Democrats were smart to meddle in GOP primaries

Jonathan Bernstein

It appears that a controversial Democratic campaign tactic might be working.

One of the big political stories this spring and summer was Democratic meddling in Republican primaries — Democrats, that is, spending money to “attack” extremist Republican candidates for being too conservative. The thinking among campaign strategists was that elevating the extremists’ profile would help them defeat more moderate opponents who would have been harder for Democrats to beat in the general election.

Critics, including some within the Democratic Party, feared that the project could easily go awry and lead to more extremists in office. Those who defended the strategy insisted that politics sometimes demanded rough-and-tumble tactics, especially when victory would mean keeping election deniers and other extremists out of office.

Democrats wound up targeting only 13 races, and the fringe candidate they supported won in six of those contests: two House districts, one Senate, and three governors.

We don’t know how the midterms will turn out, but we can see what polls and other indicators tell us about the state of the races. And right now, according to FiveThirtyEight projections, none of the six Republicans are favored to win.

One race is close enough that it falls in the toss-up category: Republican John Gibbs was given a 43% chance of winning in Michigan’s 3rd congressional district. Democratic spending helped Gibbs, who has declared President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 “simply mathematically impossible,” defeat Republican incumbent Peter Meijer in the primary. While it’s impossible to know whether Meijer would be running better than Gibbs against the Democratic contender, Hillary Scholten, it’s very likely that a Republican incumbent would have been able to hold the seat in a year that should be pretty strong for the GOP. 2

The other five Republicans who got a boost from Democrats are even less likely to be elected; the one with the strongest chance, according to FiveThirtyEight, is New Hampshire Senate candidate Donald Bolduc with a 22% likelihood. The others are huge longshots. We can’t know for sure what might have happened in these races with a different Republican nominee, but one measure of the tactic’s effectiveness is that Bolduc is polling far behind the state’s mainstream Republican governor, Chris Sununu.

Similarly, extremist Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano is polling far worse than Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, who is running as a mainstream Republican.

It’s also worth a quick look at the races where Democrats tried to help select their opponent but were unsuccessful. Democrats appear to be in good shape in three of those, but the Republican candidate has a solid lead in one House race, while two other House contests and the Nevada gubernatorial race are toss-ups. It’s quite possible that had Democrats put more money into meddling that they might have swung a total of five House seats and one Senate seat — a total that might have been enough to secure majorities in both chambers. Just in terms of outcomes, that potential upside seems well worth the possibility that one or two more extremists wind up in office.

After all, a whole lot of Republicans who falsely claim that fraud determined the outcome of the 2020 elections were nominated and will be elected without the benefit of Democratic meddling. And they will be a lot more influential if they are backed by partisan legislative majorities, even if many of their fellow Republican lawmakers are perfectly sensible and fully support democracy.

Of course, the outlook might change for some of these seats before Election Day. And we don’t know that Democratic meddling actually made any difference in those primaries, let alone that it provided the margin of victory for the winning candidates. And yes, it’s fair to note that the “attacks” were only effective to the extent that Republican voters were willing to vote for extremists in the first place, even in swing districts where it might hurt them in the general election. The blame for that falls squarely on Republicans, not Democrats.

What that meant is that the Democratic Party was faced with only bad choices in these swing districts. Had they refrained from “meddling,” they would be putting their majorities further at risk. If they meddled, as they did, they were risking accidentally electing extremists. As it is, they seem to have targeted their attacks well, minimizing the risk and maximizing the chances for gains. I’ll score this one for the campaign professionals and candidates who took the risk.

—Bloomberg