Early GOP primaries shaping up as rightward march with Trump
As primary season kicks into high gear, Republicans are engaged in nomination fights that are pulling the party to the right, leaving some leaders worried their candidates will be out of step with the broader electorate in November.
Primaries in four states on Tuesday, all in places Donald Trump carried in 2016, showcase races in which GOP candidates are jockeying to be seen as the most conservative, the most anti-Washington and the most loyal to the president. It’s evidence of the onetime outsider’s deepening imprint on the Republican Party he commandeered less than two years ago.
In Indiana, Republicans will choose between three Senate candidates who have spent much of the race praising Trump and bashing each other. In West Virginia, a former federal convict and coal baron has taken aim at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., with racially charged accusations of corruption.
In Ohio, Republicans are certain to nominate someone more conservative than outgoing GOP Gov. John Kasich, a 2016 presidential candidate, moderate and frequent Trump critic. Even Kasich’s former running mate, Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, has pledged to unwind some of Kasich’s centrist policies, including the expansion of the Medicaid government insurance program following Democrats’ 2010 health insurance overhaul.
With Trump’s job approval hanging around 40 percent and the GOP-run Congress less than half that, the abandonment of the middle has some Republicans raising alarms.
“The far left and the far right always think they are going to dominate these elections,” said John Weaver, a Trump critic and top strategist to Kasich, who has been become a near-pariah in the primary to succeed him.
“You may think it’s wise in a primary to handcuff yourself to the president,” Weaver said. “But when the ship goes down, you may not be able to get the cuffs off.”
North Carolina Republicans will weigh in on the fate of Republican Rep. Robert Pittenger, facing a primary challenger who almost upset him two years ago. Pittenger features Trump prominently in his campaign. Challenger Mark Harris, a prominent Charlotte pastor, has tried to turn the table, saying Pittenger is a creature of Washington who refuses to help Trump “drain that swamp.”
Tough primaries certainly don’t have to be disastrous. They often gin up voter attention and engagement, and can signal strong turnout in the general election.
Dallas Woodhouse, who runs the North Carolina Republican Party, said candidates benefit because they must “make their arguments and voters become more aware of the election.”
Trump and his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton each survived internal party battles in 2016. Clinton won the national popular vote that year, but in the states that mattered most — Ohio and North Carolina, among them — wary Republicans gravitated back to Trump while Clinton struggled to hit the usual Democratic base targets.