Democrats’ risky election strategy put to the test

Should Democrats meddle in Republican primaries, even if it risks the election of a far-right conspiracy theorist endorsed by former President Trump?

The question was put to the test yesterday in Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District.

The race pitted Pete Meijer, a moderate Republican incumbent who voted to certify Joe Biden’s presidency and impeach Trump, against John Gibbs, who has, according to reports, denied the 2020 presidential election results, defended anti-Semites in his now-locked Twitter account and accused Obama administration officials of taking part in Satanic rituals.  

At the center of attention in the primary was a single television ad. On its surface, it’s the kind of spot that has all the impact of a decades-old television rerun. An opening image of Gibbs, an edgy voiceover leading the attack: he’s “too conservative for west Michigan”…he was “handpicked by Trump to run for Congress” (cue the grip and grin with Trump and Gibbs)…he called Trump “the greatest president” and even worked in his administration…he’s promising to push “that same conservative  agenda in Congress,” namely, a  “hardline against immigrants” and “so-called patriotic education in our schools.”

Only when we get to the final beat are we arrested from our numbness: “The DCCC is responsible for the content of the advertising.” That small print is a big deal. 

Why would the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) spend money burnishing the credentials of a rejectionist, far-right extremist against a right-of-center moderate who works with Democrats? To elevate a candidate who will repel moderates while also turning-out the Democratic base in the general election. Get the political scrawny pick of the litter. 

It may have worked. Gibbs won yesterday’s primary; and the general election now becomes far more competitive for Democrat Hillary Scholten. (The Cook Political Report classifies the district as a toss-up, with a marginal advantage in Democratic performance.) 

The strategy hasn’t been limited to Michigan. In Colorado’s GOP Senate primary, Democrats spent $4 million on TV and digital ads to elevate a Jan. 6 participant over a moderate businessman. In Pennsylvania’s Republican Gubernatorial primary, Democrats boosted the election-denying GOP candidate, Doug Mastriano, in television ads. In Maryland, the Democratic Governors Association spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to elevate a Republican who attended the insurrection and called former Vice President Mike Pence a traitor as the violence unfolded. In Illinois, Democrats dropped $35 million on Super PAC ads targeting a moderate Republican and elevating his election-denying, Trump-endorsed opponent.

The strategy has created a furor. Former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.) has circulated a letter opposing any practice that intentionally elevates election deniers. The letter argues that it’s “risky and unethical to promote a candidate whose campaign is based on eroding trust in our elections. We must stop this practice, and stop today.” Signatories include Democratic luminaries such as former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Gary Hart (D-Colo.), Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Tim Wirth (D-N.M.), and Reps. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Elizabeth Holtzman (D-N.Y.), among others. 

I fully understand the moral outrage. In a perfect world, Congress would have more moderate Republicans like Meijer, whose fealty to democracy appears to have sacrificed his seat in Congress. In that perfect world, Democrats would support Democrats, Republicans would support Republicans, lines would be demarcated and not crossed, votes would be counted fairly, winners would win, losers lose and both parties would actually govern. 

Also in that perfect world, when members of Congress recited their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution, they wouldn’t be simultaneously calculating how to scuttle it. 

But the world we are in isn’t perfect.

The job of the DCCC is to win, and by winning, to preserve its slender majority. Winning in this political environment isn’t a game of neat, clean rules and penalties that guide fair conduct and clean outcomes. It’s more like a hockey game — fast, harsh, with impotent referees (the Federal Elections Commission) watching the melees and partisan warriors tabulating the votes.  

In a margin where democracy itself may be on the line, unsavory tactics sometimes make sense, even if they offend our sensibilities. Going on offense is sometimes offensive. 

Still, Meijer made a critical point in a letter he wrote on Monday: It’s true that in moderate districts, extreme candidates are less electable than fringe candidates. “But less-electable doesn’t mean un-electable.”

With Gibbs’s victory in Michigan-3, undoubtedly propelled by DCCC, one shoe dropped. The other shoe dangles dangerously until the general election. If Gibbs prevails then, and Congress adds to its polarized ranks another election-denying, conspiracy-peddling, insurrection-supporting Republican, the strategy will have proven itself to be a tragedy. As Meijer wrote in his Aug. 1 letter, “Republican voters will be blamed if any of these candidates are ultimately elected, but there is no doubt Democrats’ fingerprints will be on the weapon.”

But if the Democrats somehow preserve the majority or limit their losses to a narrow path to governing, it will have been brilliant.  

Until then, put me down as cringing but undecided. 

Steve Israel represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives over eight terms and was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011 to 2015. He is now director of the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy Institute of Politics and Global Affairs. Follow him on Twitter @RepSteveIsrael.