Money can’t buy you conservative acceptance
Number two House Republican, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a six term incumbent, was soundly defeated by Dave Brat, an underfunded conservative challenger, in their Virginia congressional district primary battle. Cantor was widely talked about as a likely successor to Speaker Boehner, acceptable to the Republican establishment, should Boehner retire or other political fortunes depose him.
The Republican political establishment in Washington is reported to be in shock. Washington based journalists are using terms like “major defeat” and “seismic political consequences” to describe the results and implications. We will adopt the term astounding.
Here is some of what we have gleaned from reading about the election, what others have surmised and some of our thoughts.
- David Brat an economic professor at Randolf-Macon won 56% of the primary vote to Cantor’s 44%. Cantor is reported to have raised $5.5 million and Brat only $200,000. No significant amount of interest group money was spent in support of Brat or against Cantor. However Cantor, as an establishment conservative, enjoyed some interest group expenditures in support of his candidacy. Brat was outspent by a ratio of at least 26 to 1. Other reports indicate the amount of money arrayed against Brat at 40 to 1.
- Virginia has an open primary system. Democrats had their primary the previous week. Voters having voted the previous week in the Democrat primary could have legally voted in the Republican primary. Data will soon be analyzed to determine if there was such voting as a record will be available of individual participation in both. That some former Democrats changed to Republican is of course something to be wished for. While voting in both would be an available manipulation, we do not think it was anywhere near determinative given the percentage spread.
- Cantor spent a great percentage of his resources claiming Brat was a liberal. If there was any significant Democrat vote for Brat, an irony would be that Cantor arguably encouraged it. Other observers have suggested that any Democrats voting for Brat were trying to manipulate the candidate viewed to be weakest in the general, to prevail in the Republican primary, giving Democrats a better opportunity to win in the fall.
- Our observation is that those efforts are only effective in special circumstances in the closest of elections and would leave a trail of organized activity exposing it if it were to generate any numbers sufficient to turn the Cantor – Brat primary election. Our instinct is that Democrats would not bother as Cantor was so widely perceived to be the likely nominee by a wide margin. The usual Democrat tactic is to run false flag ads against the stronger candidate to undermine support.
- Brat maintained a conventional conservative array of positions and challenged Cantor’s conservative allegiance. While Cantor was rated 95% by the American Conservative Union he was rated at only 55% conservative by Heritage Action. That divergence exposes the difference in what those groups consider salient conservative votes and positions. So examine what the ratings pertain to, and go with Heritage Action.
- Comments in various blogs indicated wide spread dissatisfaction with Cantor for being a creature of Washington, associated with K street lobbyists, not paying attention to his constituency, not steadfast in pursuing smaller government, being complicit in big government programs, and for pushing amnesty oriented immigration bills. The latter association, in spite of his denials, was aggravated by news reports this week of thousands of children being abandoned on the border with Mexico and being received into the United States. The issue has been very high profile, creating major problems and aggravating widespread dissatisfaction with “Washington” in dealing with the situation.
- Immigration is widely believed to be at the center of Cantor’s loss. Cantor’s maniacal (Ann Coulter’s accusation) obsession with having Republicans move on it before the fall elections, his support of DREAM act like amnesty and benefits for children who entered illegally alone or with their parents, the distrust that Obama would dependably honor any provisions of immigration “reform” he disagreed with, were set concepts in Brats support.
- Cantor’s loss has so shaken Republican moderates that any immigration legislation moving forward in the House is said to be unlikely. The candidacy of Jeb Bush, whose position on immigration reform is perceived to be like that of Cantor, is now said to be untenable.
- A key to Brat’s victory was his ability to articulate conservative populism and concerns that amnesty oriented immigration reform is being driven by interests desiring a low wage pool of labor.
- While commentators are terming Brat’s win a Tea Party victory, no national Tea Party groups were involved. Small Tea Party efforts in the Virginia district are not said to have been extensive prominent. Brat did receive endorsements from prominent conservative talk show personages Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, and Ann Coulter. His victory was the result of conservative grassroots sentiment that gelled around him, no doubt significantly amplified by them, and an excellent in house “ground game.”
- While the so called Tea Party is a conservative movement, not an actual political party, nevertheless Brat’s victory reflects Tea Party concerns and their continued importance to Republican voters. Cantor was perceived not as a beneficial insider bringing home the bacon, but as an insider who was part of the problem, ineffective against Obamacare, illegal immigration, etc.
Similarities and differences in the Virginia and the Iowa U.S. Senate primary
The Virginia race shows that money, particularly in a congressional primary, is not as determinative as the consultants who live off of high dollar campaigns want candidates to believe. Astoundingly so. We saw a semblance of that last week in Iowa where in a five way senate race one candidate substantially outspent the combined fundraising of the other candidates and lost embarrassingly.
Eric Cantor was perceived as a big-government type, a deal maker, someone who sits at the table and works with Democrats to manage their aims. In our judgement that was the basic perception of Iowa candidate Mark Jacobs by primary voters here. However because of his money and the name ID that can purchase, he was early on said to be the overwhelming favorite by superficial observers and much of the Iowa political establishment.
But grassroots voters perceived Jacobs not to be a Washington outsider as he expensively claimed, but someone who couldn’t wait to leave Iowa to make deals. That is not what grassroots Republicans wanted . . . a CEO to make Washington work . . . they wanted someone to cut Washington down to size. Jacobs persona was akin to what Cantor’s persona had become . . . not a man of the people . . . but of big-government Washington.
Joni Ernst to her credit effectively made “cutting” Washington’s influence her persona. We think the more authentic and capable person for the job was Sam Clovis. But such are the fortunes of politics.
Speaking of fortunes, all of this is not to say that some threshold of money is not crucial to start something resonating about one’s candidacy. Ernst raised maybe a third to half of Jacobs, and that was easily enough to propel her to victory. But if Brat’s $200,000 is indicative of enough money in a congressional primary race to establish one as an alternative to the preeminent rival, then if Sam Clovis, who demonstrated the ability to do very well spending little, had $200,000 per each of Iowa’s four congressional districts to press his case, we believe he would have prevailed in Iowa’s five man primary race.
Certainly Ernst was not perceived as associated with amnesty oriented immigration reform in spite of being endorsed by the immigration amnesty oriented Chamber of Commerce. Ernst was also termed to be the Tea Party candidate, mostly based on an unstudied endorsement by Tea Party darling Sarah Palin. But no substantial organized Tea Party activity was involved.
The more conservative voters in Iowa and South Carolina were split between a multiplicity of candidates. That was not the situation in Virginia as Brat was the only alternative to Cantor. That Cantor was an incumbent and the Iowa race was an open one is also a significant difference. While nuances existed, apparently no candidate in the Iowa primary was perceived to be pro amnesty as Cantor was (regardless of his denials).
