Senate Democrats Turn Focus to Local Issues for Midterms

In Senator Jeanne Shaheen’s first television ad of her re-election campaign, a Vietnam War veteran talks about how Ms. Shaheen, a Democrat, “cut through the red tape” to help open a veterans clinic in Keene, N.H.

“Jeanne Shaheen,” concludes the veteran, in a thick New England accent, “gets the job done for New Hampshire.”

A commercial for another Democratic senator, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, features a Republican shipbuilder from Lockport, La., talking about how the state cannot afford to lose Ms. Landrieu. “She’s chairman of the Energy Committee, the most powerful position a person can have for Louisiana,” the builder says.

And Senator Mark Pryor, a Democrat from Arkansas — where 57 percent of those who voted in the 2010 Senate race were white evangelical or born-again Christians — ran an ad that opens with him holding the Bible as he says, “I’m not ashamed to say that I believe in God, and I believe in his word.”

If Republicans are trying to nationalize the 2014 midterms, tying Democrats to President Obama and his signature health care law, Democrats considered vulnerable are countering by going local, doubling down on state-specific issues that are more typically the province of Republicans. Facing a hostile national climate — with Mr. Obama’s approval rating stalled below 50 percent, and that of Congress barely in double digits — Democrats say they believe their path to victory hinges on a series of individual contests rather than a referendum on the president and his policies.

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