Can the Republicans do it again?
That’s the question the GOP is asking itself as it closes the book on 2014, a year of undeniable achievement for a political party that was being read last rites just two years ago. Republicans picked up nine seats on their way to Senate control for the first time in eight years, flipped three governors’ mansions in deep blue states, and padded their House majority with a baker’s dozen seats captured in Democrat-friendly territory.
“How do you win these kinds of seats? The right candidates,” said Liesl Hickey, outgoing executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the GOP campaign arm charged with defending and winning seats in the House of Representatives.
In winning the Senate majority after falling short in the GOP wave election of 2010 and actually losing ground in 2012, Republicans quelled doubts about their viability in future elections. Losing this battle, fought largely in red states amid a favorable political environment, would have suggested an inability to compete for the White House two years from now, when the electorate and the battleground will be more competitive.
The Republican Senate takeover also was built on wins in Colorado and Iowa, two presidential swing states, and upon the ouster of five Democratic incumbents — no small feat. But the party’s midterm House pickups might offer more clues to potential success in 2016.
With most conservative districts won in 2010, House Republicans had nowhere to look to expand their majority this year but swing districts and Democratic seats that President Obama won in 2012.
These districts are located in the suburbs of Chicago, Denver and Philadelphia; near New York City; in eastern Iowa; and in heavily Latino areas of southern Arizona, Florida and Nevada. Voters there have much in common with those in crucial presidential battleground states that Republicans must win to be successful in 2016.
To do that, part of the Republicans’ task is to prove they are capable of governing.
“Voters want to see Republicans get something done,” said David Winston, a GOP pollster who advises congressional Republicans. “The challenge for House and Senate Republicans is how they do that.”
In interviews with the Washington Examiner, Republican strategists cited several key improvements the party made in the midterm election cycle after suffering a dispiriting defeat to Obama and the Democrats in 2012. That year, not only did a marginally unpopular Obama win re-election despite historically high unemployment, Senate Democrats gained two seats by winning states that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney won comfortably, and House Democrats gained eight seats by running the table in contested districts.
In 2014, the Republican Party invested more than $105 million to build and deploy a digital analytics and voter turnout program modeled on Obama’s 2012 operation. GOP strategists say it proved crucial to victories in dozens of close contests. The new program enabled them to make faster, more accurate strategic decisions while increasing turnout among high-propensity Republican voters who were less likely to show up for a midterm election.
Most Republican incumbents prepared earlier and built stronger campaigns than ever before, helping them weather a difficult primary season and carry momentum into the general election. For the few candidates who hobbled through the spring and summer, the national party committees were there to drag them across the finish line. An unprecedented investment by Republican-aligned groups, particularly in contentious primaries targeted by the Tea Party, helped the GOP nominate the best candidates for the general election.
This was crucial in Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi and North Carolina. In these states, groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the NRSC — the national party committee charged with defending and winning Senate seats — were active in GOP primaries on behalf of incumbents and, in open seats, the stronger general election candidate. That effort helped prevent the nomination of weak politicians who might have hampered Republicans across the board, as Missouri’s Todd Akin did in 2012.
“Previously, the party had sat on the sidelines and allowed a few outside groups to dictate the state of play, and we were very intent on changing that,” said Josh Holmes, campaign manager and top political adviser to incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who this year successfully weathered challenges from the Tea Party on the right and the Democratic Party on the left.
But the No. 1 improvement fueling GOP success in 2014, the one that needs to carry over for victory in the presidential race two years from now, was candidate quality.
This year, even considering the favorable political environment created by Obama’s deep unpopularity, what got the job done for the Republicans, whether in liberal House districts or conservative states with contested Senate races, was good candidates who ran on strong messages and backed themselves up with precision campaign operations.
Rather than simply delivering ideological arguments against Obama’s policies, Republicans offered pragmatic, reform-minded solutions. For instance, GOP candidates weren’t just telling voters that the Affordable Care Act was a wrongheaded power grab by the state. Instead they told voters that Obamacare was costing them more money, and they proposed changes. Republican candidates also stepped up their game with female voters.
In the past, the GOP blamed Democrats for inaccurately portraying them as hostile to women, while declining on principle to tailor messages specifically toward women on the grounds that they did not believe in the Democrats’ groupthink approach. But in this campaign, Republicans worked hard to shed the “war on women” label, employing an aggressive strategy to connect with female voters.
This was most evident in Colorado, where Sen.-elect Cory Gardner proposed over-the-counter access to prescription birth control drugs to counter Sen. Mark Udall’s relentless warnings that a Republican-controlled Senate would be hostile to women. But this female-centric approach extended to GOP candidates across the country and guided them in discussions of kitchen table issues including jobs and the economy.
Operationally, the campaigns were up to the task as well.
Republican consultants involved in House and Senate campaigns say GOP candidates improved their online fundraising efforts. That mattered because many outside groups and major donors, still stung by losses in 2012, did not get involved until late in the campaign. While Republican candidates were able to keep themselves afloat financially, the GOP ground game also improved, focusing campaign resources on capturing more early and absentee voters.
That was especially true in Iowa, where Sen.-elect Joni Ernst, with help from state and national parties, worked hard to reduce Hawkeye State Democrats’ traditional early-vote advantage.
Ultimately, however, the Republicans’ success boiled down to the voters themselves — especially primary voters. They had the final say in 2014, as they will in 2016, and they picked the candidates who are credited with reviving the Republican Party’s fortunes.
“You have to give some credit to Republican primary voters. They figured out how to nominate candidates who can win a general election,” said Republican consultant Brad Todd, whose firm advised winning GOP Senate candidates in Arkansas, Colorado and North Carolina. “That’s not something anybody did; it wasn’t part of any scheme. The primary voters finally got it right.”
