To save American democracy, Democrats should endorse anti-Trump conservatives in red districts.
The embrace of Donald Trump’s Big Lie by large swaths of the country and much of the Republican Party is a direct threat to free and fair elections in the United States. At such a perilous moment, party labels are less important now; the real bifurcation is between those who are committed to our system of government and those who would see it collapse.
In the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats face a difficult path to holding onto their House and Senate majorities. If they want to improve their odds and deny the Trumpists a toehold back into power, Democratic leaders should join forces with anti-Trump Republicans to outvote the hucksters and fraudsters.
That means Democrats should take what might be an unpalatable course: In states and districts where the party stands little chance of winning in the general election, Democrats should endorse and enthusiastically support anti-Trump Republicans who run as independents. Because what’s really on the ballot isn’t one party or another, it’s democracy itself.
In the 2020 election, some in the GOP showed a willingness to cross party lines, as Republicans like Cindy McCain, Meg Whitman, Jeff Flake and the late Colin Powell endorsed Joe Biden for president. Those endorsements bolstered Biden’s bipartisan bona fides, and Cindy McCain’s support may have helped him win her late husband’s home state of Arizona. In 2022, pro-democracy forces in both parties should consider supercharging an inverse of this strategy.
Some are already beginning to seize hold of this idea. In Utah, former Democratic Rep. Ben McAdams ended his Senate candidacy and threw his support and operation behind Evan McMullin, who is running as an independent. McAdams sees McMullin’s bid as the only opportunity to defeat GOP Sen. Mike Lee, an ally of Trump. Utah is a conservative state, but not in a Trumpy, xenophobic way. A Democrat in Utah has only a narrow path to winning statewide, especially as Biden’s approval numbers slide. In this circumstance and in others, national Democrats should back pro-democracy Republicans running as independents in order to overpower Trump allies on Election Day.
In fact, Democrats have previously used this strategy in states where they otherwise faced slim odds. As Aaron Blake of the Washington Post recently noted, Democrats backed independents like Angus King, who won his 2012 Maine Senate race, and Bill Walker, who won his 2014 Alaska governor’s race. Independent Kansas Senate candidate Greg Orman, who had Democrats’ support, fell short in 2014, but he gave then-Sen. Pat Roberts the smallest share of votes in his long career.
This strategy should also be evaluated for House races. A coalition of Democrats and the center-right should first target members of Congress who narrowly won election in red districts and are among the most virulent in perpetuating the election fraud myths.
At the top of the list should be election deniers like GOP Reps. Scott Perry, Burgess Owens, Bob Good, Dan Bishop, Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert and Madison Cawthorn. It’s early in the cycle, so the field of potential opponents is still fuzzy, and redistricting will shift some of these lawmakers’ districts. But in the case of Perry and Boebert, both have already drawn principled GOP primary opponents. Brian Allen, a right-leaning political newcomer, is primarying Perry. A moderate GOP state senator, Don Coram, is challenging Boebert.
Both Allen and Coram’s primary runs look quixotic at this point in a party dominated by Trump, but if they ran as right-leaning independents in the general election — with no Democrat on the ballot — the math could work. Democrats in each race won 46 percent and 45 percent of the 2020 votes, respectively. An independent candidate would only need to peel off a few percentage points of the GOP vote to win in the general election.
This scenario, of course, requires the Democratic Party organization and its voters to fall in line and support a former Republican. But it could be the only path to beating the most egregious proponents of Trumpism and holding on to the party’s majority.
This is also the perfect strategy to keep Rep. Liz Cheney in Congress if she loses her primary in August and must run as an independent. Democrats have little hope of winning Wyoming’s at-large House seat, but Cheney would have a shot at victory with a larger, non-primary electorate.
Democrats must get both more creative and strategic to confront the election denier threat.
The DNC should start the process now of researching state laws so that pro-democracy GOP candidates can get on the ballots as independents. This won’t be possible in some states as ballot access for independents can be complicated. And some anti-Trump Republicans won’t want to run as such. But many other candidates in red states and districts across the country should be considered for this approach, depending on the opponents they draw. And this list should certainly not be limited to incumbents who essentially embraced the insurrection. Every pro-Trump GOP candidate running in a red state this cycle could be vulnerable to such a strategy.
This approach might sound like a fanciful waste of Democratic resources — backing a Republican to beat a Republican — but it’s an effort worth making to vote out at least a few of the most ardent Trump supporters.
Is this a strategy that will eradicate Trumpism? No. But it is a strategic, targeted push against the worst perpetrators of the election lies and would create new incentives for others in the GOP. And these newly elected, nominal independents would likely caucus with Democrats and might even make the difference in deciding which party controls Capitol Hill.
Some Republicans who backed Biden last year were rewarded not just with the satisfaction of being on the right side of history, but with prestigious ambassadorships. What would Democrats get for doing the same to support the Republicans and independents who stand a chance of stopping the worst of the Trump lot in 2022? The prospect that they hold on to Congress and perhaps a functioning democracy in the years to come.
