GOP-ers are complaining that McCain isn’t doing more to help them avoid losses. Some want him to back off. GOP-ers say McCain makes bids tougher

With less than a week to go until Election Day, some congressional Republicans are complaining that John McCain isn’t doing more to help them avoid massive losses. Others are just hoping that he stays the heck away.

In an interview with Politico, Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, locked in a tough reelection fight in South Florida, complained about Barack Obama’s constant, unanswered attacks against McCain on Spanish-language radio and TV in the Miami media market.


“It shows up in the polls,” Diaz-Balart said. “It’s having an impact.”

But does that slide hurt Diaz-Balart’s own reelection efforts?

“It clearly does,” he said.

One Republican operative in Florida estimates Obama has been spending about $100,000 a day on Spanish-language television in the Miami area alone. The Democrat even signs off on his campaign ads in Spanish — “Soy Barack Obama y yo apruebo este mensaje."

Although McCain put in a plug for Diaz-Balart and his brother, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), during an appearance on Miami-based Radio Mambi Wednesday, he’s had virtually no advertising presence on Spanish-language stations in the area.

On a conference call Tuesday, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told his colleagues that their political fortunes may turn on McCain’s ability to chip away at Obama’s lead, according to a participant on the call.

Cole expressed confidence that McCain would gain ground, the participant said.

A McCain victory would be better still, but few — if any — congressional Republicans are expecting that.

"All we need from McCain is to not completely implode," one House Republican said last week. This lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be more candid, predicted that “there is about a 15 percent chance that [McCain] can win at this point — and Obama would have to do something stupid.”

A Senate GOP leadership aide told Politico that McCain “is not bringing anything” to Senate races.

“There’s just not any coordination,” the aide said. “You just have to go back and have a race where you focus on local issues and your state.”

Added a top Washington-based Republican Senate campaign operative: “McCain is not a net negative, but a lot of our [Republican] candidates just want to separate the Senate election from the presidential now.”

Case in point: Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole. Dole is trailing her Democratic challenger in North Carolina, a state where McCain is running neck-and-neck with Barack Obama. But Dole, who has said publicly that McCain is “underperforming” in the state, has passed up more than one opportunity to campaign with him there — the latest coming on Tuesday, when Dole skipped a McCain rally in Fayetteville to press on with a previously scheduled bus tour of her own.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Monday, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Ensign (R-Nev.) said “there’s no question the top of the ticket is affecting our Senate races, and it’s making it a lot more difficult.”

McCain is outpolling Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky; McCain holds a double-digit lead over Obama, while McConnell faces a tighter race against Democrat Bruce Lunsford. But McConnell has run an intensely local race — highlighting the federal dollars he’s brought home to Kentucky rather than his connections to President Bush or the Washington Republicans he leads. Aside from a fundraiser in the spring, McConnell hasn’t done any events with McCain.

To be sure, McCain hasn’t spent much time in Kentucky; it’s not a state where he needs to campaign to win. And McConnell has been more passive than aggressive in distancing himself from his party’s presidential nominee.

Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) have done more, telling the McCain campaign that its negative robocalls were not helping in their heavily Democratic home states. In Oregon, Republican Sen. Gordon Smith has gone so far as to run TV spots linking himself to Obama.

Because Oregon is a foregone conclusion for Obama, there’s been no campaigning from McCain there, no McCain ads and no in-person McCain fundraising.

Smith isn’t complaining.

“Our campaign has focused on his ability to cross the aisle in a toxic environment,” says Lindsay Gilbride, Smith’s campaign spokeswoman. “We’re really running a campaign focusing on local issues.”

In the red state of Nebraska, Republican Rep. Lee Terry is on his heels because Obama’s ground operation is working overtime to steal a single electoral vote from the congressman’s backyard in Omaha.

In Ohio, a perpetual battleground state, Obama's strength outside Columbus threatens Rep. Pat Tiberi, a typically safe incumbent who is feeling the heat this fall, according to two lawmakers familiar with his plight.

The GOP lawmaker who’s hoping against a McCain implosion said the Republicans’ presidential candidate “can still help with the base.” And he acknowledged that, “the better McCain does, the more seats we pick up.”

The McCain campaign did not respond to a request for comment, but a spokesman for the NRSC insisted that the candidate can still help in some cases.

“McCain is more of a positive on the race for Republicans than Obama is for Democrats running in red states,” NRSC press secretary John Randall said. “In these tough economic times, Republican candidates are focusing on local issues and what they have done for their constituents.”

And there’s at least one GOP candidate — albeit a challenger — who seems happy to grab at McCain’s coattails. John Kennedy, aiming to knock off Democratic Sen. Mary L. Landrieu in Louisiana, signs off his ads by saying, “I endorse John McCain, and I approve this message.”

McCain holds a double-digit lead in Louisiana — roughly the same margin by which Kennedy trails Landrieu.