2022-11-10
2022 Election Analysis: Part 1 - Trump and His Candidates Hurt The GOP
As the country prepared (or braced) for a red wave on Election Night 2022, we at KTracy.com predicted early in the night that the Republicans were in trouble, even after the first results from Florida started coming in. In the days ahead, we're going to have a few articles on KTracy.com explaining why the 2022 election was such a bust for the Republican Party despite historic incompetency among Democrats in charge of both the White House and Congress.
Tonight, we're talking about Donald Trump and the "Outsider" MAGA candidates that underperformed virtually everywhere across the country.
Who are the MAGA Outsiders and Why Do We Know They Failed
Georgia - Herschel Walker
In January 2021, Donald Trump called for Republican Governor Brian Kemp to resign after he certified Joe Biden's victory in the state. He later seemingly endorsed Democrat Stacey Abrams to replace Kemp. In the 2022 Primary, Trump endorsed former governor David Perdue for Governor, but Kemp won the primary with an overwhelming >50% landslide (73.7% to 21.8%). In the general election, Kemp defeated Stacey Abrams 53% to 45%. By crossing the 50% threshold, Kemp guaranteed he would not face a runoff election.
By comparison, Herschel Walker lost 48.5% to 49.4%. Luckily for Walker, the loss was not so great that he wouldn't get another chance in a runoff election. However, he still performed more than 4.5 points behind Kemp. That may not seem bad, but if you extrapolate the math, more than 11% of voters who voted for Kemp did NOT vote for Walker.
How could that happen? While on the campaign trail, several women came forward and accused Walker of having affairs with them and forcing them to have abortions. Walker denied the claims, but it was enough to make some Republicans question whether or not he deserved their vote while moderates found his alleged hypocrisy incredibly difficult to swallow.
We'll come back to this affair later.
Ohio - JD Vance
On election night, the Republican Governor of Ohio Mike DeWine won his election with a landslide 62.8% to 37.2% victory over his Democrat challenger.
The Senate Seat was vastly different. JD Vance rose to popularity as a meme author of a book about Hillbillies. He tried turning his Internet fame into political stardom by running for Senate; which was likely going to fail until he lambasted Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell and was endorsed by Donald Trump. After the endorsement, Vance managed to "surge" from behind to win the crowded GOP primary with only 32% of the vote.
After becoming the Republican candidate, JD Vance found himself on an island. Donald Trump couldn't be bothered to lift a finger to fundraise for or donate to Vance. Realizing the GOP was at risk of losing the Senate seat in Ohio, Mitch McConnell used his PAC to send OVER 30 MILLION DOLLARS to the Vance campaign. Even with this enormous donation, JD Vance just barely scraped together a victory.
We'll come back to Vance's fundraising later.
Pennsylvania - Doug Mastriano & Mehmet Oz (Dr. Oz)
The problems the GOP faced in Pennsylvania probably start with Doug Mastriano. Mastriano is a conspiracy theorist of the first order. He made the "stolen" election his biggest campaign issue when he was actually campaigning. However, he stopped campaigning after he was investigated by Congress for his participation in the January 6th Capitol Riot. He stopped campaigning, but the self-righteous jerk refused to resign and let the GOP pick another nominee.
Where JD Vance got carried by a remarkable performance from Mike DeWine in Ohio, Mehmet Oz was now a first time candidate left alone at the top of the ticket in Pennsylvania. With a strong Gubernatorial candidate on the Republican side, it's difficult to imagine Dr. Oz losing the remarkably close election to Fetterman. However, Mastriano alone isn't to blame.
Oz had no idea what he was getting himself into when he ran for Senate and won the primary on name recognition alone. He had no idea how to run a campaign when he won the nomination. To Oz's credit, he did manage to spend a ton of money to hire experts who could help him; and by the end of the campaign, it does seem like Oz figured it out. However, it was too late to make enough of a difference in the campaign.
The down ballot effect of bad candidates will be discussed later.
How MAGA Hurt The GOP
Un-vetted Candidates
There is hard evidence that Herschel Walker paid a woman he impregnated to have an abortion. Walker tried to say he didn't know the woman, but it was later revealed that he has a child with the woman. There are other accusers who came forward to say he had extramarital affairs with them, one of whom he also paid to have an abortion, allegedly. There are also police reports in Texas stemming from his stalking his ex-wife; which he claims stemmed from his Dissociative Identity Disorder. Had Walker run for the US House, or even Mayor of some city, this could have played out on a smaller stage in front of a smaller audience. Instead, it played out in a state-wide show to be enjoyed and inflamed by Democrats across the country. Had an experienced politician run who was vetted at the lower levels run, the odds of this kind of disaster happening would be significantly lower.
Doug Mastriano is another great example of this. On paper, he looks great. He's an Army Colonel and die-hard conservative Republican who would tow the party line. However, if he had run for lower office before jumping right in to Governor, voters would have realized much earlier that he was an awful candidate who wouldn't even pretend to do the work. Someone might have realized this guy was a nut job long before he became a gubernatorial candidate in the GOP Primary.
Inexperienced Candidates
JD Vance didn't know the first thing about running a campaign. Mitch McConnell, who Vance disparaged pretty badly at the start of the campaign, donated $30 million that should have gone to other candidates in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Candidates make enormous growth from their first campaign to their second. Their first campaign is a learning experience. Those learning experiences should happen at the local level in town council, mayor, and county races. Prove yourself there, and THEN you move to the next level when you really know how to campaign.
One would think that a celebrity with name recognition, like Dr. Oz, would be able to skip the lower levels by running on name recognition alone. However, running for office is unlike anything else you'll ever do. Money is a poor substitute for experience. As mentioned above, to Dr. Oz's credit, he learned how to campaign by the end but he needed to hit the ground running in a battleground state like Pennsylvania where voters expect more.
Trump Fatigue
Donald Trump was a really good President who governed like every Republican candidate campaigned. Donald Trump is also a deplorable narcissist who created unnecessary drama every chance he got by making a brand of being insensitive and childish.
Democrats are comically repulsed by Donald Trump, but moderate voters don't like him and even a lot of intellectual Republicans are exhausted from dealing with him instead of dealing with the issues. Trump brought a lot of good things with him and he will hopefully have a lasting positive effect on the Republican Party. However, we should be looking at the next step to build on his legacy rather than to make this simply a Party of Trump.
Donald Trump's candidates were not only un-vetted and inexperienced, but they were also joined at the hip to Donald Trump. While a lot of Republicans turned out to vote for their Trump candidates, the fact that they were Trump candidates made voting for them distasteful for a lot of moderate voters. It also made it more difficult for Democrats to cross party lines and vote for not just a Republican, but a Trump Republican.
