A conservative political action committee is running ads in Ohio linking the state’s Democratic Senate candidate to Hillary Clinton. The New Hampshire Democrat running for the Senate recently flubbed a question about Clinton’s honesty.

And the Democrat running for governor in West Virginia won’t even vote for her.

“It’s going to be more difficult for Hassan to distance herself from Clinton than for Ayotte to distance herself from Trump.”

Suddenly, Donald Trump is not the presidential candidate causing headaches for fellow party members in down-ballot races.

In Ohio, the conservative Freedom Partners Action Fund is airing an ad featuring a coal worker fearful of losing his job because of environmental policies favored by Clinton and President Obama. The ad shows a clip of Clinton’s infamous statement from the primary campaign in which she said, “We’re gonna to put a lot of coal workers out of business.” Then it links Clinton directly to former Gov. Ted Strickland, who is challenging Republican Sen. Rob Portman in the state’s critical Senate contest.

“Seeing Ted Strickland stand with Hillary Clinton after what she said really hurts us here in coal industry,” the miner says. “I don’t think you can trust Ted Strickland to stand up for coal.”

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The ad could be enormously effective in the coal-producing region of the Buckeye State. There are 19 counties in the state that produce coal. Political science professor Christopher Devine says the ad highlights the unusual polarization of the 2016 contest.

“You’d much more expect to see this happen in Texas or somewhere,” said Devine, a professor at the University of Dayton in Ohio. “It reflects the polarization not just in this election, but in recent elections.”

Devine said driving up Clinton’s negative ratings could be effective for voters who share Trump’s concerns over trade, but might be inclined to vote for Democrats for lower offices.

“This has to be going after people who are against Hillary Clinton but are thinking of voting for Ted Strickland,” he said.

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The uneasiness between Clinton and lower Democrats goes both ways. Democratic Party officials privately have grumbled that the Clinton campaign has not been helpful in helping other Democrats, according to emails released by WikiLeaks.

“Unfortunately, there is a faction within the Clinton world that seems to be in the mindset that they can win without anyone else, and they’re promoting the idea that the focus should be on showing how Republicans are shunning Trump because he’s so extreme,” Democratic National Committee spokesman Luis Miranda wrote in an email to DNC Treasurer Andy Tobias in May.

In the tight Senate race in New Hampshire, Gov. Maggie Hassan, who is challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, was caught off-guard when asked to defend Clinton’s trustworthiness.

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Hassan, who has been an enthusiastic supporter of Clinton, failed three times during a recent CNN interview to give a clear answer about whether the Democratic presidential nominee is honest and trustworthy.

“It’s struck me all along that since both candidates are so unpopular, the [New Hampshire Senate] race is going to come down to who’s going to be better able to distance herself from her party’s nominee,” said Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.

“It’s going to be more difficult for Hassan to distance herself from Clinton than for Ayotte to distance herself from Trump,” Smith said, adding that while Ayotte has kept Trump at arm’s length from the start of the campaign, Hassan “was a strong endorser of Clinton.”

Perhaps no place in the country is Clinton more of a liability to Democrats than West Virginia, which is heavily reliant on the coal industry and has been trending Republican for more than a decade. Nearly half of the voters who cast ballots for Sen. Bernie Sanders in the primary this year said in exit polls that they planned to vote for Trump in the fall.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jim Justice disavowed Clinton on the “Talkline” radio show Monday.

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“I cannot be a supporter of Hillary Clinton,” he said. “The reason I can’t be is her position on coal is diametrically, completely wrong in many, many different ways.”

Scott Crichlow, chairman of the political science department at West Virginia University, said it is hard to say how much of a drag the top of the ticket will be on Justice.

“It’s certainly a problem, but it also is really hard to say,” he said. “West Virginia probably splits tickets more than any other state … The Democrats haven’t won the state [in a presidential election] since the 1990s, and not only that — the margins keep getting bigger.”

Crichlow said he does not know if Republicans have tried to bind Clinton to West Virginia Democrats in advertising yet, but he added, “It would certainly be smart politics to do this in every possible race.”