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OH-12: GOP (RNC, NRSC, & NRCC) … Do You Want to Win?
So … Ohio’s 12th Congressional District stayed in GOP hands after yesterday’s special election. As a special election for only the remaining three months of the vacant House seat of Pat Tiberi, a rematch of this same election is already set for this November [link].
The talking heads are all reading what they want into what this portends for November, and across the entire country. Was this a win for the President or a devastating blow to him? What does this special election mean for the November general election? Regardless of the hair-on-fire analysis, I think almost nada.
But of course, both sides want to declare breathless victory over this special election. Supporters of President Trump (and the President himself) are pleased with the victory. They should be, but with great reservation. And the detractors of the President (from both parties) are claiming the moral victory of coming so close to winning in a District that went for President Trump by +11% in 2016. And of course, neither side should be declaring victory too loudly or extrapolating too much into a special election versus a more traditional November general election. Let’s unpack it.
Turnout Turnout Turnout
In 2016, this district generated 363, 904 votes (251,266 for Tiberi and 112,638 for the Democrat). So this narrow win is bad news for the GOP and its President, right? Well, if this was a November election, absolutely. However, this special election brought out Democrats at an almost 90% rate (99,820) of its ’16 showing, while the GOP only turned out 40% of its base (101,574). Yes, 201,394 total votes or 55% of 2016.
There is no question that the President has had a yuge influence on this turnout, on both sides. The Dems are very motivated and the GOP not so much. A previous holder of this same Congressional seat, Ohio Governor John Kasich, did his part to de-motivate GOP turnout. With “friends” like this, who needs enemies, huh? Yes, Kasich continues to be a thorn in the President’s side and he’s only too happy if the Democrats benefit (along with his own 2020 “cred”).
And how involved was the NRCC? Tepid. Again, the GOP leadership continues to oppose the President and his reforms more than support them it seems. You can blame Trump for the turnout, but I also question whether the GOP cares about winning, even when the candidate is not the President himself. Because, they want to send “him” a message. Sad.
Primaries
The GOP seems unconcerned about the tepid turnout and only lazily wishes to blame it all on Trump. However, let’s go back in time a little. Let’s go back to the GOP primary election for this seat … Balderson Wins Ohio 12 GOP Primary. Balderson won with 28.7% of the primary vote. Yes, not a typo: 28.7%.
It was a ten-person clown convention intended to dilute the real race between Balderson (backed by Tiberi and the NT establishment) and Melanie Leneghan (backed by House Freedom Caucus Co-Founder Rep. Jim Jordan). Balderson won by the skin of his teeth over Leneghan. This alone had much to do with the 40% turnout for this special election. Election fatigue, dissatisfaction with Balderson, malaise, etc. And the GOP and the candidate himself did the turnout no favors. Why didn’t the NRCC and Tiberi himself get more than 40% of their 2016 voters to the special election polls for their candidate? A cynic would suggest that they wanted to send the President a negative message more than they wanted to win. There were many suggestions on the ground that a lot of the GOP voters in the district did not even know there was a special election!
The November Future
So what can be derived from this and other special elections? One, the Democrats are motivated. They are always angry but they are especially so right now. Expect them to turnout at a 90% rate of 2016 numbers. And don’t kid yourselves, they would do this is if Mitt Romney was in the White House. Government power is their religion and anyone who is in their way is Hitler. Yes, Trump brings this out exponentially, but the voting numbers would still be the same.
Second, the GOP needs to get more united and motivated themselves. The Party leaders need to be more supportive of the President (it’s the policies, stupid) and at least allow for some Freedom Caucus candidates to get NRCC or NRSC support. Not every Trump supportive candidate is Roy Moore. Bury the doggone hatchet already, Mitch (and not in a Tea Partiers’ back)!
A perfect illustration of this Stupid Party Syndrome is the Arizona GOP Senate primary for the not-so-dearly departing Jeff Flake. We have three candidates (hey, at least not 10! #Progress). Unfortunately, it has all the makings of the Alabama special GOP Senate primary. What I have called the Goldilocks Maru. We have three (or more) candidates running which dilutes the vote and demoralizes the turnout for the general. There are three candidates — Hot, Cold and Just Right. Mitch and Company always want Cold and the Tea Party wants Hot. And what we need is Just Right. In Alabama, we had Hot Moore, Cold Big Luther and Just Right Mo Brooks. Mitch refused Big Mo and got Hot Moore and Doug Jones. Idiot.
And so Mitch doubles down in Arizona in 2018 — Hot Arpaio, Cold McSally and Just Right Ward. This is a doomed strategy if he and all of his NRSC powers shove McSally down the throats of his base. Just like happened in OH-12. If the GOP powers that be would only allow the states and districts to pick their own candidates without his heavy hand, the Leneghans and Wards of the Party will do just right.
