New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s crushing victory over actress and activist Cynthia Nixon brought down the curtain on a long primary season last Thursday. Now the candidates are in place for the midterm elections as his fellow Democrats try to rebuke President Trump, recapture Congress and chip away at the Republicans’ stranglehold on the nation’s governorships.
As is often the case with politics in the Trump era, however, nothing is ever easy. Democrats are defending 26 Senate seats to the Republicans’ nine, including 10 in states Trump won in 2016. In about half of these states, the president is still popular, creating the possibility that the GOP will actually expand its narrow 51-49 majority in the upper chamber. Some of the most popular governors in the country are Republicans, including incumbents running for reelection this year in Massachusetts and Maryland, the bluest of states.
“In all 36 governors’ races set to take place this November, Republicans have nominated credible candidates who, if elected, would effectively govern their states from day one,” said Jon Thompson, communications director for the Republican Governors Association. “Republican gubernatorial candidates are running on strong messages of lower taxes, opportunity expansion, education reform, business growth and pro-jobs policies that would continue economic success or spark a state’s struggling economy.
“Meanwhile, Democrats have nominated numerous far-left extreme candidates for governor who are simply unelectable in many corners of the country — including deep-blue states,” he added. “With a large number of Democrat gubernatorial candidates supporting radical policies like single-payer healthcare, the abolish ICE movement, and significant tax increases, voters are learning just how out-of-touch they really are with a vast majority of Americans.”
Democrats don’t see it that way. “The 2018 campaign offers a historic opportunity for Democrats to win governorships and elect new leaders around the country,” said Melissa Miller, press secretary for the Democratic Governors Association. “The DGA is proud to have a strong field of candidates and the most diverse slate of gubernatorial nominees in American history. Across the country, Democrats are waging energetic campaigns focused on the issues that impact the families and small businesses of their states.”
Even in the campaigns for the state house, it matters who sits in the White House. “Voters know that not only is electing a Democratic governor the best way to stand up to President Trump’s dangerous agenda,” Miller said, “but it’s the best way to improve their roads, schools, and healthcare as well.”
“This administration is disruptive, but disruption can be a double-edged sword,” said Bruce Haynes, vice chairman of public affairs at Sard Verbinnen & Co. and an adviser to Republicans. “People want change, but if change seems out of control they reach for the brake pedal and the House races in the midterm election are the next brake pedal they can hit. Looking at all of the fundamentals going into the midterms, the main question seems to be how hard they are going to hit the brakes.”
What didn’t happen
For all the candidates and upsets in the 2018 primaries, the biggest surprise might be what didn’t happen. On the Republican side, there was once concern that gadfly candidates emboldened by Trump’s defeat of 16 more conventional GOP contenders two years ago would jeopardize the party’s general election chances. This was especially true with the Senate, where former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon once threatened to recruit primary challengers for virtually all the incumbent Republicans up this year.
That didn’t happen. Bannon’s primary project fizzled after his attempt to push Roy Moore in last year’s Alabama Senate special election led to the Democrats winning a seat they could not even field a candidate for the last time it was up (Jeff Sessions, now attorney general of the United States, won reelection to it with over 97 percent of the vote). Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., largely supported the same candidates in the senatorial primaries, and the president explicitly warned West Virginia GOP voters not to pick a Moore-like loser.
Instead, Republicans got most of their top recruits for the Democratic Senate seats they hope to gain and for open GOP-held seats they are trying to hold through their primaries. Trump helped get a rival to Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., to drop his primary challenge and stayed out of an Arizona Senate primary where two of his staunch supporters — including former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the first recipient of a Trump presidential pardon — were viewed as weaker candidates than the eventual winner, Rep. Martha McSally.
For Democrats, the dog that didn’t bark was even more remarkable. A Tea Party-like climate existed on the Left, where progressives hoped to topple incumbents backed by the Democratic establishment and install their own candidates through the primaries. Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez upset Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., who was considered a possible candidate for speaker if Democrats won the House. Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., fell to Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley, despite having a solidly liberal voting record in his own right.
