The Week in Review: Political Edition

Now that my cousin’s wedding has come and gone, I have the opportunity to weigh in on the political developments of last week.

For starters, Eric Swalwell became the first major candidate to drop out of the 2020 presidential race; just weeks after the first Democratic debate.  This should not have come as a surprise because last time around, one candidate dropped out of the race after the first Republican debate (Rick Perry).  As a sanctimonious Congressional Democrat from a deep blue House district in California, no rationale existed for Swalwell’s candidacy.  Pete Buttigieg has cornered the market on the “next generation candidates” while Kamala Harris has cornered the market on self-righteous California prosecutors.  Swalwell can now go back to his primary job: changing diapers.

However, Swalwell’s disappearance from the 2020 Democratic field did not reduce the number of Democratic Presidential candidates. Billionaire Tom Steyer announced his intention to run for President just one day after Swalwell suspended his campaign. While Steyer has always devoted his time and money to supporting Democratic candidates and left-wing causes, Steyer has spent the past two years pushing for an idea unpopular with a majority of Americans: the impeachment of President Trump. Steyer held a town hall in the district of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler in an effort to put pressure on him to start impeachment hearings. Nothing proves Steyer’s disconnect from the American people more than his decision to run ads in favor of impeachment in the districts of Congressmen and Freedom Caucus members Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, both of whom represent districts President Trump carried with more than 60 percent of the vote in 2016. Good luck convincing voters nationwide to support your impeachment agenda, Tom. But perhaps even more importantly at this point, good luck convincing a majority of your party that hates billionaires to support nominating one for President.

To the horror of the GOP establishment, Kris Kobach announced his intention to run for the open Senate seat in Kansas.  Kobach angered the GOP establishment by defeating incumbent Governor Jeff Colyer in a primary and then losing the general election.  In addition, his commitment to securing the border and enacting the Trump agenda on the issue of immigration probably does not help his standing with many in the Republican Party, who still seem completely in the dark on the wishes of the American people and the Republican base in spite of the results of the 2016 election; which definitely did not turn out the way they predicted.

The establishment might feel that since Kobach lost a gubernatorial race in a deep red state, he would obviously lose a general election for a federal race.  Their assumptions leave out some key factors. First of all, outgoing Governor Sam Brownback could not run for re-election due to term limits.  If he did run for re-election, he would have gotten crushed because of his low approval ratings. Less than a year before the scheduled expiration of his term, Brownback became the ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom; elevating Lieutenant Governor Colyer to the position of governor. Colyer lost the primary to Kobach by an extremely narrow margin and ended up facing off in the general election against Democrat Laura Kelly and independent Greg Orman. Kelly prevailed with a plurality of the vote (48 percent) while Kobach received 43 percent and Orman picking up 6.5 percent.  Some squishes such as former Republican Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum, ended up voting for the Democratic candidate. In spite of Kobach’s less-than-impressive performance in the gubernatorial election, Republicans only lost one seat in Kansas’s Congressional delegation; a seat that Hillary Clinton won.  Democrats had hoped that by nominating failed 2014 gubernatorial candidate Paul Davis for an open House seat in the Trump-won Kansas’s 2^nd Congressional District, they could turn that seat blue. The Democrats came up short; Republican Steve Watkins won the seat.

Kobach has another argument on his side: history. In 1994, Republican Susan Collins came in third place in the Maine gubernatorial election; behind Independent Angus King and Democrat Joseph Brennan. Collins ran in a much more favorable environment than Kobach did (the Republican Revolution) and still did worse; although Maine does not come close to matching Kansas’s level of redness.  Perhaps outgoing Senator Pat Roberts, whom Kobach intends to replace, needs a little refresher.  According to Roberts, “It seems to me that if you have just lost a statewide race that the chances of you winning, running again for another statewide race would be very difficult.”  Apparently, Roberts forgot about Collins’s victory in the 1996 Senate race two years after losing a gubernatorial race as well as John Ensign’s victory in the Nevada Senate election of 2000 two years after failing to unseat future Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.  If Republicans really thought that losing a statewide race led to a candidate’s political obituary, then they would not have pushed so hard for Arizona Governor Doug Ducey to appoint Martha McSally to John McCain’s Senate seat just weeks after she lost the contest to replace Never-Trumper Jeff Flake. McSally will have to run in a special election to finish the final two years of McCain’s term next year.  After that, whoever wins the election will have to run again in 2022 for a full six-year term.  An article in Red State raises serious questions about whether or not McSally can rise to the challenge.

