House Dems Who Oppose the Akin Ploy

Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. 

In the 2012 Missouri  Senate race, incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill ran ads during the GOP primary campaign saying that Todd Akin was "too conservative."  The idea of the "attack ad" was to drive GOP voters to Akin, her weakest potential foe.  It worked.  Other campaigns have tried variations of the "pick your opponent" ploy.

Sarah Ferris and Ally Mutnick at Politico:

A growing number of House Democrats are seething at their own campaign arm for meddling in a GOP primary to promote a pro-Trump election conspiracy theorist — after months of warning that such candidates were a threat to democracy.

In public statements, private chats and complaints taken directly to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Democratic members are aghast that the committee is spending nearly half a million dollars to air ads boosting Donald Trump-endorsed John Gibbs over Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.), who voted to impeach Trump last year.

While Meijer is one of the few GOP lawmakers who voted to hold Trump accountable for his own false claims about the 2020 race, his blue-leaning seat is also a top Democratic target district this fall — and Gibbs is seen as an easier opponent to beat in November. The primary next Tuesday will kick off a three-month sprint to the general election.

“No race is worth compromising your values in that way,” said Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), who sits on the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and Trump’s election-subverting schemes that preceded it.

Democrats, like Murphy, fear the strategy could easily backfire, if a candidate like Gibbs were to win the general election amid a GOP wave — and the party also risks undercutting its own core message about the dangers of MAGA Republicans taking power. It could be harder for Democrats to claim that certain GOP candidates are an existential threat to the country if they are also using party money to push them closer to winning office.

Some members’ frustrations are particularly acute now, after months of simmering tensions with Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) over other issues during his tenure as chair of the DCCC.

The Akin Ploy in Michigan

Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. 

In the 2012 Missouri  Senate race, incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill ran ads during the GOP primary campaign saying that Todd Akin was "too conservative."  The idea of the "attack ad" was to drive GOP voters to Akin, her weakest potential foe.  It worked.  Other campaigns have tried variations of the "pick your opponent" ploy.  Even in California.

 Lachlan Markay at Axios:

National Democrats are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to boost a far-right, Trump-endorsed conspiracy theorist in one of the most closely watched House races in the country — further endangering one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Trump.

Driving the news: A new TV ad from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee portrays Republican John Gibbs as the true pro-Trump conservative in his effort to unseat Republican Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) — aligning with Gibbs' own campaign messaging. 

• Trump endorsed Gibbs' challenge after Meijer voted to impeach the former president over his role in fomenting the Jan. 6 Capitol siege.
•  Meijer, a freshman, had been in Congress just days when he took that potentially career-ending vote.
• Now Democrats, who see Gibbs as the more beatable general election opponent, are fueling the Trump-backed effort to oust one of his few remaining GOP critics in next week's primary.

A DCCC spokesperson told Axios it plans to spend $425,000 to air the ad in the Grand Rapids market beginning Tuesday.

There are two dangers with the Akin ploy.

• When far-right candidates lose the primary, moderate winners come out stronger for the general election, as in Colorado this year.
• And the more conservative candidate could actually win the general election -- as Democrats learned in 1966 with Ronald Reagan.

Picking Your Opponent

Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. 

In the 2012 Missouri  Senate race, incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill ran ads during the GOP primary campaign saying that Todd Akin was "too conservative."  The idea of the "attack ad" was to drive GOP voters to Akin, her weakest potential foe.  It worked.  Other campaigns have tried variations of the "pick your opponent" ploy.  Even in California.

Sandra Fish at The Colorado Sun:

The Democratic Governors Association is financing a group running TV ads boosting the profile of Greg Lopez, one of two Republican candidates for governor in Colorado.

The DGA donated $1.5 million to Strong Colorado for All in recent weeks. That state-level super PAC then donated $600,000 to Colorado Information Network, another state-level super PAC that began airing the ads last week. The $600,000 is the only contribution Colorado Information Network reported in a filing made Monday with the Secretary of State’s Office.

The Colorado Information Network booked at least $915,000 worth of TV ads featuring Lopez to run through the June 28 primary. The group reported about $401,000 of that spending in its Monday report.

The ads stress Lopez’s conservative credentials on abortion, gay marriage and former President Donald Trump.

“Greg Lopez holds views that are too extreme and out-of-touch for Colorado,” DGA spokeswoman Christina Amestoy said. “Voters need to know what he believes in, what he would push on the state, and just how dangerous of a governor he could be.”

