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GOP’s more conservative faction will be strengthened. But the fact
that extremism helps in primaries and does not hurt in a general
election in a gerrymandered district does not provide a successful
statewide GOP election strategy. (If the Republicans had nominated
Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling for governor last year, rather than the far more
combative conservative Ken Cuccinelli, Republicans would control
the executive branch today).
In the not-so-distant past, Republicans sought to appeal to
the state’s centrist majority by providing political space in the
party for less conservative voices like former Sen. John Warner
and former US Rep. Tom Davis, as well as several state senators
who were willing to compromise at least some of the time. While
conservatives sometimes may have fumed, Warner, Davis and that
team of moderate Republican state senators proved very effective
campaigners.
Those past successes – and more recent failures – provide
electoral lessons that Republicans seem to need to re-learn with
some regularity.
Stephen J. Farnsworth is professor of political science and
international affairs and director of the Center for Leadership
and Media Studies at the University of Mary Washington in
Fredericksburg. He is the author or co-author of five books, most
recently
The Global President: International Media and the U.S.
Government
.
As demonstrated during Virginia’s
2014 nomination season, the Republican
Party continues to struggle with its long-
running identity crisis. Consider, as
examples, Ed Gillespie, the Republican
nominee for the US Senate, and Dave
Brat, who shocked the national political
establishment with his primary victory over
US House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in
the Seventh Congressional District.
Gillespie is a former chair of the
Republican National Committee, an
organization where winning an election trumps hard-core ideological
position-taking. Gillespie courted the party’s conservatives on
his way to the nomination, to be sure, but this former top aide to
President George W. Bush could never be mistaken as a Tea Party
candidate. With incumbent US Sen. Mark Warner (D) ahead in the
polls, Gillespie wisely offers a mix of conservative—but not too
conservative – agenda items as he woos the statewide electorate
between now and November.
Brat, in contrast, is the yin to Gillespie’s yang. The economic
professor’s renegade primary campaign took aim at the party
establishment, arguing that many elected Republicans, particularly
Cantor, have been too quick to compromise, particularly on
immigration and budget deficits.
The gerrymandered composition of the Seventh District, a
largely Republican stretch of territory reaching from New Kent
County to Spotsylvania County, looks very favorable for Brat in
November. As in many legislative districts across Virginia, winning
the dominant party nomination in June virtually assures a general
election victory in November.
Brat’s nomination win demonstrates the power of Republican
energy. Although some have tried to paint Cantor’s loss as the
result of sabotage, angry Republicans in the district—not angry
Democrats—can take credit. There are a lot more of the former than
the latter in the Seventh.
As shown in the table that accompanies this column, more than
8,000 people who voted for Cantor in the primary two years ago
failed to do so in June. Cantor won every single jurisdiction in the
2012 primary; he won last than half of them this time.
Political observers who imagine Democratic influence explains
Brat’s victory fail to consider that Cantor did not match his 2012
primary vote totals in any one of the district’s jurisdictions. In
addition, Cantor’s decline was particularly severe in the jurisdictions
with the highest GOP turnout in the November 2012 congressional
election. (With Obama and Romney locked in a tight race for
Virginia’s Electoral votes on that ballot, that contest maximized the
number of Democratic voters. And there still weren’t all that many).
Actually, in Virginia politics, parties
find it hard to get their
own
loyalists to
participate in their own primaries. Claiming
that a significant number of Democrats would
vote in a Republican primary for purposes of
sabotage – and to imagine they would do so
in a race that considered close—is absurd.
Cantor would have been re-nominated if he
had worked the district harder. After all, an
incumbent with a 20-to-1 cash advantage
should at least have been able to get the same
number of people who voted for him in 2012
to do so in 2014. A campaign that could not
even match its vote totals from two years
earlier has only itself to blame.
If Brat ends up winning in November
and Gillespie loses (as now seems likely), the
Republicans, not Democrats, Were Decisive in Virginia’s
Seventh Congressional District
Cantor 2014 Cantor 2012 %GOP Nov 2012
Entire District
28,902
37,369
58%
Chesterfield*
5,924
7,663
57%
Culpeper
1,479
1,898
60%
Goochland
1,248
1,551
64%
Hanover
4,150
6,838
68%
Henrico*
9,423
11,039
54%
Louisa
1,050
1,183
57%
New Kent
758
1,185
66%
Orange
1,226
1,468
59%
Spotsylvania 1,943
2,610
57%
Richmond City* 1,701
1,934
49%
Numbers represent the amount of votes cast for Cantor in jurisdictions
within the district during the Republican primaries of 2012 and 2014.
Underlined districts were won by Cantor.
*District contains only a portion of the city or county.
Source: Virginia State Board of Elections.
Virginia GOP Identity Crisis Continues
By Stephen J. Farnsworth
Legislative Counsel
John G. “Chip” Dicks
FutureLaw, LLC
1802 Bayberry Court, Suite 403
Richmond, Virginia 23226
(804) 225-5507 (Direct Dial)
(804) 225-5508 (Fax)
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