Give parties control of candidates
For the past two years in American politics, one question has bubbled beneath the electoral process: Is there
anyone Steve Bannon would find too objectionable to support?
It was Bannon, after all, who clung to Donald Trump’s ribald candidacy on his way to a short-lived spot as the president’s chief White House strategist. It was Bannon who recently wrapped up a U.S. Senate campaign in Alabama where he stumped hard for a man plausibly accused of molesting young girls. And it was Bannon who in 2016 boasted that his Breitbart website was “a platform for the alt-right,” a white nationalist movement trying to infiltrate the Republican Party.
Last week, the question of Bannon’s standards was answered, as he finally found a candidate too toxic for even his own caustic touch.
In 2016, small business owner Paul Nehlen challenged House Speaker Paul Ryan for the Republican nomination in Ryan’s southern Wisconsin congressional district. Along the way, Nehlen indicated a desire to deport all Muslims from America, called Ryan’s actions “borderline treason” and shared photos on Twitter of Ryan sporting a Talibanstyle beard. Yet Breitbart still slathered Nehlen with glowing coverage throughout the campaign, and in August of 2016, Trump himself tweeted his support. Nehlen lost to Ryan by 68 percentage points.
Yet after a series of anti-Semitic tweets last week, Nehlen — back seeking office once again — lost the blessing of Breitbart, a place where he had previously been granted his own author’s page. On Dec. 27, after a Nehlen streak of tweets including one in which he advised a Jewish journalist to “eat a bullet,” Bannon adviser Arthur Schwartz said Nehlen was “dead to us.”
Being the candidate too extreme for Steve Bannon to support is like being the drunkest Packers fan at Lambeau Field — you have redefined the limits for public humiliation. But even if Bannon can wash his hands of Nehlen and walk away from his erstwhile prodigy, it’s not as if Nehlen disappears. He simply gets flushed back to Wisconsin, where the state Republican Party must now spend its resources distancing itself from him.
That’s because Wisconsin is one of the states where the state political parties have virtually no say in who runs under their banner. In order to qualify for the ballot for Congress, one must only be 25 years of age, a citizen of the United States for seven years, and an inhabitant of the state at the time of the election. When candidates file their paperwork, they get to pencil in the name of whichever party they believe they belong to.
Some states allow the major parties to prevent candidates from appearing on the ballot under their name. In South Carolina, Democrats in 2008 blocked comedian Stephen Colbert from appearing on the state’s presidential ballot.
But Wisconsin is stuck with a parasite sucking up any goodwill the party is trying to build with undecided voters, and there is no mechanism to expunge these grotesque bedfellows.
Elections should be left up to voters but a party should have some say in how it is operated.