Although the ad features ominous music and concludes by saying that Lopez is “too conservative for Colorado,” it appears aimed at swaying conservative Republicans to select him over University of Colorado regent Heidi Ganahl in the gubernatorial primary.

More on the potential for the tactic to backfire:

 

How California’s unusual primary system can lead to unusual strategies and unusual results.

I wrote about a GOP-leaning senate district where two Dems may be on the Nov ballot and what it says about California’s 10 year top two experiment:https://t.co/xy5eQutXBq pic.twitter.com/PzDsl7w6ua

— Ben Christopher (@FromBenC) June 13, 2022

The Akin Ploy in California

Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. 

In the 2012 Missouri  Senate race, incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill ran ads during the GOP primary campaign saying that Todd Akin was "too conservative."  The idea of the "attack ad" was to drive GOP voters to Akin, her weakest potential foe.  It worked.  Other campaigns have tried the same thing.

The Akin Ploy is alive in the 2022 midterm.

Ok, listen to this ad. Every. Single. Word. This is how you get a Dem/Rep runoff in the AG race. It is a clinic on the Top Two primary. pic.twitter.com/i96TP7gI2k

— CA120 (@CA_120) May 9, 2022

We are taking the fight to anti-choice Republicans.

This will be the defining issue of the 2022 election.

I won’t sit back. pic.twitter.com/FYmO3QuSjn

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) May 4, 2022

The Akin Ploy, 2022

Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. 

In the 2012 Missouri  Senate race, incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill ran ads during the GOP primary campaign saying that Todd Akin was "too conservative."  The idea of the "attack ad" was to drive GOP voters to Akin, her weakest potential foe.  It worked.  Other campaigns have tried the same thing.

Henry J. Gomez and Natasha Korecki at NBC:

Democrats bracing for devastating midterm losses this fall are zeroing in on a strategy that lands them on the battlefield now.

They are investing millions of dollars to meddle in Republican primaries for governor, attempting to elevate their preferred competitors in November or weaken their biggest threats.

Next week's messy GOP fight in Pennsylvania is the most blatant example. State Sen. Doug Mastriano is ahead in recent polls — and his would-be Democratic opponent wouldn’t mind if it stayed that way.

Democrat Josh Shapiro, the state attorney general running unopposed in his party's primary for governor, is airing an ad that brandishes Mastriano’s conservative credentials, making sure to say a Mastriano victory is a win "for what Donald Trump stands for." That's all but an endorsement in a GOP primary, but it could hurt later in a race where even some Republicans have doubts about Mastriano's electability.

That a Democrat is behind the ad underscores the lengths to which the party will go to engineer an easier general election in what's expected to be a volatile environment this fall.

"Both public and private polling indicate that Doug Mastriano is poised to become the Republican nominee on May 17 — and our campaign is prepared to start the general election now and make sure Pennsylvanians know his real record," Shapiro spokesperson Will Simons said in a statement to NBC News.

DGA Plagiarizes McCaskill (and She's Probably Fine with That)

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race.

Natasha Korecki and Daniel Strauss at Politico:

The Democratic Governors Association is planning to launch an ad calling Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner's right-wing challenger "too conservative" for the state — an apparent move to boost state Rep. Jeanne Ives in her campaign's final days.

The ad, which is slated to begin airing on broadcast and cable TV in the state Friday, begins with a question: "When is a conservative leader too conservative for Illinois?"

But it quickly evolves into a list of Ives' conservative positions, presenting them in a way that could be appealing to some Republican primary voters.

...

The strategy is more reminiscent of the Missouri Senate primary in 2012, when Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill paid for ads calling then-Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) — whom she viewed as her weakest possible opponent — "too conservative" for the state.

"Using the guidance of my campaign staff and consultants, we came up with the idea for a 'dog whistle' ad, a message that was pitched in such a way that it would be heard only by a certain group of people," McCaskill wrote later in her memoir. "I told my team we needed to put Akin’s uber-conservative bona fides in an ad — and then, using reverse psychology, tell voters not to vote for him. And we needed to run the hell out of that ad."

 

American Bridge v. Trump

Trump's GOP opponents failed at oppo, but Democrats are not making that mistake. At The New York Times, Maggie Haberman and Ashley Parker report that American Bridge seeks to define Trump as effectively as it defined Todd Akin in 2012.

