EVER since Donald Trump’s victory emboldened the Republican Party’s nativist wing, the dirtiest words with which a Republican can be tarred have not four letters, but 8 and 13: “moderate” and “establishment”. Unfortunately, those accurately describe the two Republican candidates for governors’ mansions this year.

In New Jersey, Kim Guadagno has spent two terms as lieutenant-governor. Mrs Guadagno is pro-choice, believes that greenhouse gases contribute to climate change and has addressed her state’s LGBT Chamber of Commerce. Before Ed Gillespie decided to run for governor of Virginia he was a lobbyist, political strategist, head of the Republican National Committee, adviser to George W. Bush and Mitt Romney and, in college, a Senate car-park attendant—hardly the outsider that the Republican base seems to crave.

But recent commercials suggest both candidates have turned Trumpian, meaning nativist, race-baiting and unconcerned with accuracy. Mrs Guadagno’s advert stars Jose Carranza, an “illegal alien and child rapist”. The ad warns that Phil Murphy, the Democratic candidate, “will have the backs of deranged murderers like Carranza”.

Mr Gillespie’s ads both play on voters’ fears of MS-13, a notoriously violent Salvadoran street gang linked to several crimes in northern Virginia. One shows a hooded figure holding a baseball bat in a dark alley while the words “Kill, rape, control” appear on screen; another shows heavily tattooed dark-skinned men behind those words, while an announcer warns, “MS-13 is a menace.” (In fact, those men were members of a different gang, photographed in a Salvadoran prison.) Mr Northam “increase[s] the threat of MS-13”, the ad warns, because he “voted in favour of sanctuary cities.”

Virginia has no sanctuary cities. And Mr Murphy gave an uninspired, rambling answer in support of undocumented immigrants brought to America as children that Mrs Guadagno took out of context. But both Mrs Guadagno and Mr Gillespie trail mainstream Democrats in states that Hillary Clinton won easily. The Democratic base appears motivated by its hatred for Mr Trump, while the Republican base seems depressed by his lacklustre record. Though Democrats have lost four special congressional elections this year, they outperformed expectations in staunch Republican districts. To rally the base, both candidates have repudiated their past comity, and turned to the same anti-immigrant sentiment that vaulted Mr Trump into the Oval Office.