Wednesday July 12, 2023
Are We Returning to More-Normal Politics?
Editor’s Note: We are taking a brief break, but will return tomorrow. Today, enjoy this most-read story of 2023 that wasn’t about the Spotsy School Board.
COMMENTARY: Are We Returning to More-Normal Politics?
by Martin Davis
To say that turnout in last week’s Democratic primary was poor would be an understatement.
Primaries aren’t known for turning out large numbers of voters, of course. But since the presidential election of 2016, primary elections have turned out a relatively high number of voters in Virginia.
In 2017, the state saw record high turnout for its primary, with almost 11% of voters going to the polls. In 2021, Democrats turned out 8% of registered voters statewide for that primary. Not as strong as 2017, but still pretty good, according to a VPM report.
About 8 percent of registered voters turned out for Tuesday’s Democratic primary in Virginia, down about two points from 2017’s record.
But data from the Virginia Public Access Project show that percentage is still among the highest tallies for Democratic primaries since the early 1990s. In all, turnout dipped about 11% from 2017, to about 480,000 votes cast.
But Tuesday’s Democratic turnout was well below state levels in 2021, at 5% in Spotsylvania, 6% in Stafford, and 10% in Fredericksburg.
Unlike 2021, there were no gubernatorial names on the ballot, so that explains some of the drop. But not all of it.
Democrats poured a lot of fiscal and human resources into this race, and this led some - myself included - to expect higher turnout rates for the Democratic primary.
Signs began popping up all over Spotsylvania County early this year, and before long Route 3 in Spotsy and major thoroughfares in Stafford were awash in signage. And in Fredericksburg, the candidates’ signs had to compete with signage over the ongoing debate in the city over Alternative Dwelling Units (that’s another story for another day).
There was also spending on TV ads, and fliers that some residents complained to F2S were appearing seemingly daily.
The Litchfield campaign boasted of knocking on some 40,000 - 45,000 doors. And Griffin’s people were canvassing hard the last few weeks of the primary campaign.
All that work, and the turnout rate was, in a word, abysmal.
So how does one explain that?
The answer lies in a return to normalcy in the Democratic Party. To understand how, let’s turn for a moment to the Republican Primary.
Voters Are Burned Out … on Crazy
Turnout numbers weren’t great for Republicans, either, but they were more in line with state primary turnout rates since 2017. The turnout rate was: 8% in Spotsylvania, 9% in Stafford, and 6% in Fredericksburg.
How to explain the better numbers?
In his post-election analysis, Cardinal News’ Dwayne Yancey pointed out that Republican voters turned their collective backs on the hard-core MAGA Republicans seeking office.
Across Virginia on Tuesday, Republican voters generally rewarded candidates who weren’t the furthest right, or at least were seen as the more establishment candidate available.
In the race for the Senate District 27, there was certainly a MAGA-style candidate.
Matt Strickland has been running a burn-it-all-down campaign since he announced, and he was a candidate that the party did not want to see advance.
When Strickland’s business was raided by state police for his repeated failures to following state COVID laws, he filmed state police and taunted them by relating their activities to those of the Nazis.
When Gov. Glenn Youngkin tried to bail him out by having Tara Durant shepherd a bill through the General Assembly that would have benefited Strickland, the Gourmeltz owner responding by chastising the governor and Durant, branding Youngkin an AINO (American in Name Only).
Durant’s campaign was run to draw a stark contrast between the establishment party that Youngkin now heads, and the MAGA-style campaign that Strickland was running. With the exception of a few attack mailers (or “comparison” mailers, as she describes them), Durant made scant reference to Strickland on the campaign trail.
The tactic worked, and brought out a relatively higher number of Republican voters, with Durant winning by a landslide. And Strickland became another MAGA casualty of last week’s primary.
In short, voters were expressing their frustration and exhaustion with the extremism and anti-democratic behaviors that Donald Trump represents, and the local candidates who continue to stand by his approach.
Back to the Dems
Yancey’s analysis showed Republicans moving back from the ledge, but Dems with turning harder to the left.
The message on the Democratic side seemed just the opposite. In many primaries, the party opted for candidates further to the left than the incumbents they had.
Like the Republicans, he continues, the Democrats gave the boot to the party’s most-extreme candidates (Sen. Joe Morrissey, in particular). But overall, the party elected people that tacked harder to the left.
This was not the case in SD27, however. While Ben Litchfield struck a more-populist pose and has positions that tack toward the more progressive wing of the party on issues like corporate taxation and consumer protection, he was far from the most-left-leaning Democrat running last week.
Joel Griffin, with a resume that in some ways reads like one a Republican would take a shine to (Marine veteran, business owner, venture capitalist), fits more in the Bill and Hillary Clinton mold than the mold of a Bernie Saunders. Strong on women’s rights and the right to abortion, but welcoming of business-friendly policies.
Litchfield may have been more left than Griffin, but he was no fringe progressive.
In short, the Democratic primary in SD27 was a more-normal race. With no extremist to put down, Democratic voters may have felt comfortable with either candidate winning, potentially driving down turnout.
A Return to a More-normal Politics
If, as Yancey noted, both the Republicans and the Democrats pushed out their most-extreme candidates, we have some hope that we are on the path to a more-sane political discussion in the Commonwealth.
This is not to suggest that Republicans who won last Tuesday are moderate.
Durant is adamantly anti-choice, has supported legislation that would force schools to out students who are transgender to their parents, and has fallen in line with conservatives on issues ranging from book bans and Critical Race Theory to parents’ rights.
Democrats have attacked these positions as out of step with voters’ beliefs, and we expect Griffin will hit Durant hard on these issues this fall. Just as Durant is sure to hit Griffin for his stand on abortion as too extreme for her supporters.
But Durant is no Strickland, according to Stafford resident and political gadfly Daniel Cortez, and is in line with Griffin and Litchfield about how government is to operate.
Tara, Joel, and Ben respected the [masking] mandate, even if they disagreed with it. Strickland did not. He betrayed legislative propriety - obeying the law. [The other three] obeyed the law, but were prepared to work within the process. One candidate continued to display that he will disobey the law.
And this is the line in the sand between hardcore conservative and/or liberal, and extremist.
The battle against extremism is in no wise over. There are critical races in Spotsylvania this November against political extremists on the school board who have repeatedly violated board policies and denied public speakers their First Amendment rights. The battles will be intense, and victory is far from a foregone conclusion.
But that Republicans statewide and Democrats here locally are turning their backs on extremism is a good sign for our communities and democracy as a whole.