Turnout is key to winning. So gOp E … do you want to win?
Published in General
5 for 5!
I think trump has the obama problem. If he isn’t on the ticket, turnout will be low.
A few comments.
First, Democrats have carried this district one time since the Great Depression. One time in 1980, with the Democrat being voted out after only one term. Who is on the ballot is Trump, and the need of sane Republicans to send an unmistakeable message to the rest of the party, sticking with Trump means you will be defeated in the general election.
Second, the Post talks about the Arizona Senate race. A vote for Kelli Ward is a vote for the Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema. My preferences are as follows:
If Kelli Ward is nominated, I will offer my services to “Republicans for Sinema.”
In his last pod cast Nate Silver discuss their mid term model that they are building to look at all the elections. This race, and basically all the special elections, will play virtually no role in constructing his model. There is now simply much better data available to use in making predictions.
As someone who lives in the district (OH-12), I can’t imagine how this can be true, other than for people living in a cave. We have been inundated by television and radio ads for months; and all summer I was getting several pieces of mail a day for both sides, flyers left on my porch, emails, and over the last week or so multiple text messages (and robocalls, I’m sure, though I don’t answer the phone if I don’t know the number).
I suppose it could be possible that people tuned out the onslaught and didn’t pay attention to when the election was and missed that it was this week, but I cannot fathom not knowing that there was one! I have several friends who don’t live in the district who thought they did simply due to the overwhelming amount of advertising.
I’ll agree that the contentious primary certainly didn’t help. We had barely gotten past all of that (including, of course, lots of anti-Balderson advertising) when they ramped things up for the special election.
Obama secured the Ohio 12th District in 2008 …
You @garyrobbins are predictable. And repeatable. I’ll bet I’ve seen this exact sentence more than 20 times.
This was very interesting. I did not know the details, but was suspicious that the number of entrants in the primary was a sign of trying to weaken someone by splitting votes.
You said:
Does that mean that if elected Balderson will be at best a weak supporter of Trump?
The weak support of the GOPe reminds me of why we have very liberal Sen. Tim Kaine in my state of Virginia. His first opponent (Ken Cuccinneli) had very little support from them and barely lost – IIRC. I suspect this rounds candidate – Cory Stewart – will get even less, so we will keep Kaine.
Well that won’t be good. This election sticks with the trend of Dems over performing in deep Red districts. While this doesn’t gurantee a win in a +11 R district, there are many other districts that are less Red where such over performance would mean a victory. Also a general trend of showing up even for obscure pointless elections (and having someone serve for 3 months is basically pointless), could mean trouble for state wide races. I assume that in November we will have a rematch between these two people for this seat? It will be interesting to see if more Republicans show up then (you would expect them too) also if the Dems can find more people.
This will actually be an interesting test. Theoretically we might assume the max number of Democrat votes for this district is their 2016 numbers. IF they can’t beat that come November the Republicans will easily win the seat by just turning out 50% of their 2016 total. So they only need a 25% improvement on their current numbers. That seems likely for a true election vs. a special election. If the Republican turnout in November isn’t vastly improved over their special election turn out we can assume Republicans are demotivated, with only the hardcore interested. If the Dems break their numbers from 2016 we will know they are able to tap into new voters or are converting Republicans.
I don’t think 20 times. Maybe a half dozen times?
I am tired of saying it. You are tired of hearing it.
I would rather talk about “Orders of Protection,” “Recovery Court,” “ Drug Testings,” and “Star Trek,” which were my last 4 posts. I am pondering future posts on “Inspirational Stories from AA,” “What are the 12 Steps?,” “The current received wisdom that Father’s are the same as Mother’s,” “Funny stories from the Courtroom,” “What are Private Dependency Petitions?,” “Travesties that I have seen,” “Spousal Maintence,” “The Indian Child Welfare Act,” “Campaigning on the Rez,” “Military Retirement,” and “Practicing Law being guided by Spirit.” Are any of those topics of interest to my fellow Ricochetti?
My observation is that democrat turnout is unusually high, being motivated by incandescent rage. Where as republicans are acting like normal in off year elections. For instance, this was readily apparent in the VA governors race.
I also think the generic republican brand is dead, and Bush killed it. If not for the Far Left scaring the normals, and trump cobbling together a non traditional coalition it would remain dead.
I was going to chime in with my usual “Is there any actual data on SEs being bellwethers for the midterms” question. Up until now, I’ve never received an answer. Thanks <span class="atwho-inserted" contenteditable="false" data-atwho-at-query="@jager“>@jager; I now know that the answer is “No, they really aren’t much of an indicator, they were just the best we had for a while.”
