Democratic midterm meddling in Republican primaries worked, but not perfectly
by David Mark, Managing Editor - Magazine
November 09, 2022 02:18 PMSeveral Democratic midterm wins weren't particularly surprising — since the party's candidates, operatives, and strategists helped ensure the weakest possible Republican nominees would be on November ballots.
A recurring storyline through the 2022 primary season was the Democratic Party’s practice of meddling in GOP primaries in the hopes of producing unelectable nominees. And the tactic, which Democratic candidates and organizations spent several million dollars on cumulatively, paid off politically. In five races where Democrats were successful in boosting hard-right candidates to the GOP nomination, the Republican candidate lost. That after struggling to raise money and being forced to explain past controversial statements.
But in a supreme irony, the biggest Democratic congressional champion of the practice, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) lost his own reelection bid. As head of the House Democratic campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Maloney oversaw spending in a bunch of races where his party tried to produce the weakest GOP general election nominee.
However, Maloney was losing his own reelection race, to represent New York's new 17th Congressional District, based in the lower Hudson Valley. Maloney trailed Republican rival Mike Lawler, a state assemblyman, 51%-49%, with 95% of votes counted.
The political fate of Maloney, first elected to the House in 2012, reflects the political karma some prominent Democrats warned about in employing the GOP primary meddling tactic. Among were party elders like David Axelrod, the campaign architect of former President Barack Obama's 2008 and 2012 White House wins. The downside risk, Axelrod and others warned, was that some of those so-called extreme candidates could win on Election Day. And if that happened, Democrats would be open to charges of hypocrisy, for attempting to advance the cause of the very candidates the party decried as threats to American democracy.
Other prominent Democrats, though, defended the meddling approach. The early interference amounted to what they saw as a viable path to keeping Democratic seats blue, amid a tumultuous campaign season where inflation and gas prices were on the rise and President Joe Biden's favorability was stubbornly low.
Here are the highlights of Democratic 2022 meddling in Republican primaries (or lowlights, depending on your perspective).
Governor’s Races Targeted<..snip..>
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/democratic-meddling-republican-primaries-effective