The Democrats, meanwhile, believe they have struck gold with their Senate candidate in Kentucky, Amy McGrath.  McGrath lost last year in a district Democrats had hoped to flip: Kentucky’s 6^th Congressional District, based in Lexington.  Despite her loss in the district, the least Republican of the five Republican districts in Kentucky, McGrath thinks she can prevail in a statewide race; where the conservative voters of Appalachia and the rest of the state get to weigh in, not just liberals in the college town of Lexington and its suburbs.  Explain that logic to me.  Nonetheless, she appears to have achieved the status of the media’s latest “anointed one.”  Despite the media’s excitement about her candidacy, McGrath will likely have the same fate as Harold Ford Jr, Alison Lundergan Grimes, Phil Bredesen, Beto O’Rourke and other candidates who have tried running for Senate in deep red states. As the 2017 special election in Alabama demonstrated, only decades-old sexual assault allegations, especially those involving children, will stop a Republican from winning a Senate race in a red state. People can say Richard Murdouck and Todd Akin lost too (in Indiana and Missouri, respectively) but at the time, the two states did not enjoy the status as safe Republican states that they enjoy today.  While Mitt Romney won the states by double digits in 2012, Republicans definitely would have had reason to think that President Obama might have done well there.  In 2008, Obama nearly carried Missouri and won Indiana by a razor-thin margin; making him the first Democrat to do so since Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 landslide.

Former Congressman Scott Taylor, a Republican who represented Virginia’s 2^nd Congressional District for one term, has announced his intention to run for Mark Warner’s Senate seat in Virginia. Warner just barely held onto his seat the last time he had to run for re-election in 2014, as a red wave swept across the country.  Six years later, Warner probably will not have as much trouble winning re-election; especially now that former Governor Terry McAuliffe restored voting rights to several felons ahead of the 2016 Presidential Election.  In addition, the long-term consequences of our immigration policy appear to have finally come to fruition in Virginia.  As Ann Coulter pointed out, “In 1970, only one out of every 100 Virginians was foreign-born. By 2012, one in nine Virginians was foreign-born.” As a result of that dramatic demographic change, Virginia has voted Democratic in the last three Presidential elections and has not sent a Republican Senator to Washington since 2002.  The Republican Senate candidate Corey Stewart got crushed in his Senate bid last year; likely causing several of the state’s GOP Congressman, including Taylor, to go down with him. Only its GOP-controlled legislature would give anyone the impression that Virginia even qualifies as a swing state anymore.  Republicans came very close to losing the House of Delegates in 2017 and only narrowly held on to the Senate in 2015.  With all members of both chambers having to stand for re-election, the entire state legislature hangs in the balance this fall. The Democrats don’t have that much work to do in order to flip both Houses.  If and when they do, the horrendous abortion law known as the “Repeal Act” that they failed to pass this year will become a top priority of the new Democratic majority.

If he still served in the House of Representatives, Taylor might have a spot on my list of the top 10 House Republicans Worthy of a Primary Challenge. Taylor co-sponsored the Equality Act before it had any chance of becoming law and signed a letter to Speaker Ryan asking him to hold a vote on a bill to protect “dreamers.” Perhaps high school track athlete Selina Soule can fly down to Virginia and explain to Taylor the consequences that passing the Equality Act would mean for female athletes like her all across the country.  Taylor would get my 25-point benefit of the doubt because President Trump carried his district, based in Virginia Beach, with less than 50 percent of the vote. If Taylor actually manages to win the Senate race, that will certainly mean that a red wave has taken place; meaning that the election of more conservative candidates in other states will likely cancel out the effect of electing the more moderate Taylor.  The absence of Taylor, whose campaign came under fire for election fraud, could enable a more conservative Republican to try and run for his old seat; which has a large military presence.

Speaking of conservative Republicans, they enjoyed a major victory Tuesday night when Greg Murphy won the Republican primary runoff for the special election in North Carolina’s 3^rd Congressional District. The seat became vacant just weeks after the start of the 116^th Congress, with the death of its longtime representative, Republican Congressman Walter Jones. On April 30, both parties held primaries to select candidates for a special election to fill the vacancy; slated for later this year. The Democrats nominated Allen Thomas but in the crowded Republican primary, no candidate emerged with 50 percent of the vote or greater; leading to a runoff which took place last Tuesday. Going into the runoff, Freedom Caucus members Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan endorsed Murphy over Dr. Joan Perry, who came under fire from some conservatives for backing a Democratic House candidate back in 2012 and initially refusing to support President Trump’s national emergency declaration. Murphy will almost certainly win the general election; Jones ran unopposed in his most recent re-election bid and President Trump carried the district by more than 20 points in 2016.

While this article weighed in on the developments in electoral politics last week, it did not address the intra-party fighting that bubbled up at the end of the week and into the weekend. I plan on addressing that in my next blog. Stay tuned.