Avlon: Tea Party Lost the Senate
John Avlon writes:
The lesson that hyper-partisans will be tempted to take from Tuesday’s historic “shellacking” is that the more polarizing the candidate, the better the results.
Reality does not bear that theory out. In fact, the most celebrated Tea Party-supported nominees trailed more centrist Republican candidates in the same state considerably, putting a drag on the overall ticket and quite possibly costing the GOP control of the U.S. Senate.
The fact that Harry Reid ended up sailing past Sharron Angle in Nevada wasn’t the only important measure of her failure in this marquee Tea Party race. Angle ended up trailing the current Republican Governor-elect Brian Sandoval by more than 61,000 votes.
Sandoval didn’t get much national media attention, but this Hispanic, pro-choice former judge won his nomination by defeating an embattled-with-scandal incumbent Republican governor in a primary. He dispatched Harry Reid’s son Rory on Tuesday. Here’s what’s even more remarkable—roughly 20 percent of Sandoval’s voters split their ticket to support Harry Reid rather than Sharron Angle when it came to the Senate. She might have raised $15 million in national activist cash last quarter, but for one-fifth of Nevada voters—even with 14 percent unemployment—Sharron Angle was simply too extreme to send to the Senate.
In Delaware, Christine O’Donnell’s campaign absorbed a lot of oxygen thanks to her serial absurdities and social policy extremism. Her loss took a sure win away from the GOP, who were poised to walk into the seat with the popular centrist former governor and congressman Mike Castle. But thanks to the fact that Democrat-leaning Delaware only has one congressional seat, it’s possible to make an apples-to-apples comparison of their election prowess. In the Democratic midterm wave year of 2006, the Republican Castle won re-election with 57 percent of the total. In this week’s Republican wave, O’Donnell won only 40 percent of the vote, for her third Senate defeat in five years.
In Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey’s nail biting victory over Joe Sestak is the subject of much celebration in conservative circles. The former president of the Club for Growth has been a major proponent of RINO hunting in the GOP for decades, targeting Republican centrists on social as well as fiscal issues. He developed a voting record in Congress that was literally to the right of Jesse Helms. And he will soon be a U.S. Senator from the purple swing-state of Pennsylvania.
But in this wave election year, Toomey had been leading comfortably in the polls until a late inning Sestak surge that left the race too close to call for much of the evening. His eventual victory should not obscure this fact—Toomey trailed Governor-elect Tom Corbett by 143,000 votes. That’s a significant measure of ticket-splitting in the Keystone state this year—people who could comfortable support Attorney General Tom Corbett but voted for Democrat Joe Sestak for Senate. It’s a sign of the comparative weakness of Toomey’s mandate as he enters office.
Likewise, Connecticut’s self-funded professional wrestling entrepreneur Linda McMahon may have pumped millions into her campaign, but the race was over early on Tuesday night against Senator-elect Richard Blumenthal. Still, former Bush Ambassador Tom Foley was still pushing for a recount early Thursday morning, reflecting his comparative strength on the Republican line. Current totals show Foley running some 70,000 votes ahead of McMahon, translating to a 15 percent ticket split between the WWE executive and the former Ambassador to Ireland. Given the razor thin margin between Foley and Democrat Dan Malloy, it’s entirely possible that a more broadly popular GOP Senate nominee in this state where independent voters outnumber Republicans or Democrats could have helped Foley over the top.
The Tea Party movement can be considered a Western conservative movement but in the archetypal western state of Colorado—home to many early Tea Party chapters—the wheels came off the Tea Party Express. It’s not just that centrist Democrat and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper was elected Governor with 51 percent of the popular vote—its that the Tea Party insurgent and GOP nominee Dan Maes’ got only 11 percent of the total. His vote was split by the even more conservative former Congressman Tom Tancredo, who has developed an unprecedented record of ugliness and incitement but still managed to seem comparatively responsible next to Maes and captured 37 percent of the vote—as well as Sarah Palin’s endorsement.
But the real marquee loss for Colorado conservatives came from Tea Party favorite Ken Buck, a social and fiscal conservative who seemed poised to win the seat from the uninspiring incumbent Michael Bennet, who had been appointed to the post only 20 months ago. Bennet was decidedly centrist, having to fight off a Democratic primary challenger from the left, and the former Denver school’s superintendant (and investment banker) didn’t exactly reek of the mountain west. But as statements about Buck questioning the constitutionality of separation of church and state surfaced—and Bennet ran ads pointing out Buck’s opposition to abortion even in cases of rape and incest—the Democrat defeated the Republican to hold onto the Senate seat, aided no doubt by Hickenlooper’s strength at the top of the ticket.
