The GOP’s historic tailwinds collided with the fragile reality of a political party in the midst of a genetic conflict
November 10, 2022 at 5:00 am EST Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Sen. Roy Blunt and Sen. Rick Scott on Capitol Hill in May. McConnell and Scott mapped out competing strategies for the midterm elections. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) Comment on this story Comment Florida Sen. Rick Scott made a plea to about 35 of his colleagues during lunch at the offices of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in early August: Send money to the NRSC from your personal campaign accounts. Candidates were in need. The Republican outlook had gone from bright to gloomy since July’s budget reports. Despite $5-a-gallon gas and a historically unpopular president, Democratic Senate candidates in key states held big economic and polling leads. On the other hand, Republican candidates first promoted by former President Donald Trump were viewed negatively in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arizona and Georgia. But Scott’s hopes for a united GOP response were dashed as soon as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stood to speak in the same room: Send 20 percent of the money from their leadership PACs, he told senators, in the Senate. Leadership Fund, an outside group controlled by its own loyalists, according to a person familiar with the matter. The bottom line, multiple people familiar with the exchange said, was that senators had to pick sides in a months-long battle between the two Senate leaders over the best strategy to win, a conflict that would have serious consequences in the fall. At least one senator left the meeting disappointed that Scott had to come hand in hand so late in the campaign, according to people briefed on the aftermath. Other senators generally expressed private concerns about how Scott was running the committee. Others blamed McConnell. “The way it got across the room was, ‘Don’t give your money to the NRSC. Give to SLF,” said a person who was present. “And that hurt our candidates.” From the outside, this year’s election looked like a virtual Republican deadlock. Since Lyndon B. Johnson, new Democratic presidents have lost an average of 45 House and five Senate seats in midterms. Republicans went to the polls on Tuesday needing to win just five House seats and a single Senate seat to take control, amid soaring inflation and widespread dissatisfaction with the nation’s direction. But behind the scenes, nothing has been easy for Republicans this cycle, as their historic tailwinds collided with the divided reality of a political party in the midst of a generational upset. GOP leaders have spent much of the past year fighting against each other or conspiring against their own constituents. They were rocked by unprepared first-time candidates, fundraising shortfalls and Trump, whose restlessness demanded constant attention — until the eve of the election, when he forced party bosses to once again plead with him to delay the presidential campaign announcement. In the weeks following that August lunch, the uneasy public truce between McConnell and Scott, the head of the NRSC, effectively collapsed. Major donors failed to meet their fall NRSC pledges as SLF accounts swelled. McConnell has publicly expressed concerns about Trump-backed candidates, while privately expressing concern about being shut out of NRSC strategy discussions. Aides to both men clashed over where to spend money and over Scott’s personal political agenda, which included a politically toxic proposal to reauthorize Social Security every five years. “They made it very clear early on that they weren’t going to include anyone in their strategy, leadership or not,” Josh Holmes, a strategist close to McConnell, said of the NRSC. “So McConnell decided to do his thing. He wanted to get as much money as possible into the SLF.” Scott responded by publishing an op-ed attacking his GOP critics as “treacherous” cowards. Scott’s allies went so far as to propose privately that McConnell preferred to win only a narrow majority to support him for leader — a claim McConnell’s team found absurd. This story of how the GOP’s red tide became a tidal wave—with Republicans on track to narrowly win control of the House and still risk falling behind in the Senate—is based on interviews with 47 strategists, donors, advisers and candidates from both parties, many of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to share candidly personal details. They described how Democrats’ efforts — to brand Republicans as “MAGA extremists,” to raise concerns about a landmark abortion decision by the Supreme Court and to highlight threats to the democratic process embraced by GOP candidates — helped soften the overwhelming disillusionment. with inflation and rising fears of crime. Polls conducted by AP VoteCast found that 27 percent of voters cited abortion as the most important issue for their vote, compared to 31 percent who cited inflation. 11 percent of voters said crime was most important, exactly the same percentage as said gun violence. The massive barrage of paid advertising — fueled by more than $9 billion in spending by both sides — exposed weaknesses in both parties that were viewed negatively by a host of voters in the final days of the election. Democrats found themselves with a White House leader struggling to command the bully pulpit and candidates scarred by months of public wrangling over their legislative agenda. Republicans have struggled to keep their new populist base, which has embraced Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and absolutist views on abortion, with their moderate fringe voters, who were turned off by the party’s more radical turn and did not they trusted the Trump-led party. As the election approached, these contradictions only became harder to contain. Historical patterns, Republicans realized, could be broken. “Our peak was really in June, about June 13. We would have a record night,” House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) said in an interview a day before the election in his office at the U.S. Capitol. “I never doubted whether we will win the majority. The question was how big the majority would be.” The first warning signs emerged days after the US Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion on June 24. the Biden administration was brought to a standstill. Post Dobbs, tracking data kept by both parties showed that Democratic House districts that had runaway were once again behaving like Democratic districts. A Democratic House poll in the field when the administration hit showed an immediate shift in responses. Strategists in both parties soon calculated that a massive wave of Democratic congressional departures and redistricting could give the GOP a 10-seat gain in the House, enough to take control — but not enough to avoid intraparty chaos which would follow. “Every poll, no matter what office you’re in, no matter who the electorate is, no matter what state you were in — whether it was a South Dakota Senate race, a congressional race or a state [legislative] race — showed that abortion was the best test argument,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. That hope was confirmed when Kansans voted Aug. 2 by an 18-point margin to retain abortion protections. Two weeks later, Democrats won a statewide special election in Alaska, followed by a special election in New York’s Hudson Valley, even surpassing President Biden’s margin in 2020. “It was night and day,” said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Executive Director Tim Persico. Republicans responded with a two-pronged approach. Leaders like Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, encouraged candidates to “move on” quickly from abortion to other issues that were better for Republicans. Republican leaders implored the candidates to avoid strict anti-abortion positions with no exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. “See common ground with the majority of Americans who support exemptions,” read a September memo from the Republican National Committee, a sentiment Trump echoed at his rallies. The party then focused on giving the nation something else to talk about. To the National Republican Congressional Committee, Chairman Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) convened a summit of pollsters in late August. They had managed to link inflation concerns to Democratic policies, with ads as early as July 4, 2021 about the rising cost of hamburgers and propane after the first Democratic stimulus bill. But they needed something more to capitalize on widespread discontent with the direction of the country. The answer had emerged in focus groups and polls since the spring: Suburban voters would volunteer that they no longer felt safe going downtown. “You dig a little deeper, and the concerns about the increase in crime and their personal safety have been there all along,” said BJ Martino, a pollster at the Tarrance Group who attended the private meeting. “For our campaigns, it was about making sure that we connected the policies of the Democrats in Congress to the consequences that they are already seeing, as we had already done on the economy.” Emer appeared days later on Fox News Sunday with the marching orders. “This is about the financial security of the American people,” he said of the upcoming election. “This is about the physical security of Americans.” Democrats had seen crime concerns on their spring ballot as well, prompting the DCCC to send a March memo to candidates telling them to start vetting “at least one active or retired member . . .
