Don’t lie.
If I had told you six years ago that, in the home stretch of the not-so-far-off 2022 midterm elections, Tulsi Gabbard would be crisscrossing the country campaigning for conservative Republicans and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) would be doing the same for liberal Democrats, you would have laughed me out of whatever room we were standing in.
Back then, Gabbard was a demonstrably liberal Hawaii congresswoman and ally of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Indeed, she resigned as vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee to endorse Sanders’s underdog bid for the party’s presidential nomination versus Hillary Clinton. To borrow a phrase from DNC Chairman and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, Gabbard represented the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” typically opposing senior party bigwigs she believed were too centrist on domestic and foreign policy issues.
Also back then, Cheney was newly elected to the House, presenting every bit as staunchly conservative as her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney. Soon, Liz Cheney’s GOP peers selected her conference chairwoman, the No. 3 leadership post whose main responsibility is messaging — i.e., attacking Democrats on the House floor and on television. Some Republicans speculated Liz Cheney was positioned to be elected speaker the next time the party won the majority, as appears likely in Tuesday’s midterm elections.
But such is the bizarre state of American politics that Gabbard and Liz Cheney have switched teams and, in the middle of a hard-fought midterm election campaign, are doing everything they can to elect to office representatives of the party they once bitterly opposed.
Gabbard, who as recently as 2020 ran for president as a Democrat, dropped her affiliation with the party and is now headlining campaign events not just for Republicans but for some of the most conservative, outspoken Republicans. Like who? Like Don Bolduc, the GOP Senate nominee in New Hampshire; like John Gibbs, GOP nominee in Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District; and like Rep. Mayra Flores (R-TX) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT).
“I left the Democratic Party because they’ve become obsessed with pushing a woke agenda. Now I’m doing all that I can to help Republican Senator Mike Lee win in November so he can return to Washington and defend our freedom,” Gabbard said in a recent fundraising email appeal she authored and signed for Lee’s reelection campaign.
When Gabbard served in the House, she was not known as a social centrist by any stretch. But her opposition to how far to the left Democratic cultural politics has drifted seems to summarize her beef with her former party. Liz Cheney’s break with the GOP is easier to pinpoint. Unless former President Donald Trump is excised from the party over his claims that the 2020 election was stolen, which Liz Cheney believes fomented the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, then Republicans cannot be trusted with political power.
Since losing badly this past summer in the primary to choose a Republican nominee for Wyoming’s at-large House seat, Liz Cheney has endorsed Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who is running for reelection in a battleground House district heavily targeted by the Republicans. Liz Cheney also has had her political action committee cut advertisements urging Arizona voters to oppose Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, the Republican nominees for governor and secretary of state, respectively, both of whom traffic in Trump’s unsubstantiated stolen election claims.
Liz Cheney also has gone public with her opposition to J.D. Vance, the Republican Senate nominee in Ohio, and Doug Mastriano, the GOP gubernatorial nominee in Pennsylvania. “No American can be a bystander,” she said in a Twitter post. “We all have a duty to defend the republic.”
So, Gabbard and Liz Cheney both have their professed reasons. And let’s be clear, they gained many admirers in doing so. This is not the sort of thing we see in American politics with regularity. But not everyone is convinced their decision to switch jerseys is something to be applauded. Here’s what Republican strategist Brad Todd had to say.
“Toxic vanity is one of the incurable political diseases that medical science has yet to solve,” he said.
Now, to the field …
By the #s:
- President Joe Biden’s job approval rating: RealClearPolitics — 42.8%; FiveThirtyEight — 42.4%.
- Generic ballot: RealClearPolitics — Republicans edging Democrats 48.1% to 45.2%; FiveThirtyEight — Republicans edging Democrats 46.3% to 45.1%.
- Direction of the country: RealClearPolitics — right track 25.2%/wrong track 67.4% (FiveThirtyEight average unavailable).
- House ratings changes from Cook Political Report with Amy Walter: The nonpartisan handicapper has moved another 10 Democratic-held seats toward the Republicans but, for now, is sticking with its projection that the GOP will gain anywhere from 12–25 seats in Tuesday’s midterm elections.
- Rep. Josh Harder (D-CA) in California’s 9th Congressional District: Likely D to Lean D
- Rep. Julia Brownley (D-CA) in California’s 26th Congressional District: Solid D to Lean D
- Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) in California’s 47th Congressional District: Lean D to Toss-up
- Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) in Illinois’s 6th Congressional District: Likely D to Lean D
- Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL) in Illinois’s 14th Congressional District: Likely D to Lean D
- Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ) in New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District: Likely D to Lean D
- New York’s 3rd Congressional District — open: Lean D to Toss-up
- New York’s 4th Congressional District — open: Lean D to Toss-up
- Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) in New York’s 25th Congressional District: Solid D to Likely D
- Oregon’s 5th Congressional District — open: Toss-up to Lean R
Battle for the House. Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), is dumping another $5.6 million into television advertising in Democratic-held districts that were not presumed in play at the beginning of the 2022 election cycle.
This move reveals both the danger Democrats are in less than one week before Election Day and the massive fundraising haul McCarthy and other top House GOP leaders have generated this cycle. Seats like Illinois’s 6th Congressional District, where Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) is running for reelection; California’s 49th Congressional District, where Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA) is running for reelection; and New York’s 17th Congressional District, where Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee of all people is fighting for survival.
The Congressional Leadership Fund has now spent a whopping $215 million to elect a Republican House majority in the midterm elections.
Arizona Senate race. On Tuesday, seven days before Election Day, the Club for Growth announced plans to pour another $500,000 into its advertising campaign to boost Republican nominee Blake Masters, per the Daily Caller.
This latest cash infusion brings the conservative advocacy’s investment in Masters to $6 million as the career venture capitalist seeks to unseat Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ). With polling pointing to a Republican electoral wave, and late advertising blitzes on behalf of his candidacy by the Club for Growth and other groups, Masters just might get over the hump. (Also encouraging for Masters, this week Libertarian nominee Marc Victor dropped out of the race and endorsed him, although his name is still on the ballot and many votes have already been cast.)
But if there is any Senate race where Republicans have wondered about their prospects despite favorable political winds, it’s Arizona. Kelly has led virtually the entire way, with Masters struggling to win over swing voters and suburban women.
As of Wednesday morning, Kelly still led in the RealClearPolitics average by 2.3 percentage points.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
2024 watch. As I reported in these parts earlier this week, the race for the Republican presidential nomination gets underway rather immediately after Tuesday’s midterm elections.
Ten days after the vote, nearly one dozen GOP White House hopefuls are booked to appear at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership meeting in Las Vegas. Among them are former Vice President Mike Pence and two veterans of former President Donald Trump’s Cabinet: former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. You’ll also find Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis attending the RJC conference, as well as Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who snagged the coveted headliner slot at the group’s annual dinner, where the group’s biggest campaign donors will be in attendance.
And what about Trump? He was invited, RJC officials confirmed to me, but has so far declined. I say “so far” because, as one RJC bigwig reminded me: “That’s not to say he won’t change his mind the day before.”
