Big Donor Money, Small Donor Money, and the Uncontrollable Rebels

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

Julie Bykowicz at WSJ:

Big Republican donors haven’t been much help in pushing California Rep. Kevin McCarthy over the finish line in his bid to become speaker of the House of Representatives.

The reason: His dissenters don’t need them.

About half the Republicans opposing Mr. McCarthy’s bid for House speaker fund their campaigns through small, online contributions instead of counting on major donors and corporate political-action committees, a Wall Street Journal review of Federal Election Commission reports found.

Those streams of $5 and $10 donations can turn into a flood when a lawmaker stakes out a contrarian position and stokes political drama.

“Many of the holdouts do not rely on major donors, PACs and the traditional offerings that a political party can provide,” said Ken Spain, a corporate adviser in Washington and former communications director of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “There’s a perverse incentive for members to elevate their personal brand at the expense of the governing majority.”

...

 The changed political-fundraising landscape cuts across both parties: Some of the Democrats’ top online fundraisers are the ones who have occasionally been at odds with their party’s leadership, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

McCarthy and the Rules

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. It also discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.  

It took 15 ballots for Kevin McCarthy to overcome hard-right resistance and become speaker.

Rachel Bade at Politico:

McCarthy’s decision to give Freedom Caucus members three of the nine seats on the House Rules Committee easily represented the single most significant surrender of leadership power that we’ve seen in decades — one that will have major repercussions for the lower chamber.

Since the 1960s, the panel — which oversees the floor process and decides which amendments are considered —has been viewed as the “speaker’s committee,” with each member handpicked by the leader and genuflecting to his or her will.

Now, conservatives eager to flex will dominate that panel and operate independently of leadership, effectively wielding veto power over legislation. Given the committee’s partisan breakdown — nine seats for the GOP, four for Democrats — Republicans can afford to lose only two votes. That means that the three Freedom Caucus members on the panel could band together with Democrats to tank a bill even before it hits the floor. They’ll also be able to demand changes to legislation, undercutting the careful work by other committee chairs who may not agree with their views.

McCarthy’s camp has sought to downplay this change by arguing that (1) conservatives could kill any bill anyway because of their slim four-seat House majority and (2) it’s better for them to hash out their disagreements with conservatives in committee before bills head to the floor.

But “that misses the ballgame,” as one astute former House GOP leadership source told us: It “doesn’t take into account that the power of the floor isn’t just about what reaches it, but also what doesn’t — and what processes are permitted via amendment.”

McCarthy: Winning to Lose

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. It also discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.  

It took 15 ballots for Kevin McCarthy to overcome hard-right resistance and become speaker.

This is what it came to before #KevinMcCarthy finally secured enough votes to become Speaker. We don't normally get to see all this on TV, and once McCarthy reinstates the C-SPAN camera rules, we won't again. Alabama's Mike Rogers had to be restrained from attacking Matt Gaetz. https://t.co/MIlfclu76l

— Doug Sovern (@SovernNation) January 7, 2023

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, holds her smart phone with former US President Donald Trump on the line, as Rep. Matt Rosendale, a Republican from Montana, waves it off during a meeting of the 118th Congress in the House Chamber on Friday.#SpeakerVote pic.twitter.com/VWvOGfXd9Q

— Al Drago (@Al_Drago) January 7, 2023

ICYMI — REUTERS snapped this pic of Santos voting for McCarthy as his other hand conspicuously forms the 👌🏻 sign, known by many to mean “white power” and frequently flashed by white supremacist groups.

He also has hired an aide who is a former Bannon producer. pic.twitter.com/P70VBeueGK

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) January 6, 2023

When you can’t tell whether Democrats or Republicans wrote the talking points. https://t.co/IXHx6ffz25

— Francis Wilkinson (@fdwilkinson) January 7, 2023

Two Years Later: Trump Enablers and McCarthy Resisters

 In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.   Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie.  And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.  

Kyle Cheney and Nicholas Wu at Politico:

A handful of Republicans who remained in the Jan. 6 committee’s sights throughout its investigation are now leading the effort to deny Kevin McCarthy the speakership — using their power to bring the House to a standstill.

