Democrats who have spent months emphasizing the high cost of living in their fight to win control of Congress are increasingly invoking corruption in Washington to sharpen that message in the closing weeks of the campaign, blaming self-dealing by politicians for driving up prices.
Armed with research showing that voters have grown numb to the idea that politicians cannot be trusted, Democrats are using the message to stoke anti-incumbent sentiment as Republicans attempt to defend their slim House and Senate majorities. Their claim is that rampant corruption in Congress and the administration is directly costing average citizens who are paying more for necessities like groceries, gas and medicine while those in power get rich through insider knowledge, pay-to-play schemes and the backing of billionaires and powerful corporations.
That message is taking center stage in political ads, speeches and debates in some of the most competitive races in the country.
“You aren’t the problem and neither are your fellow Americans,” Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat running for re-election in Georgia, says in a campaign video. “Corruption is why things don’t work for the American people.”
Democrats are using the message in multiple competitive House and Senate contests, with candidates pointing to increases in the net worth of lawmakers and administration officials and vowing to embrace an anti-corruption agenda, including banning congressional stock trading and ending the revolving door between lawmakers on Capitol Hill and lobbyists on K Street.
Democratic candidates also are hitting Republican members of Congress with accusations of protecting enablers of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, after the G.O.P. had to be forced into taking up and passing legislation directing the Justice Department to release files in his case.
It is yet another way that Democratic leaders are trying to yoke Republican candidates to President Trump. Multiple accounts have shown his family and others connected to the government enriching themselves during his presidency through cryptocurrency trading, peddling influence, securing lucrative real estate deals with foreign entities and negotiating pardons.
The Democratic candidate in Pennsylvania’s Seventh Congressional District, a firefighter named Bob Brooks, has an ad declaring that he has “never seen a dumpster fire” like Washington, where “corporate PACs and Big Tech” back lawmakers, “and your paycheck goes up in smoke.”
In Virginia’s First District, the Democratic county prosecutor Shannon Taylor released an “accountability agenda” that she said was aimed at pursuing “elected officials who are looking out for themselves while raising our costs and hurting our community.”
And in Kentucky’s Sixth District, where the two parties are vying for an open seat, a recent ad for the Democratic Navy veteran and former federal prosecutor Zach Dembo promises that he will take on health insurance companies denying care “and go after corruption in both parties.”
Democratic leaders, increasingly confident of their chances of grabbing the House majority, see the anti-corruption theme as a significant element of their platform, one they say they intend to deliver on if they take control of the House, Senate or both.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who is in line to be speaker should his party win the House, has repeatedly said Democrats intend to “hold the crooks accountable” if their candidates prevail. In a meeting with reporters this week, he called corruption “an incredibly important theme” for Democratic House candidates.
“The reality facing the American people is that the cost of living is way too high, and Donald Trump, along with his Republican sycophantic members of Congress, have actually decided not to do anything about it because so many of them are so focused on enriching themselves, their family members, their friends and their donors,” Mr. Jeffries said. “There is a cost to corruption.”
Accusations of corruption and political misconduct have been a staple of congressional campaigns for decades, though the emphasis has shifted from election to election. In the 1990s, Republicans recaptured the House after 40 years by successfully branding the entrenched Democratic majority as corrupt, citing multiple scandals such as rampant abuse of overdrafts at the House bank. In 2006, Democrats regained power by accusing the Republican majority of fostering a “culture of corruption” with various scandals, including one involving a lawmaker who sent sexual messages to teenage House pages.
But Democrats say their research, including in focus groups, uncovered a unique aspect to the corruption issue in recent months. In those discussions, voters blamed a “rigged system” for the high costs they were facing. Internal surveys revealed that voters favored taking on the corrupt system even more than other Democratic priorities, such as bringing down health care costs.
Public polling showed similar results. A mid-August Reuters/Ipsos survey found that more than 60 percent of Americans believe that corruption influences the decisions made by the federal government and that the president and his family had inappropriately profited from cryptocurrency. A narrow majority said that corruption was worse under the Trump administration than under other recent presidencies. The poll found that the view that corruption plays an undue role in the government spanned all ideologies.
In making the link between corruption and affordability, Democratic strategists said they had found a sweet spot that gives the issues more heft together.
“When you tie the corruption issue to the cost of living, that resonates more than the corruption issue itself,” said Brian Fallon, a Democratic strategist providing advice to groups and candidates on the subject.
Republicans, too, are trying to leverage the issue. They are also raising it on the campaign trail, with new ads going up in recent days in Florida hitting incumbent Democrats on the stock trading issue. Party officials note that it was Senate Democrats who blocked a recent attempt to limit stock trading by members of Congress. (Democrats called the bill watered down since it would not bar such trading outright and would not apply to the president.)
Republicans say that voters will reject Democrats’ focus on corruption as a politically motivated artifice.
“Voters see through the facade, and they know Republicans are cleaning up the rot left behind by Democrat leaders,” said Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
But Republicans, in control and responsible for the government, have less freedom to link corruption to high costs, giving Democrats an opening.
Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and minority leader deeply involved in Senate campaign strategy, credited Mr. Ossoff for the way he has distilled the issue. He said Democratic strategists have been circulating Mr. Ossoff’s message on how corrupt practices contribute to high costs.
“When you tie the two together,” Mr. Schumer said of corruption and high costs, “the sum becomes greater than the parts.”
Democrats also like the message because it unites their party all along the ideological spectrum, steering clear of the divisions between more progressive and moderate candidates that have complicated races this year.
Still, the focus raises a potential challenge for Democrats if they succeed in their push to take over Congress. Under any scenario, they would still have to work with the Trump administration on legislation to reduce costs, while simultaneously conducting inquiries into the corruption allegations that are fueling their campaigns.
Mr. Jeffries said Democrats could do both.
“We certainly have a steadfast commitment to continuing to make significant and decisive progress on addressing the affordability crisis,” he said. “But at the same time, recognize that we have to visit accountability upon those individuals who’ve been stealing from the American people, shortchanging the American people or screwing over the American people.”
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