I think you have a good case that this shows the Dems are motivated but we already knew that. I wonder if the bigger issues on the GOP side was more of an attitude of “Meh, who cares”. They redo this same election in three months. The NRCC might had simply decided it was a poor use of resources to spend much effort on anyone for three months. It is my hope that both turn out and Republican support increase quite a bit when the election actually matters.
Henry Olsen has good analysis.
This was a district Obama and Trump carried. Balderson was never going to appeal to those Obama-Trump voters in large numbers and motivate them to turn out. He’s lucky he won. But you can bet Balderson will probably stab Trump and his agenda in the back at every turn where it counts – immigration and trade.
I know Melanie personally, and Balderson totally slimed her in the primaries. This has not been forgotten or forgiven.
All elections are, in the end, local elections, won or lost by the people involved. National and party issues can be factors, but in the end a candidate has to win on their own merits. Balderson is not loved here. Neither was Tiberi, frankly (I’ve described him elsewhere as reliably milquetoast). He fought very dirty in the primaries, and that cost him yesterday in turnout. But his campaign was shoddy, and his ads have (on their own demerits) earned the enmity of my kids for their panicky hysteria.
Yes, the Dems were highly motivated over the Republicans on this round. Yes, the national hysteria is a huge factor there. But in the end, Balderson owns this narrow victory himself.
I am intrigued, what does this mean?
Every time they tried to watch anything on Youtube, they’d get a Balderson add, and the adds sounded roughly akin to “vote for me, or it’s the end of the world!” They came to hate him rather deeply.
Balderson hasn’t actually won the seat yet as Ohio won’t declare the winner for ten days when thousands of absentee and provisional ballots are counted. We should be particularly concerned about the provisional ballots as there are 3400 of them in a race that is only separated at this point by some 1700 votes. If past elections are any indication, provisionals typically favor Dems as that party seems to attract many of the mentally challenged who got an F in reading comprehension during the few years they were in school. Once the final count is tallied, odds are the separation of votes will amount to 0.5 rather than the current 0.9 and trigger an automatic recount. That’s when the Dem crooked recount machine goes into full action and finds votes in odd places, particularly among the homeless. Color me skeptical that this election will ultimately be called for the Republican. We can only hope the RNC is sending super sharp people in to monitor the counting of the provisional and absentee ballots. The Ohio Secretary of State, Jon Husted, will be instrumental in making sure the usual Dem chicanery doesn’t take place. He has supported Trump in the past.
The only way to make sure the Dems don’t cheat is to beat them by a whole lot of votes. They still will cheat…it just won’t matter.
Keep in mind the district was redrawn between those two elections, so saying he was “voted out after one term” may be a little too strong.
Funny stories from the courtroom would be a good complement to the lawyer jokes.
The generic Republican brand was dead in 1976.
Both parties have had near death experiences. They eventually sort things out because there is over 150 years of brand equity in the labels.
Yup! I was a poll worker during the election. My precinct was split in half by the border. We turned away as many people as were allowed to vote!
True. In close races the Dems always manage to find just enough “missing” votes to win . . .
I hate to say it, but winning every race to ensure Republicans maintain control is too important to let personal animosity interfere . . .
Just curious … can you list the various reasons that so many people were turned away from voting?
When, as Balderson has done, you have primaried on insulting half the base and sliming an opponent, you have no right to then take for granted that the base will just show up as ordered. That’s an object lesson that politicians of both parties have often failed to learn (Hillary Clinton being the most prominent recent example).
Moreover, we’re rarely just voting for the party if we know the individual involved – and this is doubly so in Ohio, which almost never unseats incumbents, regardless of party. Once you’re in as a senator in Ohio, I don’t care if the entire state seems to shift to the opposite part, that senator has that seat as long as he likes, if he votes favorably on Ohio issues, which is partly why such a hard lefty as Sherrod Brown has stayed in office. What Ohioans resent (and demonstrate at the polls time and again) is being taken for granted. You do that here, and you’re sunk. Ohioans often rebel against “anointed successors”, just on principle.
A good example of this was Senator Howard Metzenbaum, who was in office I don’t remember how many decades. He was an old school Dem as the state was going strong Republican, but was never voted out. Well, when he finally retired, he tried a baton pass to his son in law, and the election wasn’t even close. His son-in-law was beaten like a drum for that.
Well, like I said above, Balderson’s campaign was terrible, and was basically premised on a baton pass. He didn’t really campaign on his own merits, only on keeping the seat in the party. It was a dumb move here. I still gritted my teeth and voted for him, but I know plenty of others who preferred to send him a message that he had no automatic claim on their loyalty.
Only one reason, they didn’t live within the district. They just heard all the advertisements and came in just to make sure. Some of the looks on their faces were pretty priceless though.