trying to win a third term against Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas), who has raked in big money throughout his campaign. According to a poll by The Hill and Emerson College released earlier this month, Cruz leads by 4 percentage points.

In Florida, Scott is squaring off with former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Fla.). The same survey shows Scott leading by a single point in the state that has increasingly hued red in recent years.

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