During its last days of existence, the Capitol riot panel unleashed a massive trove of evidence with an unmistakable conclusion: At every stage of former President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election results, a phalanx of hardline GOP lawmakers were egging him on. The committee’s latest material, including 250 witness transcripts, often portrayed those House Republicans as drivers, enablers and even architects of Trump’s Jan. 6 scheme.

And several conservatives currently standing against Kevin McCarthy’s bid for the top gavel, including House Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), were among the handful of true believers in Trump’s efforts.

...

Ali Alexander, the leader of the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” effort, put Gosar among a small group of members who might relay updates after speaking to Trump. He also said Gosar supported his push for a Washington protest on Jan. 6.

Other witnesses said Gosar was a member of a Twitter direct message thread that helped organize Trump’s Jan. 6 rally and related events.

...

Perry was another frequent presence in pre-Jan. 6 planning. Text messages the select committee obtained from Meadows show Perry pushing fringe theories about European efforts to steal the 2020 election from Trump.

From the J6 report:

The Committee’s investigation has shown that Congressman Perry wasworking with one Department of Justice official, Jeffrey Clark, regarding thestolen election claims. Perry was working with Clark and with President Trump and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows with this goal: to enlist Clark toreverse the Department of Justice’s findings regarding the election and helpoverturn the election outcome.

After introducing Clark to the President, Perry sent multiple text messages to Meadows between December 26th and December 28th, pressing that Clark be elevated within the Department. Perry reminded Meadows that there are only “11 days to 1/6 . . . We gotta get going!,” and, as the dayswent on, one asking, “Did you call Jeff Clark?”

 

"People Don't Trust McCarthy"

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. It also discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.  

Tina Nguyen at Puck:

Indeed, from the conversations I’ve had with allies of the 19 initial “no” votes, their opposition to McCarthy is more than just wrangling concessions. Rather, their outrage stems from what they consider to be McCarthy’s original sin: disloyalty and nihilism in pursuit of his ambition to wield the gavel. Recent news articles suggesting how much McCarthy donated to the campaigns of his antagonistes miss the point. That was all ex post facto wet-kissing. They have not forgotten, after all, that he worked to undermine them and their MAGA allies in the midterm primaries, spending millions against their campaigns and boosting more moderate challengers. Nor do they trust that a former Majority Whip who had privately tried to get Donald Trump to resign after January 6th would ever have their backs against the Washington machine. For many of them, the opposition is personal. And when they say that they would prefer anyone who is not McCarthy, they truly mean it.

“Every time Kevin sends his people out to go talk to the dissenters, whenever our side says Look, we want a leader with substance and a leader who believes in it, they all immediately know exactly the criticism that we’re talking about,” the source with knowledge of their negotiations told me. “People don’t trust McCarthy. They don’t think he’s proven himself to be trustworthy. And they think that he cares more about becoming speaker than he does about actually changing things and working to fix the institution

Split-Screen Congress

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. It also discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.  

Look, Leader McConnell and I don’t agree on everything. In fact, we disagree on a great deal.

But the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law showed that when we work together, we can get things done and move the nation forward. pic.twitter.com/I4T5h5Odhr

— President Biden (@POTUS) January 4, 2023

What have we become as a political party when 20 people can rule 200 others against their will. Certainly not conservative. https://t.co/4XrbwA2ImC

— Sen. Kevin Cramer (@SenKevinCramer) January 4, 2023

Convenience Voting in 2022

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

Jessica Piper at Politico:

Lawmakers of both parties made it easier to vote by expanding availability of mail and early voting in a politically mixed group of states: Vermont, Kentucky and Nevada.

The states had divergent results but shared a few key things in common. Making it easier to vote early or by mail did not lead to voter fraud, nor did it seem to advantage Republicans or Democrats. In Kentucky, Republicans held on to five of the state’s six congressional districts and a Senate seat. Both Vermont and Nevada saw split-ticket voters decide statewide races, by a gaping margin in Vermont and a narrow one in Nevada.

It reflects a broad lesson for other states that might consider expanding voter access or encouraging voting before Election Day: While voting methods have become deeply polarized by party, expanding access to early and mail voting does not appear to benefit one party over the other. Republicans do not do themselves any favors when they follow in Trump’s footsteps and vilify early voting: It puts more onus on their voters to cast ballots on a single day.