Moderate Democrats are at the center of a game of tug-of-war between Republicans and Democratic leadership, as the GOP attempts to peel off the five remaining votes needed to back the party’s “clean” stopgap spending bill and reopen the government.

According to multiple GOP sources, individual Republican lawmakers are engaging with Senate Democrats who they view as flippable in a bid to win them over. Although some members of leadership are involved, this is largely being done at the rank-and-file level, with members who have working relationships with the Democrats in question taking on the heavy lifting.

On Wednesday, what began as spur-of-the-minute talks on the Senate floor ballooned into a conversation involving up to a dozen rank-and-file lawmakers with an eye toward a possible resolution on two fronts: an alternative stopgap spending deadline and the enhanced Affordable Care Act credits, which are set to expire at year’s end.

“I think there are a lot of Democrat people who are looking for a way out. They want an off-ramp here,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told The Hill. “There’s a good amount of outreach going on and conversations being held. We’ll see where it goes.”

Sens. Gary Peters (Mich.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) and Maggie Hassan (N.H.) are among the preeminent Democrats that Republicans hope to flip. All of them backed the March stopgap spending........

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