Unlike the Tea Party, however, this movement claimed no Senate scalps. In 2010 and 2012, conservative insurgents beat Republican establishment senatorial candidates to win seats in Florida, Texas, Kentucky and Utah. Sens. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, and Richard Lugar, R-Ind., were beaten as multi-term incumbents; Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa, was forced to switch parties to defend his seat.
Specter and Bennett, now both deceased, were chased from the Senate by challengers who were able to keep their seats in Republican hands. That wasn’t the case with Lugar, whose GOP opponent lost a race he almost certainly would have won. Tea Party candidates also lost winnable Senate races in Delaware and Nevada.
Yet on the Democratic side, from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., incumbents staved off progressive challengers. So did incumbent governors, such as Cuomo and Rhode Island’s Gina Raimondo. With a few exceptions, such as the race for the House seat held by GOP Rep. Don Bacon in Nebraska, the biggest progressive wins were in safe Democratic districts where they won’t spoil the party’s chances. “West Virginia isn’t Queens, it isn’t Brooklyn,” said Democratic strategist Rodell Mollineau.
Flirting with socialism
Here Cuomo versus Nixon is instructive. In New York, progressives made big gains in down-ballot races where Democrats were likely to win either way. This included Julia Salazar, a socialist in the mold of Ocasio-Cortez who defeated an incumbent state senator despite questions about whether she misrepresented her personal background. Yet Cuomo beat Nixon by more than 30 points.
“Where we’ve had actual elections and not just primaries — [Pennsylvania Rep.] Conor Lamb and [Alabama Sen.] Doug Jones — the Democrat has not been some whacked-out liberal, he’s not been talking about abolishing ICE or free this and free that,” said veteran Democratic strategist Richard Goodstein. “They’re actually quite moderate and they’re winning in red areas.”
In bluer areas, Democrats adapted to the progressives similarly to how Republican incumbents finally started holding their own against Tea Partiers in 2014: They prepared for them early and appropriated their platforms where possible. Thus a lot of mainstream liberals backed by the party establishment against supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., are talking about abolishing ICE and expanding Medicare coverage to non-seniors.
That’s what gives Republicans a small ray of hope in the House, where their majority is most endangered — the possibility that the suburban voters who will decide who gets to wield the speaker’s gavel will reject Democrats’ feints toward socialism. “As with most of the primaries this year, we’ve seen Democrats lurch very far left and take positions that render them unelectable in a general election,” said Matt Gorman, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Democrats counter that they have recruited candidates well-situated to capitalize on these voters’ antipathy toward Trump. They focused on military veterans, women and candidates of color. Even in the House primaries, where progressive upstarts arguably fared best, the party establishment had a real impact. Thirty-nine of the 41 candidates on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Red to Blue program list won.
“Voters across the country have been working hard for nearly two years to hold House Republicans accountable and flip key districts blue, and the DCCC has long valued the unprecedented influence that the grassroots have in these races,” said Meredith Kelly, communications director for the House Democrats’ campaign arm. “With primaries ending, it’s clear that Democratic voters are united behind taking back the House, have nominated incredibly strong candidates with records of service who fit their districts, and the DCCC’s Red to Blue program has proven to be the strongest predictor of who voters will nominate.”
“The organization with the best endorsement record in Democratic primaries remains the Democratic Party itself,” FiveThirtyEight’s Meredith Conroy, Nathaniel Rakich and Mai Nguyen reported in August. “Candidates who are on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Red to Blue List or endorsed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had a win rate of 95 percent. … In other words, the best predictor of primary success remains establishment support.”
Republican headwinds
In any event, Democrats are on offense in far more House districts than Republicans. They need to pick up 23 seats to gain the majority; Hillary Clinton won that many GOP-held districts in 2016.
