Has any R candidate been primaried by a Trumpist yet?
OK, it’s well known that Kemp, Raffensperger, and any Senator/Representative who voted to impeach is going to be primaried, or at least an attempt will be made, in their next election. That includes Cheney, of course. But what about the past? Has any R who’s gotten on the wrong side of Trump been primaried yet?
In 2018, Jeff Flake decided not to run for reelection in Arizona because it was clear he was going to be primaried. Rep. Mark Sanford was defeated in his primary that year by a Trumpist challenger. And Trump endorsed Kris Kobach, who defeated incumbent KS Governor Jeff Colyer in the primary. All three offices ended up being won by Democrats in the general election that year (although Republicans took back Sanford’s seat last year).
I’ve been wanting to ask this somewhere: please define primaried when used as a verb. Thank you.
In this context, it means “an officeholder facing a challenger from their own party during the primary election” (as opposed to facing a challenger from another party during the general election).
So this sentence from the OP means that Raffensperger is going to have another Republican against him in the primaries? Um, isn’t that the point of primaries-- to weed through candidates in the same party?
I’m missing something.
Please interpret this sentence for me. Thank you.
[The bar is open for those of you waiting for me to finish my civics lesson.]
But usually the party supports their candidate currently in office, since they are running for re-election.
Typically, a current officeholder, who is in good standing with his party, won’t face a significant challenge during the primary/nomination process. There’s a bunch of reasons for this, including the party not wanting to force the officeholder to spend a bunch of campaign money during the primary (saving that money for the general election), as well as not exposing voters to negative ads against the officeholder that’ve been placed by other members of their own party.
That doesn’t mean that current officeholders always coast through the primary, but their opponents are more typically fringe candidates, who don’t have big ad budgets, and don’t get many votes.
And, the GOP, moreso than the Democratic Party, is known for strong party loyalty. Party officials won’t generally give any support to a challenger who decides to run against a loyal GOP officeholder, and most aspiring GOP politicians will realize that doing so, in defiance of the party, is a good way to kill one’s political aspirations.
But, in these sorts of cases, where a GOP officeholder is seen as going against the party (or, in this case, not showing sufficient loyalty to Trump), they can, and do, face primary opposition from fellow Republicans who accuse them of being RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), etc.
“Has any Republican officeholder, who has gotten on the wrong side of Trump (spoken out against him, voted to impeach him, denied his claims of election fraud, etc.) faced a GOP challenger in a primary election by now?”
Thank you! By George, I think I’ve got it.
Basically it means trump throwing the incumbent (whom the party would normally support) under the bus because they’re not loyal enough to him.
This is great. Please carry one.
Exactly; it can also mean the same net effect happens when Trump’s proxies (GOP officials, conservative media people, etc.) do the same thing.
And it’s not just Trumpites, of course. The Tea Party primaried several incumbents who refused to be as stupid as they are over the years.
There’s Jeff Sessions. Even though he wasn’t an incumbent, he was running for his old Senate seat, and in a different election year, probably would have been a shoo-in for it. But, even though he had served in Trump’s cabinet and continued kissing the Orange One’s ass, he lost the primary to an even Trumpier guy, Tommy Tuberville.
Nor is it just a phenomenon of the Republican Party. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has her seat in Congress by virtue of challenging and defeating a 20-year incumbent in the Democratic primary in her district. Likewise Jamaal Bowman was elected to New York’s 16th Congressional District last year after defeating 32-year Democratic incumbent Eliot Engel.
Successful primary challenges are rare for all the reasons laid out by @kenobi_65. The incumbent is almost always going to have a major cash advantage and support from federal and state party leaders, and a challenger risks alienating the party and donors. But where they tend to be successful is when the incumbent has grown out -of-touch with the local party activists who are the “ground forces” in any election. In the Trump and above examples, money and friends in Washington couldn’t make up for being misaligned with what their base voters and key constituencies wanted on key issues.
The rise of primarying as a verb has mostly to do with extremists & extremism.
The essential point is that if a “mainstream” incumbent is too mainstream = centrist versus their party’s evolving standards, they will face a challenger from their party’s frothing fringe. Because the primary election features only voters of that party, the fringier candidate has an advantage as the party following is itself moving fringier.
Lather rinse repeat over a few election cycles and only reactionary QAnon-spouting wackos can be Congressmen from hard R districts. “I can be more hard-core RW than the incumbent !” quickly becomes the rallying cry of all. And given the rise of funding by direct contribution fed by viral social media marketing, being the loudest brashest noise in the tent can really get the money and votes flowing your way.
Conceptually the same thing can happen on the left, but has not been as much in evidence.
Do you know much about the R person who won Sanford’s seat back last year?
Was it the same person who defeated Sanford in the 2018 primary? If somebody else was that person Trumpier, wackier, or both than Sanford or the '18 primary winner?
Sanford was defeated by Katie Arrington in the 2018 primary, and Nancy Mace won the district back for Republicans in 2020. Can’t say I know much about either politician, but I will note that Mace was one of the minority of House Republicans who voted to certify the election results.
Case in point: Eric Cantor, 2014.
That, and you know that the current officeholder is someone capable of winning the general election. The challenger probably hasn’t proven that yet.
Yep. In most primaries there’s not many voters. So if Upstart Candidate X can engage the frothers, they’ll turn out in numbers sufficient to give X the primary victory.
There used to be some moderating influence here in that most districts were at least semi-purple, so any party nominating a true extremist would probably lose more votes in the general election than they could spare.
The advent of substantially guaranteed R & D districts eliminates that one sanity check on the lurch to extremism.
The increasingly tribalistic attitude of the public only makes it worse.
That was the first case I heard of “sore loser laws”, which seem bizarre to me.
Ah yes, 2014 was a more innocent time. . .