Trump defines both parties’ primaries
Both sides in state of flux approaching consequential midterm elections
WASHINGTON – Five weeks before Election Day, the primaries for the midterms have proved this: Donald Trump is the unchallenged leader of the Republican Party.
And no one is the leader of the Democratic Party.
The leading edge of the Democratic Party – the non-incumbents who won congressional and gubernatorial primaries – are more likely than ever before to be younger, female and diverse in race and sexual orientation. Liberal challengers scored the most surprising upsets. That said, the emerging Democratic nominees are typically newcomers but not necessarily outsiders; many have elective experience and an establishment cast.
The leading edge of the Republican Party is distinctly Trumpian, overwhelmingly white and mostly male. President Trump’s endorsement propelled some long-shot contenders to win nominations, and almost no successful new GOP congressional candidate criticized the president.
Both parties find themselves in a state of some flux as they approach an election in November that is likely to have big consequences. A redefined GOP is at risk of losing control of at least one house of Congress, and an energized Democratic Party is setting the stage for a wide-open brawl for the presidential nomination in 2020.
Trump defines the Republicans – and the Democrats, at least for now.
“Regardless of where you are on the spectrum in the Democratic Party, you oppose Trump; it’s a unifying theme,” said Jennifer Duffy of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “But get down to the nitty-gritty of the party and what it stands for and what it wants to do, there are some very big divisions there.”
In the primaries that ended in September, the ideological divide between the two parties continued to widen, according to an analysis by Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica.
Based on a study of the ideological bent of their donors, he concluded that Democratic congressional candidates are moving left; Republican candidates are moving right. “Both parties are feeding off each other,” Bonica said.
The number in the middle continues to decline, signaling more of the polarization that has made everything from overhauling immigration laws to confirming a Supreme Court justice an increasingly difficult endeavor.
Trump’s takeover
Trump is the face of the GOP. A 54 percent majority of Republicans in a new Ipsos Public Affairs Poll identified him as the leader of the party – an especially impressive number given that the person ranked second, House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is not seeking re-elec- tion, was named by 3 percent. Twentythree percent said they didn’t know.
The online Ipsos survey was taken Sept. 19 of 360 Republicans and 345 Democrats and has a credibility interval of +/-5.9 and 6 percentage points for the respective partisan samples.
The majority of candidates Trump endorsed ended up winning. He helped propel primary upsets in House races (including in Alabama, New York, South Carolina), Senate races (including Arizona) and gubernatorial races (including Georgia, Minnesota, Kansas).
In Kansas, Trump’s support helped Secretary of State Kris Kobach defeat incumbent Gov. Jeff Colyer for the gubernatorial nomination. In Minnesota, former two-term governor Tim Pawlenty outspent his opponent by about 3-1 but still lost the Republican primary to Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson, who embraced the president.
An analysis of congressional contenders by the Brookings Institution concluded that a third of the non-in- cumbent Republicans who won nominations praised Trump on their campaign websites. Slightly more than half didn’t mention the president’s name. Virtually none of them made clearly critical comments.
Democratic directions
One in 3 Democrats replied “don’t know” when asked to name the party’s leader, the most frequent response in the Ipsos poll, and 13 percent said the party didn’t have a leader.
That’s not unusual for the party that doesn’t hold the White House. It does underscore the wide-open landscape for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. As a result, dozens of prominent Democrats – senators and governors and mayors and business executives and a former vice president, among others – are considering presidential bids. Even the biggest names scored only in single digits as the party’s leader: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at 5 percent, former Vice President Joe Biden at 3 percent, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren at 1 percent.
Democratic National Chairman Tom Perez – who actually is the leader of the party, technically speaking – was named by just 1 percent.
That adds up to a party that’s up for grabs and trending left.
There were shock waves when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, a Democratic socialist, ousted 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley for the Democratic nomination in the New York primary. That was followed in short order by a similar upset in the Massachusetts primary, when Ayanna Pressley, 44, defeated another 10-term incumbent, Michael Capuano.
Both women were part of a wave of more diverse Democratic contenders.
Ocasio-Cortez is Puerto Rican, and Ayanna Pressley is African-American; both defeated Anglo men. In Florida, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination over two better-funded white candidates; he is the first African-American nominated for governor by a major party in Florida. Christine Hallquist became the first openly transgender person to win a gubernatorial nomination, in Vermont. Two Muslim women, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, won primaries in solidly Democratic districts and are poised to be elected to the House next month.
Women won nominations everywhere, mostly as Democrats. Reuters’ Center for American Women and Politics reported that a record 235 women were nominated for the House, a record 22 for the Senate and a record 16 for governor.
Though liberal challengers scored the biggest upsets, establishment Democrats fared a bit better in Democratic primaries overall. In swing congressional districts, the Democratic nominee was more likely to be an establishment or moderate Democrat, the Brookings analysis found.