“Republicans are struggling with several challenges on the House side,” Haynes said. “Significant retirements, challenges in hard dollar fundraising, rabid enthusiasm among Democratic voters and sliding presidential approval ratings. Republicans need a break to hold on to the House and it’s hard to see where it is coming from.”
The one area where Democrats really gambled on progressive candidates this year was in gubernatorial races that were either open or featured a Republican incumbent: Ben Jealous in Maryland, Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Andrew Gillum in Florida. All three candidates are African-American. Progressives of color have notably outperformed their white liberal counterparts, from Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley this year to Barack Obama winning where Sanders and Howard Dean failed.
Abrams is competitive and Gillum is leading narrowly. Jealous is losing, but a safer Democrat would also have had trouble against popular Republican Gov. Larry Hogan. Still, there are questions about whether some of these nominees might prove too liberal for their respective states. “While national polling does suggest a favorable year for Democrats at the ballot box, those liberal donors invested in governors’ races are going to be rightfully upset when Democrats blow winnable races due to the fact that they have nominated some of the most unelectable left-wing candidates for governor,” RGA’s Thompson said.
The Senate is the other Republican firewall against the blue wave. Gov. Rick Scott is leading Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in Florida. Rep. Kevin Cramer is narrowly ahead of Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota. The same is true for Attorney General Josh Hawley against Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri. McSally has crept ahead of popular Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema in the RealClearPolitics polling average in Arizona.
All of these are states Trump won. “Senate races are different,” Haynes said. “While House races tend to be governed by fundamentals, Senate races are almost like mini-presidential elections. They are unique, and tend to reflect the personalities of the candidates more than the prevailing political winds. And the Republicans not only have good candidates, but they have a great map, candidates who are excelling at fundraising running against an underwhelming crop of Democratic candidates.”
Even here there are problems, however. Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., are still leading in states where Trump is relatively popular. So is Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., in a state Trump won by 42 points. Heller in Nevada is narrowly trailing, Tennessee is too close for comfort, and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has a smaller lead than Manchin, Tester or Donnelly and will require a Trump campaign visit in October.
It would still take quite a run for Democrats to retake the Senate, though the party benefiting from a wave sometimes sweeps the competitive races. “The fact that we’re even having this conversation with this map is significant,” Goodstein said.
Red state Democrats will be under pressure to show independence from the national party on things like the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh without alienating the liberal outside groups some of them will need in the homestretch. “Progressives need to understand that if we lose some of these seats, we will not win them back for a long time,” Mollineau said.
While the numbers still vary widely by poll — Quinnipiac gives Democrats a 14-point advantage nationally, Economist/YouGov just 3 points — on average there has been a recent unfavorable trend for Republicans in both the generic congressional ballot and Trump’s job approval rating. Historically, the president’s party loses seats in the first midterm election and Trump is below 50 percent approval in his best polls.
“Presidential approval is a key fundamental impacting midterm outcomes and we have seen the president’s poll numbers take an appreciable dip in the last week to 10 days,” Haynes said. “That correlates with the noise around the administration, and the best thing that could happen to Republicans is for that noise to go away and for the president’s approval ratings to climb back up and away from Obama 2010 and Clinton 1994 territory.”
The question is how to do that. “I think it’s every man and woman for himself,” said Republican strategist Bradley Blakeman. “I think the mantra of the Republican Party should be you can’t argue with success.”
By this reasoning, Republicans should embrace Trump’s stewardship of the economy and distance themselves where necessary from his tweets. “When I talk to people outside the Beltway and ask if they like what President Trump has done they say, ‘We love it. We just don’t like the way he’s doing it,’” Blakeman said. “Even with people who like the president, there is a disconnect between the demeanor of what he does, but they have no problem with the actions of what he does.”
Whether this will be enough to stem the Democratic tide remains to be seen. “Given the challenges the GOP faces in the House, we could have a blue House, a red Senate and a purple government headed into the next presidential election,” Haynes said.