In 2016, the group is taking every opportunity to do the same thing with Donald J. Trump. It is maintaining an archive of digital video footage, with 6,500 clips of Mr. Trump speaking or being mentioned, going back to the 1980s, and 17,000 hours of footage over all. It has also compiled more than 5,000 pages of research on the presumptive Republican nominee and has 25 trackers monitoring him.

American Bridge is playing a more significant role in 2016 than it did in 2012, when the Obama campaign was leery of the group, which was founded by a close ally of Hillary Clinton’s. This cycle, Democrats have relied on it openly for research.

There are special systems that allow it to search by specific strings of words to identify issue targets. It is trying to expedite their ability to quickly frame a case against Mr. Trump. And it is monitoring roughly 600 candidates up and down the ballot, in addition to Mr. Trump.

In the 25th paragraph of the Times story about the Trump Institute's sleazy business practices and plagiarism, we find where the story cam from:

Asked about the plagiarism, which was discovered by the Democratic “super PAC” American Bridge, the editor of the Trump Institute publication, Susan G. Parker, denied responsibility and suggested that a lawyer for the Milins, who provided her with background material for the book, might have been to blame.

In Iowa, American Crossroads v. Insider Clinton

"Picking your opponent" sometimes backfires (CA Democrats wanted Reagan as the Republican candidate for governor in 1966) and sometimes it works (In 2012, McCaskill picked Akin and won).  In Iowa, American Crossroads is helping Bernie Sanders by depicting Hillary Clinton as a Wall Street insider.

Picking Your Opponent

In an excerpt from her memoirs, Senator Claire McCaskill gleefully admits that she sought to help Todd Akin win the GOP primary to run against her in 2012:

My consultants put together a $1.7 million plan. Four weeks out we would begin with a television ad boosting Akin, which my campaign consultant Mike Muir dubbed “A Cup of Tea.” The production costs were pretty low, about $20,000, because we didn’t have to film anything. We just used pictures and voice-overs. We would spend $750,000 at first and run it for eight or nine days. Then we’d go back into the field and test to see if it was working. If it was, we’d dump in more “McCaskill for Senate” money, and we’d add radio and more TV in St. Louis and Kansas City. The second TV buy would approach $900,000. We hoped that some of our friends watching the TV ads would catch on and some of the outside groups would augment the last week with mail and radio. Sure enough, a radio ad calling Akin “too conservative” that went on the air in the closing days of the primary was paid for by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. We would later find out that their rural radio buy was $250,000.

As it turned out, we spent more money for Todd Akin in the last two weeks of the primary than he spent on his whole primary campaign.

Dems to Play in CA Primary?

At Fox and Hounds, Joel Fox notes that some Democrats want Tim Donnelly as Jerry Brown's November opponent:

A whispering campaign urging some loyal Democrats to vote for Donnelly in the open primary to assure Donnelly a place on the November ballot wouldn’t work according to Allan Hoffenblum, a keen observer of the California political scene and publisher of the California Target Book which tracks candidate elections. “It would have to be out in the open, you would need to use persuasion techniques and that couldn’t be kept secret. And it would cost money.”

However, Hoffenblum says that it might be possible for a mischief effort to boost the Donnelly campaign by running ads against Donnelly’s opponents in the primary, particularly his best-funded opponent, Neel Kashkari.

It’s been done before, Hoffenblum reminded me, although he didn’t have to since I was involved on the receiving end of such mischief. When former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan was seemingly running away with the Republican nomination for governor in 2002, Garry South, Gov. Gray Davis’s campaign strategist hit Riordan with negative ads during the primary. I was on the Riordan team. The shots hit their mark and Riordan’s huge lead in early polls vanished as Bill Simon bested him on Election Day.

Another option for Democrats is to do for Donnelly what Claire McCaskill did for Todd Akin in 2012:  run an ad that nominally attacks Donnelly but actually (and intentionally) helps him get GOP votes.  As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch explained at the time:

To conservatives, McCaskill's "criticisms" in the Akin commercial sound more like compliments: that he opposes big government and wants to cut the federal departments of energy and education; and that he has been hotly critical of Obama.

At one point, the ad makes an allegation that sounds as if it could be on an Akin bumper sticker: "Todd's pro-family agenda would outlaw many forms of contraception."

The ad closes with the narrator speaking words that are shown on the screen next to Akin: "Missouri's TRUE conservative ..." Only after a pause does the rest of the phrase come up: "...is just TOO conservative."

