In recent political history, the Republican Party appears to have been much better at strategizing than Democrats.
While Democrats have generally focused on the big-ticket offices — the president, governors and members of Congress — Republicans figured out that the way to assure political power over the long haul is to focus on contests further down the ballot.
In recent times, they have targeted state legislative races because in many states, such as Mississippi, the legislature draws the voting boundaries from which members of Congress and the state legislators themselves are elected. Since the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that there is nothing unconstitutional about drawing election boundaries to give one political party a greater shot at winning, the Republican advantage from redistricting is now so entrenched in some states that it’s hard to see how Democrats will ever be able to flip them back. The strategy has nearly guaranteed Republicans that even when they are in the minority in Congress, their disadvantage will never be so large that they can’t block legislation they oppose.
Recently, conservative syndicated columnist Mona Charen wrote about a more pernicious movement within the Republican Party — or more accurately a powerful faction within the Republican Party — that could further tilt the balance of power toward the GOP and undermine democracy in the process.
Democrats better be paying attention.
Following the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump attempted to overturn his defeat by pressuring state and local election officials to cooperate in a false narrative about widespread voter fraud. That didn’t work, so now the former president and his supporters are busy backing “election deniers” for state office who could be helpful the next time there’s a closely contested presidential race.
According to Charen’s column, written before several states held party primaries last month, at least 23 candidates who falsely claim the presidency was stolen from Trump had qualified to run for secretary of state in 19 states. Fifty-three election deniers were seeking governorships in 25 states, and 13 were running for attorney general in 13 states. All three of these positions — secretary of state, governor and attorney general — play critical roles in the oversight of the vote-counting and in challenges to it. The former president has been actively involved in endorsing many of these election deniers, “the only time in history that a former president has bestirred himself over races so far down the ballot,” wrote Charen.
“Additionally,” said the columnist, “death threats and intimidation from MAGA (Make America Great Again) extremists have caused one in five election administrators to leave their posts before 2024.”
The early results of Trump’s efforts have been mixed, as illustrated in two states that he narrowly lost in 2020. The GOP nomination in the Pennsylvania governor’s race went to a big-time election denier, Doug Mastriano, while in Georgia, two Republican incumbents who refused to cave to Trump’s pressure, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, handily won their party’s nomination.
The battle is far from over, however. If Trump and his acolytes are successful, it could endanger the integrity of every close election. All it takes to steal an election is to have those counting the votes predisposed as to who the winner is going to be.
