Kavanaugh’s confirmation has left Republicans elated, Dems alarmed
RUTLAND, N.D. — When Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, and her Republican opponent, Rep. Kevin Cramer, put Sunday’s annual Uffda Day celebration on their schedules earlier this year, they likely thought they would get an earful from voters about tariffs here in the heart of North Dakota’s soybean belt.
But the Scandavian food festival in this town of 155, a fixture on North Dakota’s political calendar, instead served as a snapshot of the nation’s changing electoral landscape, illustrating why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was so eager to ram through Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination before the midterm election.
Voter after voter brought up the polarizing Supreme Court battle to the two candidates as they made their way around the lefse and other Norwegian delicacies; the comments reflected the country’s divide, with Republicans thanking Cramer for standing by Kavanaugh and Democrats offering hugs to Heitkamp to show their appreciation for her opposi-
tion.
The intense interest, even in a farm-focused state far from Washington, reflects the extent to which the partisan divide over Kavanaugh has transformed the political debate in just a matter of weeks. With less than a month to go until the election, the battle for control of the Senate has been nationalized by the showdown over the Supreme Court, and for the moment has left Democrats alarmed and Republicans elated.
“The smart political vote would have been to vote for Kavanaugh,” Heitkamp said after marching in a six-block parade here, acknowledging that her opposition would anger some of the state’s voters and that she’d rather focus on trade and tariffs, “not a Supreme Court nomination.”
But, Heitkamp said, “that’s the way it just goes.”
Republicans, for their part, not only delivered a conservative majority on the high court but galvanized conservative-leaning voters in a campaign that previously had been dominated by a surge in Democratic enthusiasm.
“There is nothing that unifies all stripes of Republicans more than a court fight,” McConnell said in an interview, adding: “They stupidly handed us the best issue they possibly could going into the fall election. And it totally underscores the importance of keeping a Republican Senate.”
Localizing races
There are real risks for Republicans. Seating a man on the nation’s highest court who was accused in searing terms of sexual misconduct has only enraged many women who were already eager to register their contempt for President Donald Trump at the polls. And it may further imperil the party’s tenuous House majority and its prospects in a handful of big-state governor’s races that could turn on anti-Trump energy.
But the terms of the debate have shifted profoundly for Democratic Senate candidates.
From North Dakota and Missouri to Montana and Tennessee, they have tried to localize races, either ignoring Trump or highlighting their willingness to work with him while downplaying the court fight and emphasizing regional issues.
In Montana, Sen. Jon Tester and his allies have assailed his Republican opponent, Matt Rosendale, a Maryland native, as an East Coast real estate developer. In Missouri, Sen. Claire McCaskill has taken every chance to highlight the Ivy League and law professor background of her GOP challenger, Josh Hawley.
At the same time, Phil Bredesen, the Democratic Senate nominee in Tennessee, has done just about everything he can to distance himself from national Democrats. He has spent much of his campaign talking about his tenure as governor and as Nashville’s mayor, and even tried to inject the invasion of Asian carp in the state’s waterways as an issue in the race.
And Heitkamp has portrayed herself as a champion of North Dakota’s farmers and ranchers, recording ads of herself standing in knee-high soybean fields.
‘Polarization of the parties’
Now, though, Republicans in these races are using the court clash to turn the campaign into more of a national referendum on the fate of their 51-49 majority and a test of which side the voters are on: that of Trump and Kavanaugh or the angry Democratic opposition.
“I hope the battle cry of Republicans for the next 30 days will be ‘Remember Kavanaugh,’” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa and the Judiciary Committee chairman, at a Republican dinner Sunday in Iowa.
Cramer, referring to his state’s electorate, said that “280,000 people are going to decide something that’s got very significant national implications,” adding that the Kavanaugh showdown demonstrated “with great clarity what can happen if those crazy people get control of the government.”
Asked in an interview over coffee in Bismarck what would happen if the campaign becomes a test of red-versus-blue loyalties, Cramer did not hesitate: “She’s toast,” he said of Heitkamp, adding, “But she’s done her best to try and make it not that.”
Outside the Little Cottage Cafe, Lee Klein, a retired insurance executive who supports Heitkamp and called Cramer “a weasel,” was blunt about what he thought the consequences would be for Heitkamp.
“That vote today is going to sink her,” said Klein, who wrote in Harry S. Truman for president in 2016, pointing to “the polarization of the parties.”