"That's music to their ears" in the Akin camp, said [St. Louis University's Ken] Warren, the political scientist. "No one is 'too conservative' for a Tea Party Missourian.

Democratic DEFCON 4

At Slate, David Weigel says that Senate Democrats are currently at DEFCON 4 (increased intelligence and heightened security):

The smart money in Washington is for a hung Senate—maybe the party loses West Virginia, South Dakota, Arkansas, Montana, and Alaska. But Democrats aren’t actually down in the polls in Alaska.

That state, which hadn’t previously elected a Democratic senator since Mike Gravel (yes, him), is a test case of whether Democrats can help a lousy candidate navigate the Republican primary to face the DSCC on the killing field. Begich is four points ahead of Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell, who’s running, but he’d be 12 points ahead of Sarah Palin if she ran, and he’d be doing even better if failed (and Palin-endorsed) 2010 GOP candidate Joe Miller won the primary. Knowing this, Begich has aggressively trolled Palin, and gotten the predictable angry response in the form of Facebook posts.

This is a playbook Democrats haven’t snapped shut yet. In 2012, Guy Cecil helped shape Sen. Claire McCaskill’s strategy of elevating Todd Akin by attacking him as the “most conservative” candidate in TV ads that, obviously, thrilled conservatives. In 2014, they could try that in Georgia, where two of the most right-wing members of the House are trying to make the runoff. “They’ve never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” said Bennet. Would the DSCC help them in that effort? “If we did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

In After Hope and Change, we discuss the McCaskill ad that nominally criticized Akin but effectively won him support in the GOP primary:

Law: Don't Let Reid Pick Our Candidates

In Human Events, American Crossroads CEO Steven Law writes:

In just the last three years, American Crossroads has become one of the largest advocates for movement conservative and Tea Party-backed leaders at the federal level. We stood proudly with Senators Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Pat Toomey. We also got behind riskier bets like Sharron Angle and Richard Mourdock that many in the “establishment” wouldn’t touch.

Regrettably, some of them blew opportunities we should have won.

Conservatives point out that many of our failed candidates were “establishment” retreads instead of Tea Party insurgents. They’re right. That just means we’ve got to get better at putting forward great candidates across the board.

No one benefits more from subpar Republican candidates than the Democratic party. So here’s something else all conservatives should agree on: we don’t want Harry Reid and left-wing Super PACs picking our nominees for us. Yet it’s happening with increasing frequency. In Missouri, Reid’s Super PAC tag-teamed with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Sen. McCaskill’s campaign to deliver the GOP nomination to Todd Akin, a champion of congressional earmarks who self-immolated within weeks.

How did they get away with it? Conservative groups splintered among several second-tier contenders, weakening the front-runner and paving the way for the Democrat-backed Akin. This should never be allowed to happen again.

There is specific animosity between Crossroads and Reid. 

Rove's Analysis

Bloomberg journalist Sheelah Kolhatkar got into a briefing for major donors.  Karl Rove spoke:

Rove explained that Crossroads had conducted extensive focus groups and shared polling and focus group data with “all the major groups that are playing” in the election. “As many of you know, one of the most important things about Crossroads is: We don’t try and do this alone. We have partners,” he said. “The Kochs—you name it.”

What had emerged from that data is an “acute understanding of the nature of those undecided, persuadable” voters. “If you say he’s a socialist, they’ll go to defend him. If you call him a ‘far out left-winger,’ they’ll say, ‘no, no, he’s not.’” The proper strategy, Rove declared, was criticizing Obama without really criticizing him—by reminding voters of what the president said that he was going to do and comparing it to what he’s actually done. “If you keep it focused on the facts and adopt a respectful tone, then they’re gonna agree with you.”

...

 “We spent—outside groups spent $110 million and Romney spent $42 million,” Rove continued. “So the bad guys [Democrats] spent $130 million and the good guys [Republicans] spent $152 million, and our money didn’t go as far as theirs because we couldn’t buy at the lowest unit rate. Really, it was sort of roughly equivalent, and we fought it to a draw.” And that, Rove pointed out, was after a brutal Republican primary. “We have to keep in mind whose vote we’re trying to get—it ain’t the delegate from Alaska. It’s not the alternate from Alabama. It’s some undecided voter in the battleground state who likes the president.

Rove spoke of Congress:

He also detailed plans for Senate and House races, and joked, “We should sink Todd Akin. If he’s found mysteriously murdered, don’t look for my whereabouts!”

 ...

There are six Republican incumbents Rove identified as in jeopardy, but the biggest risk to Republican hopes of retaking the Senate is Todd Akin in Missouri, following his comments about “legitimate rape.” Rove urged every attendee to apply pressure on Akin to convince him to leave the race. “We have five people who are interested” in replacing Akin, Rove said. “We don’t care who the nominee is, other than get Akin out.”

Todd Akin = Vito Marcantonio

AP reports that Democratic candidates are tying their foes to Todd Akin:

From Colorado to New Hampshire to Illinois, Democrats already are using the incendiary comments about rape made by the Missouri congressman and Republican Senate candidate as a political bludgeon. In interviews, news releases and tweets, they've blasted Akin for saying victims of "legitimate rape" are able to naturally prevent pregnancy and tried to tie their opponents to legislation he's supported.
...
In New Hampshire, Annie Kuster rapped one of Democrats' top targets, GOP Rep. Charlie Bass, saying she was "disappointed" Bass hadn't yet called for Akin to leave the Senate race. Bass quickly did so. In Illinois, another Democratic challenger, Cheri Bustos, called on her opponent, GOP Rep. Bobby Schilling, to return a $2,000 donation from Akin. Schilling did so and issued a statement expressing his disgust with Akin's remarks.

Democrats are using an approach that Richard Nixon honed in his 1950 Senate race, where he linked Helen Gahgan Douglas to left-wing New York House member Vito Marcantonio. In his biography of Nixon, Earl Mazo observed:

In the California election Mrs. Douglas was first tied to Marcantonio by her Democratic primary opponent. When he read ahout it in Washington, Marcantonio went to a friend of Nixon’s and said, chuckling, “Tell Nicky to get on this thing because it is a good idea.” Marcantonio disliked Mrs. Douglas intensely and normally used an obscene five-letter word when referring to her in private conversations.

Akin

Despite his devastating gaffe, Akin says he will stay in the race. Slate reports:

Republican Todd Akin made a return trip to Mike Huckabee's radio show on Tuesday, again making it clear that he has no intention of ending his Senate campaign in Missouri despite calls from his own party to call it quits.

"We are going to continue with this race for the U.S. Senate," the Missouri congressman said. Barring a surprise change of heart, Akin's comments effectively stop the countdown clock that was ticking toward the 5 p.m. (local time) deadline he faced to exit the race if he wanted to spare his party a host of likely bureaucratic hurdles should he later call it quits.

His decision comes in the face of a remarkably swift and united GOP and conservative effort to get him out.  CNN reports:

Five past and present Republican senators from Missouri, including highly regarded names such as John Danforth and Christopher "Kit" Bond, added their voices to calls for the embattled candidate to get out of the race.

"We do not believe it serves the national interest for Congressman Todd Akin to stay in this race," said the statement by Sen. Roy Blunt and former senators Danforth, Bond, John Ashcroft and Jim Talent. "The issues at stake are too big, and this election is simply too important. The right decision is to step aside."

The latest call signaled that Akin stood alone in wanting to remain in the race.

Top Republican officials -- including Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus -- also have signaled that the six-term Missouri congressman should withdraw.

Yesterday, National Review editorialized:

Most Republicans who hold the view that unborn children have a right to life regardless of the circumstances of their conception will have the wit to explain themselves in a way that prevents most voters who disagree from vetoing them for that reason.

While Akin is a stalwart conservative and an honorable man, we regret to say that he inspires no such confidence. That is one reason why Senator Claire McCaskill, the sitting Democratic senator, boosted him during the Republican primaries with ads calling him a “true conservative.” She knew that she is the weakest Senate incumbent on the ballot this year and that her only hope was to draw a weak opponent. Akin won a three-way primary with a plurality of the vote; there was no run-off. McCaskill’s strategy is now paying off.

Akin has backed off from his remarks, albeit with the politician’s excuse of “misspeaking.” People who make such remarks on television are typically capable of making more like them, or rather incapable of exercising the judgment to refrain. We suspect that this same lack of judgment will cause Akin to blow past tomorrow evening’s deadline for him to leave the race and allow the Republicans to select a better nominee. We hope the congressman, who surely wants to see a Senate with as much conservative strength as possible next year, will prove us wrong.